The next time you find yourself in a group discussion, try to do an inventory of the words most often spoken. Chances are good I will lead the pack. And by a significant margin.

Which makes sense given that I is every person’s most constant and consistent companion. Wherever I go, there I is, so to speak.

Now briefly picture that I of yours in the third person. So when you say something like, “I am really hungry,” imagine that you’re talking about someone else.

Oh, I is hungry. Wonder what ol’ I over there is going to eat?

Weird, right?

But here’s the thing: most of us are, in fact, something of a stranger to ourselves. And it is precisely this absence of self-awareness and self-knowledge that leads to so many of our challenges in life.

I is for Personality

From a psychological perspective, the path to self-awareness begins with an understanding of one’s personality.

Part nature, part nurture, personality is largely in place long before we leave elementary school.

Reflect on that for a moment. It means the ‘you’ that has been moving through life making decisions, taking this action and that, was more or less formed at an age when it still needed a hall pass to go to the bathroom. That CEO earning millions? Her personality is 10. The general commanding an army? Ten again.

So how much do you think you know about your personality? Chances are good, not nearly as much as you think. For example, did you know:

• Roughly half of your personality is baked into your DNA – it literally came into the world with you
• There are just five primary ingredients to personality, but the possible combinations are incredibly diverse
• Your personality is a strong predictor of the kind of pet you choose
• Your personality helps determine your political orientation, your taste in friends, music, etc.

We could list dozens of additional facts and figures, but the key takeaway here is that most of us know little to nothing about personality in general and our own personality in particular.

And the problem is that the less we know about ourselves, the more likely we are to face a bumpy road in life, including choosing the wrong jobs, settling for the wrong mates, and so on.

So how do you fix the problem?

Know Thyself

Socrates believed that an unexamined life was one not worth living. Like many philosophers, he argued that an absence of self awareness doomed us to flying blind through life (and doing lots of damage to ourselves and others in the process).

So how do you begin that process of knowing yourself?

For starters, take a scientifically-valid personality assessment. No, not a Myers-Briggs type of test. They’re fun, yes, but they’re not very scientific. And the thing is, personality science has come a long way.

In one respect or another, each of us is a kind of highly unique science project, no two personalities exactly alike. Which means the people who know themselves best are way ahead of the pack when it comes to correctly identifying their goals and reaching them.

That, to us, isn’t just the final frontier, it’s the only one really worth conquering.