How To Find Yourself Again When You’ve Forgotten Who You Are

Rylee Snow
Jun 29, 2024
6 min read

These 6 tools will help you find yourself again when you’ve forgotten who you are.

We all lose ourselves sometimes and forget who we are. We’ve all found ourselves staring into the mirror wondering who’ve we’ve become and when we lost sight of who we are.

Even when you feel lost and broken, there is always someone there for you to guide you back to wholeness, you.

Even if you don’t recognize yourself anymore, your true essence is always there waiting for you to get to know her again. We’ve all abandoned ourselves at times in our lives, but we can always come home again inside of ourselves. No matter how far off the path you’ve wandered there is always an internal compass guiding you back home.

These steps will help you walk the beautiful journey back to yourself.

Journal

Journaling helps us remain present and mindful while navigating our internal world. It provides a safe space for us to put our thoughts, feelings, and beliefs into words. It can help us express and more deeply understand our internal experiences. Writing about our internal world can help us connect to our subconscious and get a clearer picture of our internalized beliefs, emotional triggers, and thought patterns. Journaling can help us expand our self awareness, understand our emotions, see patterns in our behaviors, and deepen our relationship with ourselves.

Read these journal prompts to help you find yourself.

Meditate

Meditating can help us connect more deeply with ourselves and understand the true nature of ourselves and our existence.

As you meditate notice yourself, and notice your thoughts. Notice that you are not your mind, and notice that you are not your thoughts. Notice that you are the observer of your mind and your thoughts. Ask yourself who am I?

There are a variety of mediation styles for baby beginners all the way to enlightened monks. Accept where you are and find a style of meditation that works for you. The most important thing is to accept where you are at right now and to just get comfortable simply being with that.

Sitting with our minds forces us to be with ourselves with out the chaos of everyday life to distract us from our thoughts and feelings. Allow yourself the space and time to connect with your internal world and to simply be with yourself.

Meditation can increase our moment to moment mindfulness, which is a very powerful thing. What we are mindful of is what are Mind is Full of. When we can become aware of what are minds are full of we then have the power to decide if those thoughts are serving us. This gives us a greater ability to control and understand our thoughts and behaviors instead of our thoughts controlling us.

Check out this post for more science-based benefits of meditation.

Connect To Your Body

Movement is medicine and can work some mental magic.

In most cultures today people live life very disconnected from their bodies. Most people are busy on the go, moving from screen to screen, sitting for long periods, and eating fast (often unhealthy) meals. This not only negatively impacts our physical health but it damages our mental health as well.

Moving our bodies shows us how flexible we are, how capable we are, and how strong we are physically and mentally.

Our bodies are full of so much pleasure and wisdom. Our bodies are constantly trying to communicate clues to us about our physical, emotional, and energetic state. The more in tune we are with our bodies the more in tune we are with ourselves. There is a reason why there are age old sayings like “listen to your gut” and “feel it in your bones”. Our bodies are a deep source of intelligence and intuition.

Being embodied helps us to connect more deeply with our senses, emotions, experiences, and ourselves.

I invite you to sit with your body, close your eyes, and feel. Focus on the depth of your breath, feel the sensations on your skin, notice any places of tension or softness and drop deeper into your body. Do you feel the Prana (life force) in your breath? Do you feel the air in your lungs? How do you feel physically? How does simply noticing your body impact the way you feel mentally?

Our bodies are our homes and they’re always welcoming us into the deep richness they have to share. Your body is full of infinite wisdom and experiences. Come home to your body and notice how you feel at home in yourself.

Prioritize Your Passions

When is the last time you did something you truly love?

Most of us live busy lives full of work, responsibilities, social events, and the needs of our family and friends. Often this means are passions fall to the way side as we prioritize the needs of others and our responsibilities. It is deeply fulfilling to put others before yourself and to care for others more than you care for yourself. However, without boundaries you can quickly lose sight of yourself and your own passions and interests.

We are all gifted with unique personalities, gifts, talents, and passions. This diversity is what makes the world such a rich and interesting place. Embracing your passions is not only a gift to yourself, but it is also a gift to the world. We deeply improve each other’s lives by sharing our art, talents, interests, thoughts, and knowledge with each other. We can literally change the world by expressing ourselves and advocating for the things that matter to us.

What are you passionate about? What are your talents? When is the last time you gave yourself time to explore these interests?

Making time for the things we love helps us to connect more deeply to our selves and to enrich the world with our unique passions.

Spend Time With Yourself

Your relationship with yourself is the most important relationship you will ever have.

As the waves of life take you from change to change, relationship to relationship, and season to season, the only thing that will always be constant is you. Even though you may make deep long lasting relationships with other people they will never be able to understand you the way you understand yourself or unconditionally love you the way you can love yourself. Every one has their own bias and self serving agenda even if they mean the best for you. The only person you can count on with certainty is yourself because the only person you can control is yourself.

No matter where you go, what you do, or who else you’re with you’re always with yourself. There is no one you will spend more time with than yourself. If you don’t learn to enjoy spending time with yourself, life will be very hard for you.

Take yourself on solo dates. Do nice things just for you. Spend time alone. Get to know yourself. Enjoy your own company.

Explore your interests. Find what you’re passionate about. Embrace your talents. Learn about the things that make you curious. Stand for what you believe in.

Treat yourself like someone you love and want to have a good relationship with.

Spend Time With People You Love

Humans are social beings who crave and need connection with each other. These social connections can be just as important to both our physical and mental health as eating healthy and exercising. Spending time with people we love can fill us with a sense of belonging, reinforce our sense of self, and help us to feel seen, loved, and valued.

Thanks to the age of technology we’ve never been more connected. We can talk to millions of people from all around the world with just a few taps on our cell phones. Unfortunately, despite being more technologically connected than ever, we’ve never been more emotionally and socially disconnected from each other. People spend more time with their face in a screen than they spend face to face with each other. More people are connecting online instead of meeting up with each other in person. The amount of people working from home alone instead of in person with each other is steadily increasing. Forced isolation policies have had long lasting negative affects on people’s emotional wellbeing, social behaviors, ability to connect with each other, and society as a whole.

In a fast paced world full of screens, unrealistic beauty standards, internet trolls, cancel culture, influencers, isolation, and shallow social interactions it’s easy to feel alone, insecure, and invisible. More than ever before, it’s important that we prioritize spending time with people we love.

Making meaningful social connections can improve our physical and mental health, give us a sense of belonging, help us to feel valuable, and increase our self esteem.

Prioritize spending time meaningfully connecting with your loved ones. Share your dreams, pains, wins, and losses with others. Share in the beauty and depth of human connection.

Embrace your authentic self and let yourself be seen and appreciated by others.