It’s that time of the year! Twitter and Instagram are filled with posts about New Year resolutions; whether it’s hitting the gym at the start of January or making ‘cross your heart and hope to die’ promises about being more organized or eliminating the toxic relationships in our lives. That’s great and all, everyone craves happiness and these cliché New Year resolution is what make us happy (and that’s not a bad thing). However, what about trying to get to know ourselves a little better for the “year where we’ll see everything clearly” 2020?

Many of us continue to struggle with choosing our career paths or finding out what we like to do for fun simply because we never really took the time out to get to know ourselves. We live life one day at a time and we do what we think we’re supposed to do because it’s what our parents want or it’s what social media tells us to do.

It’s rarely ever about us knowing who we are deep down, our likes and dislikes, strengths and weaknesses and our values and beliefs. I vote that we try to accomplish this for the New Year! Amy Poehler said it best after all,” You attract the right things when you have a sense of who you are.”

teenAGE cares deeply about how we can all develop ourselves for the better, and so we’ve come up with a few ways you can start learning about yourself. 

Continuously ask yourself questions

The thing with getting to know yourself is that you need to understand that you’re a dynamic being – you’re always changing and while you may have been interested in a particular thing last year, it may not be the same come 2020. What you’ll need to do is ask yourself questions.

What are your core values?

Your core values encompass your fundamental beliefs, which then dictate your behavior and guide you to make the decisions that you do. Your values are broad concepts that can be reapplied many times over in your life in various situations to guide your actions. Read more on this here.

To kick this off, write down your top 10 core values and rank them! Rank up the value that is of the most importance to you. This will give you some insight into what you truly value in your life.

What are your strengths and weaknesses? 

Having an idea of both your strengths and weaknesses is a plus for you. It not only gives you a better understanding of yourself and how you function, but it pushes you to go after what you’re truly passionate about.

There are several online tests you can take, that you can take to find out what you’re good at and what may not be your thing overall.

In doing this, it is a good idea to get yourself a journal so that you can record these findings. It can also be used as a means of reflection which will also work in helping you to know more about yourself.

Ps. If you ever get stuck journaling, there are great journaling prompts plastered all over the Internet that you can check out.

For some, 2020 is a year of achieving everything you desire, while for others it’s building on what you’ve already accomplished. Wherever you may be on the spectrum it never hurts to start or continue getting to know yourself.

teenAGE wishes you a Happy New Year filled with brightness and positivity! 

–Isheba Cornwall