To know yourself is important not only in the context of life experiences, but also in creating your career path. This is the first step towards revealing personal reserves, directing yourself in the right career direction and the opportunity to devote yourself to the work you love. When looking for a job or internship, it is important to know your personality traits, interests, abilities, values and achievements.
The process of self-knowledge consists of collecting, analyzing and evaluating information about oneself. One of the ways of collecting information is various tests and questionnaires. However, it should be emphasized that test answers sometimes show somewhat ambiguous results.
What makes me happy?
Interests and getting to know them are one of the essential factors in choosing a professional activity. Research confirms that interests have a stronger connection with choosing a profession than abilities.
One way to know your interests is to ask yourself questions:
- What do I like to do in my free time?
- What would I do in life if I had unlimited opportunities?
If these questions turn out to be very difficult to answer – try new activities, thereby discovering what attracts and interests you.
Try the tests:
What is important for me?
Knowing values and living according to them is the foundation of strong and measured self-confidence. Living, acting according to your values and doing it well, a person feels that he has something to trust in himself, to be happy with himself.
A value is what is important to you in life, what you care about, what you value, what you often think about and dream about. Values can be both broad (family, favorite job) and tangible (breakfast, tidy workplace).
Try to name your values. You can do this according to the following areas: :
- Abstract phenomena (love, family, work, world peace)
- Your qualities (diligence, creativity, perseverance, ecological awareness)
- Concrete living objects (specific friends, relatives, dog)
- Skills, abilities, competences (ability to beautifully drawing, learning a foreign language)
- Achievements, events, important decisions (graduated from higher education, overcoming some challenge)
- Behaviors, decisions (expressing my opinion, saying no when too much is asked of me)
- Favorite activities (walking in the forest, playing board games with friends)
- Habits, rituals (morning drinking coffee, sports)
- Things (camera, hiking boots, delicious tea)
Clarify the values that are important to you when choosing a profession or job/internship.
Analyze your experience. It is also worth thinking about the various decisions made and evaluating what could have determined such a choice (e.g. how you chose your studies, extracurricular activities at school, or even the direction/activity of your vacation).
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Strenghts/Abilities
Strength is what is in you and helps you to trust yourself, feel stronger, happier. Refinement and nurturing of these strong qualities and talents not only helps to achieve goals, solve problems and overcome challenges at work or everyday life, but also helps to find your own way.
A strength can be:
- your skills, abilities, competences (mastered Adobe Photoshop, knowledge of a certain field)
- your qualities, habits, behaviors (punctuality, responsibility)
- your decisions, actions (entering college, participating in an exchange program)
- your achievements (contest winning)
If it is very difficult to come up with your strengths – try to come up with the endings for the following sentences:
- “I am proud of my decisions, actions…”
- “I think I can do better than some of the others…”
- “I’m good at…”
It is also worth asking the opinions of close people about your strengths!
Other ways to know yourself
- Ask for feedback from other people: teachers, friends, relatives, employers. Analyze your experience.
- Take up new activities, observe how you succeed, what difficulties you face and how you cope with them, what talents are revealed.