Do You Know Your True Nature? Are You A Decent Person? How Well Do You Know Yourself?

We all think we know ourselves pretty good, right? For example; we could list dozens of things we do and don’t like, places we want to go, things that annoy us, things we’re good at, things that piss us off, what makes us laugh and tons more.

However, few of us have actually sat down and spent the time thinking and answering questions about ourselves. What I mean is answering questions with more depth that provoke more thought than something like what’s your favourite colour?

The benefit of answering questions about ourselves is a deeper understanding of what we’re made of, introspectively. By knowing ourselves we can also better understand everyone else.

The Proust Questionnaire

There is a questionnaire, popularized by a French essayist and author named Marcel Proust, that consists of a series of questions that he believed revealed a person’s true nature.

For over one hundred years people have been using this questionnaire to better learn themselves and as an interesting tool to spark conversations.

Published by Vanity Fair, here are the questions of the Proust Questionnaire:

1. What is your idea of perfect happiness?
2. What is your greatest fear?
3. What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
4. What is the trait you most deplore in others?
5. Which living person do you most admire?
6. What is your greatest extravagance?
7. What is your current state of mind?
8. What do you consider the most overrated virtue?
9. On what occasion do you lie?
10. What do you most dislike about your appearance?
11. Which living person do you most despise?
12. What is the quality you most like in a man?
13. What is the quality you most like in a woman?
14. Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
15. What or who is the greatest love of your life?
16. When and where were you happiest?
17. Which talent would you most like to have?
18. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
19. What do you consider your greatest achievement?
20. If you were to die and come back as a person or a thing, what would it be?
21. Where would you most like to live?
22. What is your most treasured possession?
23. What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
24. What is your favourite occupation?
25. What is your most marked characteristic?
26. What do you most value in your friends?
27. Who are your favourite writers?
28. Who is your hero of fiction?
29. Which historical figure do you most identify with?
30. Who are your heroes in real life?
31. What are your favourite names?
32. What is it that you most dislike?
33. What is your greatest regret?
34. How would you like to die?
35. What is your motto?

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So what’s with all the self tests?

To spend less time comparing, judging and perceiving everyone else and focus on knowing ourselves better so we can live our lives according to what we truly want and being how we truly are and flipping off the pressures of what we think we should be.

So now that we’re on a roll if you haven’t already answered the 25 Questions to get to know yourself check that out.