Freedom: Comes from Knowing and Understanding Yourself

By Belinda Pieterse

“WHO AM I” is perhaps the most common question in modern day society. We lose ourselves to all the voices around us, bringing about our imprisonment to the opinions of the people in our lives and our life experiences.

Within the pages of this book are practical steps and discussions, which will help you to discover who you truly are. The real you, according to your original blueprint and not merely who society and other external factors formed you to be.

In addition, this book is different and unique as the author shares her true-life experiences and lessons learned with you, the reader, as there is no better handbook to life than life itself.

Join this amazing journey to FREEDOM, your FREEDOM, which comes from KNOWING and UNDERSTANDING yourself.

“We can bring hope by changing the shadows of our past into a Testimony of promise”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Belinda Pieterse
• Release date: Aug 17, 2017
• ISBN: 9780620764544

Belinda Pieterse

I finished my BA Degree (Psychology/Sociology) in 2012 at the age of 41. I also did various counselling courses, specializing in helping victims who come from severe childhood abuse on their road to healing. I have more than 10-year’s hands-on experience as caregiver and coach, in this field. In addition to the above, I was previously the director of my own IT Company from 2002 until 2013 and I was responsible for all administrative and financial aspects. After my divorce in 2015, I realized that I still was not sure who I am. I went on my own ‘WHO AM I’ journey to discover my true self who was hidden underneath years of emotional/psychological abuse. I wrote the book, Freedom – comes from knowing and understanding yourself, born from my heart’s desire to assist people on their journey to live a life filled with meaning and purpose. And as I discovered this can only take place if we truly understand ourselves and become comfortable and confident with who we are. Now I am a full-time life-coach and motivational speaker, sharing my personal story/experience as well as academic knowledge to assist people on their journey to self-discovery and self-understanding. And I love every minute...

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DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to my two precious children, Arrie and Aninda.

Thank you for believing in me and sticking with me during all the good and the bad times.

freedom

Smashwords Edition

Published by Belinda Pieterse at Smashwords

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner and the publisher.

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Copyright © Belinda Pieterse, 2017

ISBN: 978-0-620-76453-7

Epub ISBN: 978-0-620-76454-4

Mobi ISBN: 978-0-620-76455-1

Published by Belinda Pieterse in 2017

P.O. Box 182, Menlyn, Pretoria, 0063, South Africa

Tel: [phone]

Email: [e-mail]

Website: www.belindapieterse.com

Cover design by Madelein Coetzee

Tel: [phone]

Epub conversion: Orchard Publishing

Table of Contents

GIVING THANKS

WHO AM I?

MY JOURNEY

My background

My struggle

My road to healing

The essence of my journey

INTRODUCTION An amazing journey of self-discovery and self-knowledge

CHAPTER 1 Become your own best motivator

Why you need to know and understand yourself

Society – Opinions and advice

Society – Expectations and standards

Family and friends – Expectations

Family and friends – Different roles and positions

Family and friends – Personality and temperament differences

Other life stressors

Living a fulfilled and meaningful life

A holistic view of all the areas you function in

Spiritual

Psychological

Social

Physical

How the four areas are interlinked

The only area which can be controlled

Change starts from the inside

Life is a gift, make it meaningful, leave a legacy

Your responsibility to self and society

CHAPTER 2 The building blocks of our uniqueness

The brain

My brain profile

Temperaments

Phlegmatic

Melancholy

Choleric

Sanguine

I am a full-blown phlegmatic

Communication and conflict-handling styles

Communications styles

Self-esteem as a foundation for communication

I-You and I-It relationships as a foundation for communication

Different communication styles

Self-disclosure

Conflict-handling styles

Love languages

Words of affirmation

Quality time

Receiving gifts

Acts of service

Physical touch

My love languages

Things learned from parents, family, friends, society, and the media

Parents and family

Things I have learned

My childhood

My marriage

Friends

My high school years

Society and the media

Past experiences

My past experiences

The armed robbery

Perceptions

Criticism formed my perceptions

Emotions

My thoughts, emotions, and motives

Character and personality

CHAPTER 3 Discover your emotions at a much deeper level

Emotions defined

The importance of knowing and understanding your emotions

How emotions are influenced

Can you control your emotions?

Understanding your emotions

How do you control your emotions?

Dealing with loss

My biggest loss

Grieving your losses

My central loss – The divorce

Needs, desires, passions, and expectations

My needs, desires, passions, and expectations

Dealing with disappointment

Pain can cloud everything

CHAPTER 4 Your thoughts will determine your life

The importance of controlling your thought life

Why must you control your thoughts?

How can your thoughts influence and shape your world?

Thinking that I had nothing worthwhile to offer

Staying positive

Tips to stay positive

CHAPTER 5 It is time to take control of your life

Taking control of your life

Levels of functioning

Thoughts

Emotions

Behaviour

Physical

Social activities or support structure

Spiritual

Dealing with problems within yourself

Optimising strengths and minimising weaknesses

Resilience

CHAPTER 6 Putting the final pieces of the puzzle into place

Finding meaning in life

Do what you enjoy doing

Lend a helping hand

Listen to your heart

Looking beyond yourself

Holding onto the bigger picture

Trusting yourself and your abilities

Your life will never be a life wasted

Can ordinary people have significant lives?

Stay true to yourself

CHAPTER 7 Step out, go beyond your comfort zone, and start living a life without limits

Go beyond your comfort zone

Do the seemingly impossible

Live a life without limits

Challenge accepted

CONCLUSION Choose to take the first step

BIBLIOGRAPHY

GIVING THANKS

I would like to give a special word of thanks to my two precious children, Arrie and Aninda. Thank you for believing in me and sticking with me during all the good and the bad times. Thank you for all your love, support, and especially all your words of comfort and wisdom.

Most of all, thank you for your treasurable friendship and all the unforgettable times we’ve had together. Thank you for making me part of your journeys and lives. It is more valuable than any other gift.

You have so much input in my life and I want you to remember that you have also contributed to this book. You have helped me reach my potential and meaning in my life.

I will never forget your valuable and unique inputs and I hope you will never forget how much I love and adore both of you.

Love,

Belinda-Mamma and Mummzi

WHO AM I?

You may ask, ‘Who is Belinda Pieterse?’ But, to me, who I am is not nearly as important as the passion burning in my heart… My passion is my love for people. Therefore, in this book, I have focused on my passion and perhaps through that, the question I impose of ‘Who am I’ will become clear. I will share my journey and testimony a little later on, as there is great comfort in relating to another person’s story.

As mentioned above, I am passionate about people, especially coaching and empowering them to become the best they can be. I believe every person has the ability and right to experience the joy of a fulfilled and meaningful life. I also believe people have their unique make-up. Therefore, I feel that every person deserves to be treated as the special and unique individual they are.

I feel it is important to not only see and believe that the above statement is true but that every person I have the privilege of meeting will start believing it about themselves. Furthermore, I want to see them living in the full knowledge of who they are and what their worth is in this world.

I also believe that we can only reach our full potential and live life to the fullest if we know and understand ourselves. The vision to assist and teach people to discover and understand themselves and grow far beyond their wildest dreams came out of this belief and passion in my heart.

Knowledge is POWER and knowledge about ourselves gives us the power and ability to improve ourselves.

This is the foundation of this book and the ‘How to know yourself’ series I developed. It is an easy-to-use, practical, systematic book and series, which will assist any individual to discover and understand themselves. It is a full and comprehensive journey to self-discovery and self-development, which ranges from the basic tools, such as personality types, to recognising and understanding the complexity of our emotions and thoughts.

Anybody can embark on this journey, no matter where they are in life. Whether it is someone who doesn’t know who they are or why they do things a certain way or even someone who needs additional skills to venture into new territory. Every single individual asking themselves these questions will benefit from this series. Although, the content of the book is not restricted in any way to only these individuals. It is a continual process, considering that we are not robots and life happens. We are dynamic beings on a lifelong journey, forever changing and growing.

We are so much more than beings merely struggling to survive and coping with day-to-day challenges. Moreover, no person should come to the end of their lives, disappointed, and full of regret for not doing everything in their power to reach their full potential and living a full and momentous life. I know there is no greater satisfaction than living a meaningful and significant life – having confidence in yourself, your ability, and your positive influence in the world.

I now invite you to embark on the most important journey of your life. Please join me and discover that freedom, indeed, comes from knowing and understanding yourself. Remember that you are a person of great significance just waiting to be discovered…

MY JOURNEY

My background

When I sat down to write about my background and journey, it was difficult to figure out where to begin.

I have found that writing or talking about myself is one of the most difficult things to do. I never had the opportunity or a favourable set-up where I had the freedom to voice my opinions. As a result, I was a stranger to myself, not truly and genuinely knowing who I was. I always knew the basics, such as my favourite colour and food, but even those things changed from time-to-time and were not constant in my life.

Being a mom, wife and, most prominently, a person who liked to please people meant that I was functioning like a plane on autopilot. I was guided by a GPS – by everyone else’s desires, interests, and needs – and placed everyone else far above myself. Even my emotions, thoughts and actions were guided by this GPS, leaving me completely and utterly detached from the true me.

There were times when I would put my foot down and say, ‘This is what I want and this is necessary for me to do’. However, those decisions and actions always came at a very high price and resulted in disapproval from those who were supposed to be my support and cheerleaders in life.

Feelings of guilt made me insecure and afraid to stand up for myself. This caused me to push my desires and needs even deeper into a pit of no recognition, covering it with a false sense of achievement and self-worth, which I gained from pleasing and caring for those around me.

Christians did not help either. Many of them would remind me of all the scriptures telling us to submit, have a servant heart, and not to live for ourselves. Please do not misunderstand me; I am not rebelling against any of these scriptures in the Bible. But I believe God did not intend for any of us to be mere puppets in the hands of any other human. This will cause us to lose our knowledge of who we are and, therefore, our identity. Each person is wonderfully and fearfully created, each one with their unique design. Therefore, no one has the right to dictate our thoughts, emotions, and actions to a point where we are completely blinded of who we really are.

And with that being said and out of the way, let me continue with my journey and story.

Through the most difficult times in my life, such as having a miscarriage and losing my mom and dad, I did not have the opportunity to just be and feel. Furthermore, I never allowed myself time to grieve. I was always tending to others responsibilities or to someone who was not coping or someone who was in need of my assistance.

Due to the fact that I never allowed myself the opportunity to work through my deepest emotions, it instigated a life of ignoring and repressing these emotions. The dangerous magnitude of ignoring and repressing them turned into a vicious cycle of my inability to recognise the emotions. The inability to deal with it led to even more ignoring and repressing, until such a time where I became completely numb to any kind of emotion… or so I thought.

I seemed strong to a seemingly watchful and interested world. Nobody knew that I was dying a slow, painful, and extremely lonely death within. My impending death was not apparent to those around me until I just cracked and broke down one day.

I was confronted with a humongous wave of unidentified emotions that flooded my whole being in an instance, leaving me paralysed and without any hope for the future. I had reached a point of no return. I didn’t care about anyone or anything, not even my precious children. In the words I used at that stage, I just ‘did not give a damn!’

However, it was at this point, when everything seemed lost, where my journey to inner healing started. I first had to get to a place where I was totally fed up with everything before I could focus on myself and embark on my journey of self-discovery and healing.

At that stage, none of the prominent role-players in my life could understand why… Why would a person, who was such a significant figure and leader just give up and let go of everything that seemed to bring fulfilment and meaning to her life?

Perhaps that was part of the problem. It was a life based on other people’s knowledge of me, as well as other people’s dreams for my life. My desires, dreams, and unique individual composition were totally forgotten, as these elements did not form part of their picture.

How is this possible, you might ask? It is actually very easy. You see, if you do not know yourself well enough to reveal the true you to the people around you, then it is very easy for them to