“Everything in the universe is within you. Ask all from yourself.”― Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi

Many of us are wandering the earth, accomplished in many ways, capable of fulfilment at points, but with a fundamental wound that stops us from becoming who we might be: we don’t quite know who we are.

It isn’t, of course, that we can’t remember the basics of our biographies. We’re unsure around two things in particular: we don’t have a stable sense of what we are worth, and we don’t have a secure hold on our own values or judgements.

Without knowing who we are, we tend to have particular trouble coping with either denigration or adulation.

If others decide that we are worthless or bad, there will be nothing inside us to prevent us from swallowing their verdicts in their entirety, however wrong-headed, extreme or unkind they may be.

We will be helpless before the court of public opinion. We’ll always be asking others what we deserve before seeking inside for an answer. Lacking an independent verdict, we also stand to be unnaturally hungry for external praise: the clapping of an audience will matter more than would ever be wise. We’ll be prey to rushing towards whatever idea or activity the crowd happen to love.

We’ll trail public opinion slavishly, constantly checking the world’s whims rather than consulting an inner barometer in order to know what we should want, feel and value.

Realising that we lack a stable identity is a sobering realisation. But we can, with a fair wind, start to correct the problem at any point.

We need to connect deeply with our souls and learn how we really feel and take seriously what we actually want.

We can, by being witnessed generously, more often take our own sides and feel increasingly solid inside, trusting ourselves more than the crowd, feeling that we might be able to say no, not always swaying in the wind and feeling that we are in possession of some of the ultimate truths about us.

Having come to know ourselves like this, we will be a little less hungry for praise, a little less worried by opposition – and much more original in our thinking.

We will have learnt the vital art of both knowing and befriending who we really are.