My last blog, inspired by my mother’s diaries and love letters, described the deep sorrow I feel about the inescapable passing of time, as well as the challenge this gives me to be fully present each day I am given.

Her writings also have prompted me to reflect on who I am today and who I want to be at the end of life’s journey. Of course, that raises the question: Do we ever really know who we are? It’s ironic, isn’t it, that most of us hardly know the person with whom we’ve spent every moment of our lives.

Intellectually, I have a pretty clear sense of my strengths and failings. For example, I’m reasonably intelligent, self-confident and very hard working, having never received any grade in school other than an A. I can have a hot temper and I fear vulnerability more than just about anything else. And so on. I’ve taken numerous psychological tests and personality assessments. On the Myers-Briggs indicator, I’m an ‘ENTJ.’ I’m an ‘8’ on the Enneagram.

Most of these traits have been well formed since childhood. My strict Mennonite parents and my religious education (both my acceptance and rejection of them) had much to do with shaping my early understanding of myself.

The grouping of these embedded traits constitutes my ego self. My mind is good at repeating those traits — and the stories that go with them — to my ego, constantly reinforcing it. They have allowed me to achieve many of my goals and therefore seemingly worked quite well together for me throughout my life.

In my well-defended little intellectual bubble, I have points of view about almost everything. My mind consumes information that is consistent with my way of understanding the world and myself. It rejects and therefore shuts out interpretations and beliefs that clash with this restricted perspective. And that cycle further focuses and limits my current point of view.

Do you see where this leads? Any richer understanding of myself has gotten lost in the limiting stories my mind keeps feeding me.

So how can I hope to ever escape my clever little mind’s traps?

The best-selling author and deep thinker, Tyler Cowen, believes we can become more objective seers of ourselves by gaining some distance. He said, “Treat yourself like a piece of your writing, which you set aside for a week so you could look at it fresh.”

Sounds good, but I disagree. Unfortunately, I carry around narratives about myself that are far too entrenched to change just because I’ve tried to put them aside for a while.

If I really want to get beyond my current point of view and expand understanding of my true self, it seems to me I have to clear my mind of all the preconceptions, old stories and distractions that clutter it, and find out what’s really in there.

Ironically, mindfulness may be a path around the ever-yammering mind. Mindfulness entails moment-by-moment awareness of thoughts, feelings, physical body and surroundings. For many people, seated meditation is the preferred mindfulness practice. But walking in a forest or lying on a sandy beach might nurture mindfulness just as well. Any practice that allows us to still our thoughts and sense the truth of the present moment is a mindful one.

My husband and I practiced a daily seated meditation for decades, and sat through more than one 10-day silent Vipassana retreat. We found great value in those, but my monkey mind still inserted itself more than I wanted. In the past five years, we’ve adopted a moving meditation through our daily practice of tai chi. The continuous, flowing movements of the tai chi forms quiet my mind like no other meditative practice I have experienced. It’s a time for me to be still and present.

I like what mindfulness coach Jon Kabat-Zinn says: “Dwelling in stillness and looking inward for some part of each day, we touch what is most real and reliable in ourselves and most easily overlooked and undeveloped.”

For me, to catch even just a glimpse of myself without all of the old stories and distractions, is one of the most important benefits of practicing tai chi.

What have you found to be useful in discovering your truest self?