A 5-Step Framework for Getting to Know Yourself

Every Yom Kippur, I run into the same problem.

I’d like to sit down, take an honest look at myself and figure out where I’m falling short. But where do I start?

There are a lot of things I could be doing better. I could probably fill several pages. Somewhere between be more patient with my children and take my spiritual life more seriously, the whole exercise starts to feel overwhelming and mildly depressing.

Here’s a structured framework that will you in your process of teshuva, repentance. I break it down into five manageable steps.

Step 1: Choose the Lens

“Examine your life” is a pretty vague instruction. So before beginning, choose a lens through which to look at it.

There are several ways to do this.

Go through an ordinary day. Start from the moment you wake up and mentally walk through your typical day until you go to sleep. Where do you regularly fall short? Maybe you're constantly rushing in the morning. Maybe you lose patience with your children at bedtime. Maybe you spend an hour scrolling through your phone when you meant to spend ten minutes.

Start from the end. Imagine the person you would like to be 10 or 15 years from now. What does that person look like? Perhaps you're calmer. More generous. More spiritually engaged. A better spouse or parent. Maybe you make more time for learning, prayer, or the people you love. Now work backward: What would have to change about the person you are today to become that person?

Examine your roles. Most of us are many people at once. I am a father, husband, doctor, friend, son, teacher, neighbor, and Jew. Make your own list. Then ask yourself a difficult question: How am I doing at each of them?

These are just three approaches I’ve come across over the years, and there isn’t one correct way to do this. You may have a different approach that works better for you. The point is to give yourself a concrete place to begin.

Step 2: Make a List

Now perform the audit. Sit down with a pen and paper and write down what you find.

Don't worry yet about fixing anything. And don't edit yourself because something seems too small, too embarrassing, or too difficult to change. For now, your job is just to notice.

Maybe you aren't as patient with your spouse as you'd like to be. Maybe you don't call your parents enough. Maybe prayer has become something you rush through. Maybe you gossip more than you'd like to admit. Maybe you're generous with money but not particularly generous with your time.

Write it down.

Step 3: Ask Why

This is the hardest part. And it’s also the most important (but also the most rewarding). Take something from your list and ask yourself: Why?

Suppose I write, “I lose my patience with my children too often.”

That's an observation. But it doesn't tell me why it's happening.

Maybe I'm exhausted by the end of the day. Maybe I expect my children to behave in ways that aren't realistic for their age. Maybe I have trouble tolerating situations where I don't feel in control. Or perhaps, if I'm being completely honest, I sometimes prioritize my own convenience over being patient with them.

Those are different problems. And they would require different solutions.

Or suppose I find myself always coming late to work in the morning. Why? Maybe I don't leave myself enough time in the morning. Maybe I stay up too late. Maybe I chronically underestimate how long things take. Or perhaps my work simply isn't important enough to me to make being there on time a priority.

Or suppose someone realizes that he repeatedly loses his temper with one particular coworker. Why that person? Is there something about him that makes me feel threatened? Am I jealous of him? Do I feel that he doesn't respect me? Does he bring out an insecurity that I don't particularly enjoy admitting I have?

Keep asking why.

Eventually, patterns sometimes begin to emerge. Three seemingly unrelated problems may turn out to have the same source. What looked like laziness may actually be fear of failure. What looked like anger may be insecurity. What looked like a time-management problem may really be a problem with priorities.

That is when the exercise starts becoming interesting.

A Little More About Step 3

There is something uncomfortable about deliberately searching for your own deficiencies.

We usually spend a decent amount of energy doing the opposite. We explain our behavior and justify it. We notice the circumstances that made us act the way we did. And we're remarkably good at identifying the faults of the other person involved.

Here, we're deliberately turning the camera around and it doesn’t need to be depressing.

Think about someone you love getting to know. There is something deeply satisfying about understanding another human being—not just knowing what they do, but understanding why they do it.

This exercise offers the opportunity to do that with yourself.

The goal isn't to conclude, Wow, I'm terrible.

It's to be able to say, Oh. So that's why I keep doing that.

And there is a surprising amount of joy in reaching that moment. There is something satisfying about discovering a part of yourself that you never quite understood before. Even when what you discover isn't particularly flattering, you walk away knowing yourself a little better than you did before.

And once you understand the problem, you finally have a chance of changing it.

Step 4: Change One Thing

At this point, you may have a problem. Your list is long.

There may be 15 things you want to change and you're inspired to become more patient, wake up earlier, pray with greater concentration, exercise regularly, call your mother more often, stop gossiping, spend less time on your phone, and become an all-around magnificent human being beginning Monday morning.

That probably isn't going to happen.

So pick one thing. Then make the change small and concrete.

“Be a better father” isn't a plan.

“Put my phone away from 6:30 to 7:30 every evening when I'm with my children” is.

“Become more spiritual” isn't a plan.

“Spend ten minutes learning Torah three evenings a week” is.

And write it down. Be specific enough that a month from now you can answer a simple question: Did I actually do it?

If it did, wonderful. Now perhaps you can build on it or choose something else.

And if it didn’t, that doesn’t mean the whole exercise was a failure.

Step 5: Come Back

This is the step that I think is easiest to overlook. Don't throw away the paper. Choose a date—perhaps one to three months from now—and come back to it.

Read what you wrote. Look at the change you decided to make. Did it work?

If it did, wonderful. Now perhaps you can build on it or choose something else.

If it didn't, don't just cross it out and declare yourself a failure. Ask another question: Why didn't it work?

Maybe the goal was too ambitious. Maybe you misunderstood what was driving the behavior. Maybe the solution was wrong. That's useful information too.

Write that down.

Then try again.

Over enough years, that notebook becomes something more than a collection of abandoned New Year's resolutions.

It becomes a record of a person trying to understand himself.

You can look back and see what you struggled with, what you thought was causing it, what you tried, what worked, what failed, and how your understanding of yourself changed along the way.

Maybe that's what genuine self-improvement is supposed to be.

Not an annual list of everything that's wrong with us, but an ongoing attempt to understand who we are—and, little by little, who we might still become.