How to Find Yourself Again? A Complete Guide on Happiness and Inner Peace

Everyone says finding yourself and finding happiness within yourself is one of the most important things we do as adults—after we’ve grown up and out of childhood what else remains but to find a way to come back to it again? Even if just for once in a while? But no one can actually tell you how to find yourself because their process is not something that will work for you.

You carve out your own way, right?

What does that make you? Where does it lead you? How to find yourself? These and more questions—answered. Let’s begin.

But before we get on with the post, there is one thing worth talking about. It is the why. So if you’re asking yourself—

Why You Should Do Everything in your Power to be Happy?

Imagine going to God at the end of living this beautiful life and you say to him, “I’m sorry, I feel like a failure. I didn’t earn much. My business failed. My marriage was miserable. My children hated me because I had hated my parents too. And I didn’t make a huge name. No one probably liked me. We just lived in a 2BHK apartment that we rented. I wasn’t a highly influential person. It was a small city. I’m sorry, I feel like a failure.” And then God, saying, “Oh, but I just wanted you to be happy. Were you happy? Did you try making yourself happy, above everything else?” And you saying, “Happy? Was that the whole point of it? The whole point of existence?” God is humored. “Yes,” he says. “What else? What else could ever compared to it? Isn’t that the whole point?”

Now I don’t know if the person reading this believes in God or not, I don’t know if you have faced as much failure (or more) as the person in the story did—but one thing doesn’t change: the whole point of all of this is to be happy. For all of us. The whole point of existence is to be happy. That’s literally the only thing in life you do, the rest of stuff either just encourages happiness or doesn’t, is for future happiness, or current happiness. What only matters is to live the time you’ve got here, smiling as much as you can.

You better start right now.

How to Find Yourself?

Are we lost? Does finding yourself mean you’re inherently lost, or…incapable of returning? No, believing that would be counter-productive. Finding yourself is, what I think, knowing who you are, in the real world, even when you’re among people, all of them trying to influence you. It’s being true to yourself.

When you’re a kid, you’ve got all those adults around you who help you out and take care of you and you…know who you are. You know your identity and you know your people and you know yourself.

But then you grow up, and boom—everything is suddenly confusing because—wasn’t the whole point of growing up being completely sure in yourself and completely sure in everything else? Adults are so smart, right? They know what to do. We can always rely on an adult to show us the right path. They are the right people to approach.

When we grow up, we assume we’ll just be like them and life will be far easier than it was in middle school.

I know, I know, we all get a reality check soon enough.

The question arises, how do we find ourselves in this new environment? Have you faced that moment, having recently turned 18, and not knowing what’s going to happen in your life, because suddenly everything feels too big and too…real?

I felt that.

Four days before I was supposed to start college, I was hit with this sudden realization that I wasn’t actually a kid anymore and couldn’t take my school friends everywhere and nothing would ever be the same, but I had spent too much time waiting for 18 to happen that I didn’t get to focus much on the 15, or the 16, or the happy fleeting-dream-like 17.

To battle my anxiety about starting college and life changing all of a sudden, I wrote a book. You’ll be the first ones to know when it’s published!

The story stays the same. What to do? How to live? What to do? How to find yourself?

I felt there is something inherently incorrect in asking how to find yourself, though, because it gives off the idea that you’re something to be found. But before we get into the linguistics, trivial arguments, let’s just try looking once at what finding yourself actually means.

When you step out into the world, and suddenly you’re too free—or not enough?—and everyone’s trying to influence you in some way and you’re trying to protect yourself from every opinion—you have to stay true to yourself and to your roots and to your family and to your fricking childhood friends who’ve probably went to study abroad but who won’t ever be able to leave the connection that you had behind. I mean, right?

The bowl of pasta will always be on the table, right, the stain on the cloth never going away—maybe someone removes it, obviously you put the bowl in the dishwasher, but guess what—it stays there forever. Friendships stay there forever, and that’s the pretty magical thing about it.

So what’s the first thing you do in the process of finding yourself? You admit that you’re feeling lost, not lost, just feeling like it. That one’s pretty easy, it’s not hard to admit, but it is sometimes hard to let go of the facade that you’ve got everything in control, and now the only thing that remains is to tell yourself that you might not be as balanced in your life as you’d thought you’d be before you’d become an adult.

And none of it is even your fault.

Because it happens to almost everyone, there’s no shame in feeling stuck or lost or burnt-out or exhausted, or broke, or heartbroken, anything. We’re all humans and everyone makes different mistakes but all mistakes are equally critical and everyone faces the same sh*t day in and day out. Isn’t that relieving? …no? …okay, I guess not.

Be Silent. So Underrated.

Silence is so underrated. Everyone’s speaking all the time and messing with everyone else’s heads and it’s so fricking peaceful to sit in silence for a while and listen to the sound of your own body working and the sound of nature working its magic over and around you.

So what do you do? You tune down the voices and opinions of your friends and relatives and the social media and the news reporters and the Cafe workers and the sales-staff—God, the sales-staff—you turn down everyone’s voice. Just put it down, you’ve got the control in your own hands. Sometimes you’ve already got the answers inside of you and what you really need is just…the silence and the space to formulate those answers and tell them to yourself.

Go Back to Childhood, You’re Better off There.

Not being a literal child but, metaphorically, just going back to that time, revisiting the past and the things and the people you loved and the activities that made your day and brought a smile on your face. Why would you not try to do that? Why would you not want to visit whatever golden time was in your life one day?

So before you started performing, what was it that made you feel the most…you?

What Version of Yourself Have you Lost?

Is there a version of you that you’ve lost?

Moreover, are you ready to let them go yet? Holding on to someone you don’t identity with anymore is pretty burdening and tiring. Don’t hold up any farce anymore. Just…whatever version of yourself you want to be with, be with them. Don’t think you owe anything to your past self or to the past self of you someone else had identified you with.

Use Artistic Expression

You can express through art, feel great about, and have a masterpiece in your hands.

Even if it doesn’t turn out to be a masterpiece, though, using art to express yourself is one of the best ways of finding yourself and coming back to yourself despite how hard it might seem.

I know, I know, impostor syndrome exists but that doesn’t mean that you have to fall prey to it too. Everyone’s an impostor. Everyone’s trying to fit in. No one’s born fitting in into anything! Imagine how I felt in that two-day seminar where almost everyone around me was middle-aged (and even older!) and I was the only eighteen-year-old (freshly turned) keeping up with them.

Say No. A Lot.

You can’t entertain everyone else and still keep yourself intact. Just say no. Someone bothers you. Say no. A bad habit. Say no. Someone wants to use you. Say no. Just say no. You don’t owe anyone your time. It’s yours, and until it actually helps you, all the while keeping your mental peace intact, say no.

Finding Yourself is all about Being with Yourself.

Every once in a while, stay alone. Solo time. Me time. I-love-me time. Let yourself exist in your own company without needing anyone else. That’ll bring you back to yourself.

All these ideas to find yourself were nice and healing-oriented and all. If you thought so too, I’d love hearing from you. But when exactly are we going to address the elephant in the room? Yes, the elephant.

All this talk, and all modern media, self-help blogs, meditation channels and all those aesthetic Insta that-girl profiles talk about finding yourself and moreover, defining yourself, like you’re a product lost in the market that everyone’s seeking to buy but that has a kind of defect right now and so has gone back into the factory but will be back soon, so this currently is the #glowup era. Puh-lease.

You’re not a product, don’t try defining yourself. You don’t have to put a label on yourself. You’re not a place. You’ve got literal pulse. You’re breathing. You’re a breathing thing, you’re changing all the time so why bother sticking with any definition? Why not just…wringing it? From now on, let’s talk more about how to find happiness within yourself, or how to find peace within yourself, instead of just trying to find yourself like you’re a rare nailpaint shade.

How to Find Happiness Within Yourself

What does happiness look like? What did happiness look like to me years ago when I wrote this piece?

All those mornings when you sleep in late, the world looks a little younger. You feel you’re a kid again. You’re in love with yourself again. What you do everyday makes you smile. All that you and your friends think of doing behind each other’s backs is eating the extra chocolates. Life is easy again. You laugh without reason and damn, do you laugh loudly. And everything matters but nothing is a question of life or death. You’ve got chubby cheeks, you’ve got a toothy grin. You hate going to the dentist (because they are actually monsters). Life is easy again and you’re in love with yourself again. Everyone else is in love with you too. No one hates you. Everything is fine. And what you do everyday makes you smile.

Did that ring a bell? Did that image look eerily similar to your childhood? That means you were a kind of happy in your childhood that you probably don’t know how to recreate now.

But obviously you can’t just sit and stare at this huge void inside of you forever. Better now than later, you can write your own happy story.

Live.

You know what the surefire way to finding happiness within yourself is? To find the spark, the liveliness within yourself? It is to forget everything else, and go live your life. Somehow, that’s the only thing that matters, live somehow before it all slips away. Because someday, it will. Live before that. Live. That’s a truth and now we’ve put it on the table, so you can’t tip-toe your way around it anymore. To-do; Live.

At least try to. Smile. If someone wronged you, if someone hurt you, if you hurt yourself, forgive them all. Forgive and forget everything else and run after your dreams as fast as you can because you’re on fire and the fire can both warm your bones or scorch your skin, depending on whether you tame it or not.

That being said, someday you won’t be able to run as fast, work as hard, smile as big. Just do it now. Do all of it now before any of this slips away.

Happiness is knowing that you’re giving your best shot at life, that years later what you’re doing today will not be regretted. It’ll give you good memories of loud laughter and beautiful smiles.

Unpopular Opinions: Finding Happiness Within Yourself

Why are these opinions unpopular? Because they work but I don’t have any proof. That also makes them silly, if you want to call it that. Take a look at eight ideas for finding happiness within yourself. We aren’t looking for cliché stuff like playing with young kids or finding your soulmate or talking to a friend or petting a cat. Everyone on the internet is talking about the same thing, but is that truly guaranteeing how one might find happiness in life?

• Chase your spark is old advice, but try listening to it anyway; chase that fire, the one inside you that makes everything else feel small and cold. Chase that spark and give life to it. Breathe into it.
• Claim yourself. “I was mine from, the very first day before this world claimed me as it’s own. I was mine. I’ll always be mine.”
• Every once in a while, have fun purely for the sake of having fun, really, no-strings-attached.
• Work should seem like play and you’ll be satisfied forever.
• Journaling, self-care, mirror-talk and the like. I think it works every once in a while.
• Do it now. The best way to remove any negative emotion or induce any positive one is to indulge in actions that support your desired emotion. To find happiness, do some work, something to make you happy, something to get you busy, get your mind in a completely different direction from whatever is making you upset.
• Go on a trip. I know, costly option, but going on a trip will end up opening your eyes to the world and when you look at other people, stop focusing in yourself, you’ll actually find that you’re pretty blessed and in a good position compared to a lot of people around.
• For finding happiness within yourself in life, just live in the moment. Don’t think too much about it. Don’t tell anyone too much. Work on what you believe in. Try to have fun. Chill. You’re going to make it.

So, why don’t you just go chase life and chase happiness and chase peace because they are the only true metrics in life that can actually measure in the end how well you live your life. Happiness is that one emotion, in front of which, wealth does not matter, networking does not matter, all worldly desires have no significance when it comes to finding happiness within yourself.

You better start now.

Happiness is like an elusive thing, sometimes. But that makes striving for it worth it. Share your own personal stories. What does happiness mean to you? Have you found it yet?

We love hearing from our readers. Makes our day to know someone finds this helpful 🙂

Try reading: How to Start Being Happy Again? This is Your Comeback

If you’re up for reading poetry on finding yourself, then try my self-written poems about finding yourself.