Dan’s E.P.I.C. Story

Dan Udale is a personal friend of mine whom I met through Twitter. I quickly resonated with his words through his tweets and episodes of the Know Yourself Podcast. He has a passion for helping people in the areas of mental health and personal development. Dan has been such a huge source of inspiration and encouragement to me over this past year of knowing him. I know you will benefit from hearing his story and wisdom about self-examination and learning more about who you are.

Self-examination can be an intimidating and vulnerable exercise. Perhaps you already do some form of self-evaluation—that appraisal for work, you’re a teacher trying to improve your lesson plans, or you’re a parent just trying to figure out how to balance looking after the kids with everything else.

Ultimately this process of figuring out who we are requires this technique of evaluation.

It doesn’t have to sound and feel so corporate; it can be an emotional process, and, moreover, it can be positive. To look at your life now and recognise that you aren’t where you want to be requires humility. It means you may experience some discomfort because you may have to take accountability for the fact that YOU could be the reason you’re not happy with something in your life.

I know, I never said that this was going to be easy. I promise you though if you really want control over who you are as an individual, it requires taking accountability for your shortcomings as well as your talents and gifts. This isn’t some self-help stuff; you’re not just going to start taking accountability for things in your life, because we are human. We avoid pain and discomfort.

If your intent is right though and you genuinely want to change or just figure out who you are, then I’ll detail out my experience in the hope of inspiring or helping someone else. It’s a slow process. It’s frustrating and feels like trying to power walk through treacle. But you will make it through the treacle with persistent effort.

Who am I though, right? Why am I subscribing pain?

I started therapy 7 years ago. In my first session with my therapist I said something profound when asked why I was there, “I don’t know who I am anymore.” I felt like Keanu Reeves when he wakes up for the first time after being unplugged from the Matrix. I didn’t have cool Kung fu powers, but I was a complete blank slate.

I didn’t have my own identity that I had created; I was imitating everyone else. I was insecure because I was constantly lying to myself about the story of my life. I didn’t want to own the things that had happened to me or that I had done, because that meant doing something about those things. The fact was that I had experienced some trauma just like you probably have already or will in your life. I had a tumultuous relationship with my mom, to the point where we wouldn’t speak if we were in the same room.

I spent some serious time (like a year) just picking apart my life, getting it all out on the table and accepting that stuff had happened. It was a weight off my shoulders and a trauma in itself validating that I had been through some difficult moments. It was frustrating for me because after addressing stuff I still didn’t feel any different. I still didn’t know who I was.

I approached my therapist one session and exclaimed that, “I just want you to fix me.” She leant forward and said that “no one can tell you who you are, Dan. Figuring out who you are is something you do for yourself.”

I was absolutely gutted. I felt rejected, I was angry, and honestly I made a lot of excuses to myself. After that interaction though, something inside me changed for the better. I started turning up to session with prepared thoughts that were on my mind. I would reflect on my life in between sessions like I was in a counseling session in my head, talking to myself. I started taking ownership for my therapy journey, taking charge of the sessions, and making my journey a priority.

So that’s what I want to do for you.

I want to flip this back onto you.

No one is going to figure it out for you. You have to take your life and literally pursue your reflection with purpose.

The sad truth is that most people never truly figure out who they are. They subscribe to outside sources to feed their identity. I should know because that’s what I did my whole life. Now I’m not sitting here exactly selling this whole self-discovery stuff. I’m also not claiming to be some self-enlightened guru. I’m on the path though, and looking back it feels much better to be on the path than where I was before.

So going back to this self-evaluation I talked about at the start, it’s actually not as cumbersome and woo woo as it sounds. It’s like how at the start of a relationship, you’re trying to figure out what the other person wants and needs from the relationship. You’re trying to figure out what their aspirations are, what they want to be doing in 5 years’ time, what music they like, what their favourite experiences are. Get it? Great, now go do that, but this time the relationship is with you.

Now, there is something to be said about self-awareness in this process. I started really playing around and experimenting with figuring out what makes me tick when I started doing things on my own. So it would get to the weekend a lot of the time and I would find myself stuck for something to do. I’d sit watching Netflix or playing video games. I did enjoy these things, but I slaved myself to them because I didn’t know where else to direct my energy. It wasn’t until a couple of years into therapy that I started going to a pub around the corner from my therapist to chill out after a session and to collect my thoughts.

This process of doing something I wanted to do (even though I thought it was weird) was the first little step for me doing things for me! It blossomed from there, I started to forget about what other people might think. I started going to the cinema on my own, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I would go out for meals on my own. My confidence started growing as I did things I felt like doing, that I felt like I gravitated towards.

That’s all it was: intuition.

I let my feelings guide me to the things that felt like me, and I started to develop an idea of who I was in my head.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this piece and got some value out of it.

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Dan is our first returning guest poster! He also shared 3 Life Lessons from Shazam.

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