Get To Know Thyself
“To grow yourself, you must know yourself” — John C. Maxwell
Recently, I suffer from depression. Well… idk if it can be called that, I’m no expert. But there was a time that make me emotionally exhausted and just wanna shut down from the world. I even considered going to a psychologist just to clear up the issue. This leads me to a path where I decided to “learn myself”. I retook a test from https://www.16personalities.com/ so that I would know what category I fall in and relearn the personality type. I’m still an INFJ, same old same old from 6 months ago 😂 As I scour through the material on the website, there’s a question in the back of my mind that I hope can be answered: “what can make an INFJ happy?”.
I recontextualized my own personality and gained “validation” about who I really am. Turns out, INFJ is commonly a selfless person. They wanna act in the service of others. Little that I know how true that is. As far as I remember, I barely have time for myself just around the final year of high school. It’s always about work, work, and work. I took a part-time job for Jakarta Fair, I even agree to be a private tutor job once that only pays 100k IDR for 2 hours. In college, I once agreed to be an assistant for my lecturer’s research by doing a laborious task. I started to do paid projects up until semester 7. Around semester 4 I started to land a part-time job up until semester 8, while also doing my studies. I even work on the weekend back in my uni days for an EO company. I think this hustle spirit of mine comes from my feeling of obligation to provide for this family, paired with the desire to “not want to think about money as a problem” anymore. It’s all about the grind.
Sadly, even though now all of that is achieved, I’m still not fully happy. Last year is the signal that I come to a sudden realization. It’s about me not wanting anything for my own birthday celebration. It’s like because I’ve worked for so long that it has suppressed the desire within me, to the point that I don’t even know how to please myself or what do I really want. So it’s really hard at the moment, to get the answer to my own happiness — cause currently, I don’t have any desire whatsoever.
After having a discussion with a friend, I realized that the thing that makes me unhappy is the pressure that I’ve put on myself. Once I let go, it actually improves my mood significantly. I’m currently not as unhappy as I was several weeks ago.
So the lesson that we can get here is that… don’t be ashamed to ask for help. A simple letting it out whether it’s to a friend or any form of media like writing could fix what is physically untouchable — your feelings. Lastly, get to know yourself. Learn what makes you who you are today, what causes it, and who influences it, and try to pull the red thread. There might be no solution to it, but at least you know how it has been made so can find a workaround or a temporary solution at the moment. Search and learn material about psychological science since they have done tons of research regarding human personalities. They might even know about you more than you did.
