Tell me about yourself

On numerous occasions, we have been asked to introduce ourselves to others. The request to "tell me about yourself" is both a daily occurrence and an academic delight. The intriguing nature of this command serves as the stimulus for the present inquiry. At cornerstone moments in our academic and professional lives, we are expected to identify, critique, and explain who we are, what motivates us, and how we visually perceive the world. Though we are often asked to set elements of our self-identity apart from those around us, the core of our response to this and similar inquiries lies in our ability to reflect upon our own being.

Central to the structure of our immense but unique human experiences lies the concept of self-identity. Grounded in fields ranging from philosophy to cognitive developmental psychology, the concept of self-identity provides a foundation for organizing our thoughts, experiences, and behaviors. Despite a long and storied history, self-identity continues to captivate the minds of scholars in the 21st century. Yet the clarion calls to explore the concept of self-identity have not resulted in a consensus regarding its nature and relationships. This multiplicity in conceptual understanding has prevented scholars from specializing or building expertise on the topic of self-identity. This exploration aims to shed some light on this significant topic of inquiry, thereby acting as a signpost on the road to achieving a greater understanding of self-identity.

Introduction

This essay is a scholarly inquiry into the concept of self-identity based on qualitative reflection. It is hoped that the reader will engage in similar self-reflection. Both the recent surge of interest in the sociological concept of self, self-worth, and self-identity, and an event that I attended a few years ago, contribute to the inception of this essay. I strongly believe that self-identity is a powerful social, economic, political, cultural, and psychological force. Its recognition can spawn a host of implications for society and a variety of scholastic practices such as the choice of methodological approaches and ethical standards that stem from the researcher's own "centricness." So what? The purpose of this essay is to explore self-identity from an indigenous perspective and not from my perceived perspective of another.

It is useful to state at the onset what this essay is not. The first is not an explanation of the origin of self-identity nor the process through which self-identity develops and evolves. Neither is this essay a study that discusses the consequences of self-image on the individual or how the individual socially interacts and behaves. Furthermore, self-identity is not urban-centric. There are two areas of concern that precipitated the inception of this essay, both of which affected me very personally. The first is the budding interest in the concept of self. Primarily, from what I have read, self-identity is the product of social interaction. This concept is beguiling to me because the consequence of this social interaction can create a disparate "sociological identity" for people depending on the social, economic, cultural, political, and psychological milieu in which the self-identity is dislocated.

Early Life and Background

The section focuses on critical events and formative influences that helped shape an individual's identity. The primary aim of this section is to inform the responder about the critical building blocks of a person's identity. Most importantly, an individual – whether a trainee, practitioner, or educator – will maximize their potential only if they truly understand themselves. The formative elements of our life stories create the portrait of our identity: the career choices, role models, and key learning experiences that shape our behavior, thoughts, and actions. These reflective practitioners recognize the introspective dynamic learning process which affords insight into how they know, act, and understand. Personal histories form the base and foundation of knowledge and practice for individuals, organizations, and entire professions; as insight increases, the capacity for improving performance expands. Recognizing, examining, and accepting these elements is critical in ongoing personal growth and development throughout a lifetime.

Growing-up Experiences – Small Town, Family, Hobby Farm in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. I do not want to come across as a victim, or as exceptionally unique, or as peculiar. My family environment was sufficiently stable; I had the same care, security-providing, consistent, and loving upbringing that many readers might have experienced. My experiences were similar to other U.S. baby boomers, albeit from a slightly different American subculture. My German and Scandinavian parents, along with similarly endowed uncles and aunts, provided a firm, friendly, and affectionate foundation upon which to explore and grow. It doesn't seem right to criticize the warmth of childhood experiences, family, and neighbors; that would be unfair. Difficult events and pleasant experiences both contribute to our success and prestige in the form of heightened emotional insight and deepened understanding, benefiting others. Additionally, we become more resilient and more capable of tolerating and understanding. Such insights advance the lifelong process of maturation and professional development we all experience.

Personality and Values

"Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony." This keen observation captures the state of wholeness, stability, and epistemic attunement—a state referred to as authenticity here—that the social psychological literature has linked with the culturally familiar concept of 'being true to oneself' or having a well-defined self. Survey and experimental evidence for such a link, considered both as effects of the self and as antecedents of it, are reviewed, and the concept of a true self is used to help frame some other debates in self and identity theory, including a discussion of essentialism and the data that addresses it. Lists of personal values (eighth graders typically produce forty to fifty adjective phrases when asked to say who they are, while college students produce a relatively narrow list of abstract nouns, largely team titles, areas of study, and adjectives). Any specification of self that orients an individual to some personally meaningful and indisputable single locus of value is personality-defining; however, the concept concerns motivational-affective guidance: in classical structural theories, self-specificity takes the form of a relatively concrete layer of affect and interest binding, or priming, the reflexive representations of a very small number of immediate others, or a highly coherent consolidation of immediate others. Indeed, self-categorization theories emphasize the priming of broader loci of value, whether these be rival sports teams, rival drinkers in a classic field study, or an alignment of political leaders and religious leaders singing from the same hymn sheet. Understandably, however, when self is interpreted as principle rather than state, a single center of value remains the basic model of the orienting effect.

Hobbies, Interests, and Passions

Do our passions and hobbies factor into our sense of self-identity? Whether someone views themselves as a reader or a weekend tennis player might not appear to play a central role in shaping their self-concept, but in fact, we argue that it does. We believe that hobbies or interests are an excellent way to gain insights into a person's self-concept. The amount of time and money that a person spends on owned or desired items of consumption may be derived from the self-reflective knowledge surrounding what a person views as themselves. Even more importantly, wanted and purchased items can symbolize a superior level of commitment to an activity or perceived high self-concept of a given item, party, or event, which is considered to influence and enhance the self; thus viewed as personally meaningful to what they see as being me. Whether as an expression of a passion or hobby, interpersonal relations, or personal status indicator, these to a great extent may be acquired because of this self-embedded meaning.

In understanding ritual behavior surrounding acquired items, one could assume it shapes who you are, both socially and personally. If a person makes purchasing decisions based around how others might think, a mirror of social identity is at play. If the individual in question makes purchasing decisions from their perspective and is not concerned with what others might think of them, one could speak to the individual's personal identity. This social and personal identification by material objects has thus become a research question concerning the worth of specific items, which can influence and directly contribute to a person's self-concept. Knowing one's self can indeed provide a better understanding of our relation to consumption in the marketplace.

Aspirations and Future Goals

As an undergraduate student applying for a fellowship, I affirm captivating personal goals. The first and foremost is a successful completion of my undergraduate studies with honors. After working with health care administrators, I have decided to use health care reform as a platform for graduate study and personal research. I hope to more fully understand the complexities of health care reform issues and intervene with time and assistance, so our nation can design a health care program that meets the needs of all its citizens. Conversely, my only academic goal is to obtain a doctorate. I have always considered a top-quality education a prerequisite of the highest quality, providing a degree from a prestigious college and enabling a better life for my children. I have spent my evenings taking business classes to earn my degree. Once the initial fever of being responsible for one's own life starts, you realize that life can get costly once you move out. So, as my mom sat in my apartment trying to talk me into going to class, she gave it to me straight. If I was going to make something of myself, I needed a college education, and that wasn't going to be enough. With only a few more years in America, I decided to go all the way, from bachelor to doctoral. How can you afford to go to so many years of such an expensive endeavor? Enduring years of work made me start saving money to be able to one day go to college. After supporting my mother through her chemotherapy, I knew it was time to follow the dream I began years ago. Determined to take America—a nation known for its freedom—both by storm and by hand. As a scholarship recipient, receiving a prestigious fellowship will give me a chance to fully concentrate on school, which will enable me to conduct my own research. I want the opportunity to make a difference for my country—to be able to give something back in return. Of course, the research and the preliminary data that I will create will also enable me to receive a doctorate. I want to help my community by targeting myself at large and looking for possible hires. The best tool possible to help our youth become members of the next racially blind workforce will be to have gone through every level necessary to reach my goal. I don't feel as if it is an obligation, just that I was born to excel. I aspire for my success in persistence as a second-time young adult professional. I hope my work will inspire these adults to take the initiative and go to college.

Conclusion

We call for an in-depth understanding of self-reflection as a specific single individual event, going through the four mirror surfaces of self-awareness, using tools and frameworks the self has used before. We facilitate what we call a deeper reflective capacity for the full awareness of space and time, a creative and subjective basing of context, a deep level of interpersonal and intrapersonal understanding and also the description and critical analysis of the "mirror" for the frame of reference, respectively.

We need to find the courage and develop the skills to present self-reflection processes that help organizations, individuals, teams, and leaders to realize who and what they are and see why they are the way they are. We call for an invitation to act, followed by a catalyst vision of desired future to help leaders pull their identities constructively, based on and consistent with personal competence systems. A leader using Emotional Literacy, Communication and Conflict Resolution, by looking through structured personality, morality and motivation plans, can increase her self- and social reflexivity, situational awareness and knowledge capital. We collectively have to steadfastly revise or forego the transformative for the continuous process leadership development. And our self-perceptions and conceptualization remain inconspicuously interlocked. Their dissociable states, related pattern of conditioning, and role as given characteristic patterns in conscious self-maintenance and self-promotion call for a complementary theory of organization at an evolutionary psychological level.

Did you like this example?

244

10