Who Are You Exercise

Who are you is a simple but profound exercise of self-knowledge and self-awareness that gives very good results when applied in a group. Self-awareness is the first step to personal growth.

While mindfulness is being aware of one’s environment, body, and lifestyle, self-awareness is the recognition of that awareness. That’s why practicing self-awareness reveals what we don’t know about ourselves.

Self-awareness is the way a person consciously knows and understands their own character, feelings, motives, and desires.

Ask the group to form pairs, it is ideal that those who make up the pairs know each other as little as possible. The development of the exercise is quite simple: a person asks “Who are you?” and the other answers the first thing that comes to mind.

The first person keeps asking “Who are you?” right after each answer, and the other person keeps answering but with other answers. This goes on for two minutes, and then people switch roles: the person who answered now asks “Who are you?”

It feels silly and simple, but most people struggle because they have to keep answering who they are. Initially, people share obvious things like their names, jobs, relationships, hobbies, etc.

As the exercise progresses, it becomes more and more difficult. That is precisely the point:  peeling back the multiple layers of our identity.

The topics of this publication: reflection, self, empathy