I know him... That's how we tend to think about the beloved person , the other half, with whom we have been together for some time and we want to weave the thread of our lives into one beautiful path of life. That's how we feel. But do you know yourself? Not only your best qualities, but also a bit of a nasty shadow side? Do you know how to handle disputes? Do you know what your reaction will be in a crisis situation?

Getting to know yourself to the fullest, understanding and calculating what to expect from yourself, realizing how to deal with disagreements most successfully in combination with the character of the person you love - all this is essential in order to move forward harmoniously and spend the future life together as a wife and husband. Self-knowledge is the foundation for one's own choices, decisions and career, as well as an invaluable investment in relationships .

How to know yourself? What is important to me and what should I not give up for the sake of dear peace? Where to insist on your convictions, but where to let go of the reins more loosely, remembering that there is no one right approach, it is still to each his own. It can all be learned. Learning yourself. But the roads are different.

Psychotherapy

There are several diversions of psychotherapy - some dig deep, plunging into childhood traumas, others analyze thinking errors more. In any case, the field of psychotherapy is so wide that everyone will find their own approach. If you have not yet visited the office of a psychologist or psychotherapist, it is worth giving up your prejudices and (admit it to yourself) fear of the unknown and give it a try. Maybe a few times will be enough to unlock your thinking errors just like with one click, but maybe you will want to look deeper and introduce a visit to a psychotherapist into your weekly routine. It is not easy. And it's never easy to face your ugly self. Because everyone has one nowadays. But it's better to encounter it and shake it up properly in the specialist's office, than to let the demons go free at home in a shared life with those closest to you.

Meditations and retreats

It sounds gentle, gentle and soothing. As if so and yet not. Meditations and retreats are the meeting places where you get to know yourself through yourself.

You will be given the key to those areas of consciousness that you may have been hiding from or didn't even know existed in you.

At the same time, these are very healing ways to get to know yourself anew, to help yourself deal with sides that may not be so lovable, and ultimately to love them too. Why is it that through retreat I am able to access what I don't see everyday? A retreat is an opportunity to look at things from a distance. Freeing yourself for a few days or even hours from everyday worries, running, routine, and looking at it all from the outside. With new power through a different state of consciousness, unhindered by peripheral factors.

Books, cinema and art

And here an endless field of possibilities opens up. Literature, high-quality cinema and art - it's not just entertainment or exploring the horizons of the world. In essence, it is one of the tools to encounter yourself. How to experience and remind yourself that others are experiencing the same emotions, and when reading about situations that are unfamiliar in your life, think - but what would I do? If you feel condemned, go fishing - but why? What exactly is it that offends me so much in the situation described or shown in the film? To be happy and record what moves and excites me.

What you have read and seen will always be excellent material or a starting point for your heartfelt conversation with your loved one. What did we both see and feel? It is a step closer to the depths of the other's soul.

Challenges

You don't have to wait for a stressful or even extreme test in your individual path or in your couple relationship to learn for the first time how you will act and what to expect from yourself in a challenging situation. With this experience, how you will act and feel, it is more than worth sharing with your loved one, so that he or she also knows what to expect, and with a cool mind can conclude at the right moment how to react to it and put out the fire without negative consequences.

Challenge yourself and your partner to an adventurous test! Even a positively oriented event can be sufficiently intriguing and full of spicy emotions - it can be an obstacle course in trees several meters above the ground, where you can psychologically challenge yourself to overcome your fear of heights, an opportunity to get to know yourself and your partner at the same time; it can be a quad bike ride on serpentines; starting a cold bath; it can be a several-day or even a week-long trek with an overnight stay on your back in a sleeping bag. Unless one of the listed is your usual hobby, then these will be both challenging and at the same time quite safe ways to learn about yourself. 

You don't always have to look in the direction of extreme adventures to test yourself. Basically, a challenge and stepping out of your famous comfort zone is anything you're not born to do, or better yet, something you never thought you'd do or believe you can't do. Maybe your everyday life is so saturated with technology and social networks that your challenge is to give up publishing any content for a week? A week without social networks, computer and phone? And maybe that will be the first impulse to drop the mask that you have long considered your identity and discover yourself anew.

Text: Ieva Krastiņa

Photo: Miks blade