If you aren't sure what "yourself" is, then you have bigger issues than asking out girls/women. I suggest spending time in a psychologist's office figuring out why you don't know who you are before you even bother trying to ask anyone out if you don't already know the answer to that question.
That was a rather harsh response. I mean that guys who want to ask a girl out often do what they come to regret later. I don't think they have a rigid conception of exactly what they want, and I don't think it is something so rare than one should visit a psychologist as though one were defective. Of course this is just my opinion.
I completely disagree.
I can't figger it out either. Must be one of them there tautologies.
Actually it is quite true. People who lack introspection really don't 'know' themselves, and some or much behavior can be automatic or conditioned. Some people lack impulse control, and they really don't know or realize that component of their behavior. I wouldn't have believed if my wife (who has degrees in psychology) hadn't shown me examples first hand.
Well, I'll agree with you on the flaky part. Seriously, if you believe what other people tell you about yourself, regardless if it's true or not, that's just plain weird. The whole "I need to go find myself" stuff is Oprah-style psychobabble in my opinion. If someone is so delusional that they can't even recognize their own personality traits, they do need a psychologist...or psychiatrist. Don't you know what you like, or don't like, or if you're a morning person, or night-owl, or prefer to be left alone or like to hang out in crowds, or are usually a happy person, or more often sullen and sulky? How the heck do you NOT know this about yourself? And, why would you take someone elses opinion about your personality as more important than your own?
But do you know before you react how you will feel tomorrow about your reaction today? That'd be the short & sweet acid test of knowing yourself in my book. It doesn't mean you can't have morning after regrets, just that you don't have unanticipated morning after regrets.
I don't think we emerge knowing that. It's something to be learned. I also think it's rather subtle. I have often heard a mother say something like "my son/daughter knows what he/she wants to grow up to become", when very often I can read that as "they know what I want them to become". How many children disobey their parents when they become teenagers? If that's not a voyage of self-discovery, I don't know what is.
I see your point, but I never said that your personality can't change. Surely I have changed since I was a teenager. I wouldn't go so far as to say that I would change from day to day, maybe every 3-4 years my attitude towards certain aspects of life changes.
I don't have a clue what you're trying to get at here. What does your parents telling other people what they think you want to do when you grow up, or the fact that everyone naturally changes their mind as they learn about other options that fit their personality and desires better, have to do with knowing who you are yourself? And how is rebelling against your parents an indicator that you don't know what you want? If anything, it's an indicator that you do know, and are finally old enough to act upon your own desires, not be forced to do your parents' bidding. The conflict is usually because your parents' views on your personality and what you should or shouldn't be doing are not consistent with your own views. If you didn't know who you are and just went along with what everyone else told you, there wouldn't be any conflict.
I like this one. But it's not as simple as it sounds.
Ugh...these ships and currents always make me melancholic.
I don't mean that one either knows or doesn't know, as though that knowledge was atomic. I mean that young people who rebel know what they don't want but not really what they do. I consider their rebellion to be a negative reaction rather than a positive one, at least initially until they become more experienced and find purpose or whatever. If teenagers knew what they wanted, wouldn't we all still be teenagers?
I most certainly would. I can't think of a good example of this because I usually see these things coming long before the problem arises. I consider all my other opinions on various related matters before forming new opinions. Many people do not.
Well it depends on what 'straight line' means. Perhaps I should have phrased it better, that is why I add the polyline bit on the end. By straight line I initially meant a line like evolution follows a line from less complex to more complex. Even though people's behaviour changes, they are making discoveries through those actions. Think of it as a time line but actually a discovery line or even a knowledge line.