i define myself essay

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Change the Way You Define Yourself

Marshall Goldsmith

This week’s question for Ask the Coach: Sometimes I think that my biggest enemy is me. Why do we say and do things that limit our own success? We all have a list of characteristics and behaviors that we use to define who we are. For successful people, most of these characteristics can be described […]

This week’s question for Ask the Coach:

MG Marshall Goldsmith is recognized as one of the world’s leading executive educators and coaches. Dr. Goldsmith’s 30 books include What Got You Here Won’t Get You There and MOJO .

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How to Describe Yourself In an Essay: Guide, Tips, and Free Sample

“Tell me about your self.” As a rule, this phrase makes us forget pretty much every fact about our life, goals, qualities, and other essential things. And we start mumbling, sweating, and shivering. Ironically, we have to describe ourselves during the most important meetings – job interviews or college application interviews.

A bit of practice won’t hurt, so we want to teach you how to describe yourself in an essay. When you get used to writing about yourself, talking about yourself becomes much easier. Also, a describe yourself essay sample may become a great foundation for your admissions essay. Actually, these essay types are similar, but admissions essays are more formal.

So, let’s start with a helpful guide and tips from EssayBulls essay writer, and then we’ll be glad to share our sample with you.

How to Write a Describe Yourself Essay: Step-by-Step Guide

1. Define your goal

What are you writing your describe yourself essay sample for? Maybe you want to impress an admissions board? Or perhaps you just need to analyze your goals and accomplishments? Your goal defines the topic, tone, and structure of your essay, so defining it is crucial.

2. Narrow your topic

You can’t fit your entire life in one page. Lengthy essays turn into memoirs, and that’s a totally different genre. According to your goal, pick the topic that seems the most important in this particular case.

3. Write down your ideas

You might have thousands of ideas in your head, and you’ll never be able to structure them without notes. Write down your thoughts and divide them into various categories. This exercise will help you to select the ideas that are compatible with each other.

4. Make an outline

This step is also about structuring your ideas. Remember that this type of essay doesn’t need to stick to academic requirements, but it still should be logical and consistent. Decide what you want to write first to grab the attention of your readers, and then how you’re going to finish your essay for a good aftertaste.

5. Compose the first draft

Overcoming the fear of a blank page can be hard, especially if you’re not in the right mood. But you don’t have to be strict toward yourself! Try to draw inspiration from your favorite song or take a nice walk. The first draft doesn’t have to be perfect, as you’ll have much time to polish it.

6. Take a deep breath

In other words – have some rest. Your brain can’t work for hours and remain concentrated. Make a nice cup of tea and watch one episode of your favorite TV show. You don’t have to hurry – let your muse take a nap.

7. Read and rewrite

Admitting our mistakes isn’t easy. But people aren’t perfect, just face it. You should reread and rewrite your sample until you are 100% satisfied with its quality. We also recommend you to use online services that help students to correct grammar and spelling mistakes.

8. Format your paper

If you’re planning to send your describe yourself essay sample somewhere, make sure that it’s formatted properly. No one will give grades to your essay, but you still want to make a good impression, don’t you?

9. Get feedback

Comments from your friends or family will help you to notice inaccuracies or mistakes that you’ve missed. They may also give you a hint on how to make your essay more exciting.

We’re sure that you want to know not only how to write a describe yourself essay, but also how to make it brilliant. Below, you’ll find a bunch of quick-fire tips that will be helpful.

How to Describe Yourself in an Essay: Useful Tips

• Ask questions

As a rule, you don’t know or realize all of the truths about your personality. Perhaps, you have priceless qualities that you don’t notice, or your parents have exciting stories about your childhood hobbies. Before starting the writing process, do your research. Ask yourself and ask everybody else what is special about you.

• Pick the main aspects

As we mentioned earlier, you can’t fit your entire life in one page. You should choose two or three main aspects that you’ll include in your essay. We hope that our list will help you:

Work Experience
Passion/hobby
Important event
Life-changing challenge

• Make it interesting

Add details that make your sample unique. Nobody is interested in your GPA when they read your personal essay – they want to hear your personal voice! For example, when you prepare a describe yourself essay sample for the application process, this paper is the only way for admissions officers to see who is hiding behind the grades and academic accomplishments. Give them this chance!

• Express your personality

Don’t be afraid of showing your inner world! That’s what these essays are for. Your readers won’t be happy if they see an ideal portrait with nothing that gives away your personality.

• Avoid sensitive issues

However, you shouldn’t cross the line. You never know who is going to read your essay, so avoid the following sensitive topics: religion, politics, race, abortion, gender equality, sexual identity, etc.

Your essay will shine like a diamond if you use all of our tips! The most important thing is to believe in yourself and your writing skills. To give you more confidence, we’ve prepared a describe yourself essay example. You can get ideas and inspiration from it, or use it as a template. But we kindly ask you not to copy our sample, as it’ll be considered plagiarism.

Describe Yourself Essay Sample

Your passion can tell a lot about your personality. An indecisive person would never practice extreme sports, and an environmentalist would not collect butterflies under any circumstance. We can pretend to be someone else in many aspects, but our passions will always give us away. My passion is reading. And you may laugh and say that it’s too basic to be someone’s passion. I’ve heard many times that an applicant should never include reading in his or her “interests” section in a CV because there is no way it will attract the attention of the employer. But I think this is not fair. Reading has been my passion for nearly 15 years now. I had learned how to read when I was 5, and now I’m almost 20. And I don’t really know how many books I’ve actually read. I have tried to keep a journal, but it hasn’t helped. In my opinion, reading is the most exciting thing in this world. No history, anthropology, or psychology lessons will let you see the world through the eyes of another person the way books let you. Your life isn’t limited to your existence if you read books. Your mind and heart absorb the emotions and ideas of hundreds of characters, and your worldview becomes broader. Fortunately, my parents are bookworms just like me. Our house looks more like a library than a normal home. And we’re totally fine with this. I think that without parental support and approval, my dream wouldn’t seem that real to me. My passion has led me to a logical decision. I want to become a professional publisher because I want to have a job that doesn’t make me feel miserable. At the same time, I believe in my abilities, so I have no concerns about my income. When I was 17, I started an online magazine dedicated to literature and criticism. This hobby has helped me to enter Emerson College and start my publishing program. I also work as a part-time editor in the Boston Herald. My college has strong connections with various publishing houses, and I hope that this fact will help me to get my first full-time job, or at least an internship. I don’t know what my future will bring. But I’m sure that any dream, even the most ordinary or boring, at first sight, can turn into something great if you don’t give it up.

Describe Yourself Essay Help

That’s all. Our article on how to write a describe yourself essay is complete. We hope that you have no question about this essay type and are ready to start the writing process. In case you need more help with your admissions essay, or want to buy personal statements online to get 100% positive result, EssayBulls is always ready to provide assistance. We’re available 24/7, so apply to us at any time. Buy essay for college from our experts and simplify your college life now!

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15 Tips for Writing a College Essay About Yourself

What’s covered:.

What is the Purpose of the College Essay?
How to Stand Out Without Showing Off
15 Tips for Writing an Essay About Yourself
Where to Get Free Feedback on Your Essay

Most students who apply to top-tier colleges have exceptional grades, standardized test scores, and extracurricular activities. How do admissions officers decide which applicants to choose among all these stellar students? One way is on the strength of their college essay .

This personal statement, along with other qualitative factors like teacher recommendations, helps the admissions committee see who you really are—the person behind the transcript. So, it’s obviously important to write a great one.

What Is the Purpose of the College Essay?

Your college essay helps you stand out in a pool of qualified candidates. If effective, it will also show the admissions committee more of your personality and allow them to get a sense of how you’ll fit in with and contribute to the student body and institution. Additionally, it will show the school that you can express yourself persuasively and clearly in writing, which is an important part of most careers, no matter where you end up.

Typically, students must submit a personal statement (usually the Common App essay ) along with school-specific supplements. Some students are surprised to learn that essays typically count for around 25% of your entire application at the top 250 schools. That’s an enormous chunk, especially considering that, unlike your transcript and extracurriculars, it isn’t an assessment of your entire high school career.

The purpose of the college essay is to paint a complete picture of yourself, showing admissions committees the person behind the grades and test scores. A strong college essay shows your unique experiences, personality, perspective, interests, and values—ultimately, what makes you unique. After all, people attend college, not their grades or test scores. The college essay also provides students with a considerable amount of agency in their application, empowering them to share their own stories.

How to Stand Out Without Showing Off

It’s important to strike a balance between exploring your achievements and demonstrating humility. Your aim should be to focus on the meaning behind the experience and how it changed your outlook, not the accomplishment itself.

Confidence without cockiness is the key here. Don’t simply catalog your achievements, there are other areas on your application to share them. Rather, mention your achievements when they’re critical to the story you’re telling. It’s helpful to think of achievements as compliments, not highlights, of your college essay.

Take this essay excerpt , for example:

My parents’ separation allowed me the space to explore my own strengths and interests as each of them became individually busier. As early as middle school, I was riding the light rail train by myself, reading maps to get myself home, and applying to special academic programs without urging from my parents. Even as I took more initiatives on my own, my parents both continued to see me as somewhat immature. All of that changed three years ago, when I applied and was accepted to the SNYI-L summer exchange program in Morocco. I would be studying Arabic and learning my way around the city of Marrakesh. Although I think my parents were a little surprised when I told them my news, the addition of a fully-funded scholarship convinced them to let me go.

Instead of saying “ I received this scholarship and participated in this prestigious program, ” the author tells a story, demonstrating their growth and initiative through specific actions (riding the train alone, applying academic programs on her own, etc.)—effectively showing rather than telling.

15 Tips for Writing an Essay About Yourself

1. start early .

Leave yourself plenty of time to write your college essay—it’s stressful enough to compose a compelling essay without putting yourself under a deadline. Starting early on your essay also leaves you time to edit and refine your work, have others read your work (for example, your parents or a teacher), and carefully proofread.

2. Choose a topic that’s meaningful to you

The foundation of a great essay is selecting a topic that has real meaning for you. If you’re passionate about the subject, the reader will feel it. Alternatively, choosing a topic you think the admissions committee is looking for, but isn’t all that important to you, won’t make for a compelling essay; it will be obvious that you’re not very invested in it.

3. Show your personality

One of the main points of your college essay is to convey your personality. Admissions officers will see your transcript and read about the awards you’ve won, but the essay will help them get to know you as a person. Make sure your personality is evident in each part—if you are a jokester, incorporate some humor. Your friends should be able to pick your essay from an anonymous pile, read it, and recognize it as yours. In that same vein, someone who doesn’t know you at all should feel like they understand your personality after reading your essay.

4. Write in your own voice

In order to bring authenticity to your essay, you’ll need to write in your own voice. Don’t be overly formal (but don’t be too casual, either). Remember: you want the reader to get to know the real you, not a version of you that comes across as overly stiff or stilted. You should feel free to use contractions, incorporate dialogue, and employ vocabulary that comes naturally to you.

5. Use specific examples

Real, concrete stories and examples will help your essay come to life. They’ll add color to your narrative and make it more compelling for the reader. The goal, after all, is to engage your audience—the admissions committee.

For example, instead of stating that you care about animals, you should tell us a story about how you took care of an injured stray cat.

Consider this side-by-side comparison:

Example 1: I care deeply about animals and even once rescued a stray cat. The cat had an injured leg, and I helped nurse it back to health.

Example 2: I lost many nights of sleep trying to nurse the stray cat back to health. Its leg infection was extremely painful, and it meowed in distress up until the wee hours of the morning. I didn’t mind it though; what mattered was that the cat regained its strength. So, I stayed awake to administer its medicine and soothe it with loving ear rubs.

The second example helps us visualize this situation and is more illustrative of the writer’s personality. Because she stayed awake to care for the cat, we can infer that she is a compassionate person who cares about animals. We don’t get the same depth with the first example.

6. Don’t be afraid to show off…

You should always put your best foot forward—the whole point of your essay is to market yourself to colleges. This isn’t the time to be shy about your accomplishments, skills, or qualities.

7. …While also maintaining humility

But don’t brag. Demonstrate humility when discussing your achievements. In the example above, for instance, the author discusses her accomplishments while noting that her parents thought of her as immature. This is a great way to show humility while still highlighting that she was able to prove her parents wrong.

8. Be vulnerable

Vulnerability goes hand in hand with humility and authenticity. Don’t shy away from exploring how your experience affected you and the feelings you experienced. This, too, will help your story come to life.

Here’s an excerpt from a Common App essay that demonstrates vulnerability and allows us to connect with the writer:

“You ruined my life!” After months of quiet anger, my brother finally confronted me. To my shame, I had been appallingly ignorant of his pain.

Despite being twins, Max and I are profoundly different. Having intellectual interests from a young age that, well, interested very few of my peers, I often felt out of step in comparison with my highly-social brother. Everything appeared to come effortlessly for Max and, while we share an extremely tight bond, his frequent time away with friends left me feeling more and more alone as we grew older.

In this essay, the writer isn’t afraid to share his insecurities and feelings with us. He states that he had been “ appallingly ignorant ” of his brother’s pain, that he “ often felt out of step ” compared to his brother, and that he had felt “ more and more alone ” over time. These are all emotions that you may not necessarily share with someone you just met, but it’s exactly this vulnerability that makes the essay more raw and relatable.

9. Don’t lie or hyperbolize

This essay is about the authentic you. Lying or hyperbolizing to make yourself sound better will not only make your essay—and entire application—less genuine, but it will also weaken it. More than likely, it will be obvious that you’re exaggerating. Plus, if colleges later find out that you haven’t been truthful in any part of your application, it’s grounds for revoking your acceptance or even expulsion if you’ve already matriculated.

10. Avoid cliches

How the COVID-19 pandemic changed your life. A sports victory as a metaphor for your journey. How a pet death altered your entire outlook. Admissions officers have seen more essays on these topics than they can possibly count. Unless you have a truly unique angle, then it’s in your best interest to avoid them. Learn which topics are cliche and how to fix them .

11. Proofread

This is a critical step. Even a small error can break your essay, however amazing it is otherwise. Make sure you read it over carefully, and get another set of eyes (or two or three other sets of eyes), just in case.

12. Abstain from using AI

There are a handful of good reasons to avoid using artificial intelligence (AI) to write your college essay. Most importantly, it’s dishonest and likely to be not very good; AI-generated essays are generally formulaic, generic, and boring—everything you’re trying to avoid being. The purpose of the college essay is to share what makes you unique and highlight your personal experiences and perspectives, something that AI can’t capture.

13. Use parents as advisors, not editors

The voice of an adult is different from that of a high schooler and admissions committees are experts at spotting the writing of parents. Parents can play a valuable role in creating your college essay—advising, proofreading, and providing encouragement during those stressful moments. However, they should not write or edit your college essay with their words.

14. Have a hook

Admissions committees have a lot of essays to read and getting their attention is essential for standing out among a crowded field of applicants. A great hook captures your reader’s imagination and encourages them to keep reading your essay. Start strong, first impressions are everything!

15. Give them something to remember

The ending of your college essay is just as important as the beginning. Give your reader something to remember by composing an engaging and punchy paragraph or line—called a kicker in journalism—that ties everything you’ve written above together.

Where to Get Free Feedback on Your College Essay

Before you send off your application, make sure you get feedback from a trusted source on your essay. CollegeVine’s free peer essay review will give you the support you need to ensure you’ve effectively presented your personality and accomplishments. Our expert essay review pairs you with an advisor to help you refine your writing, submit your best work, and boost your chances of getting into your dream school. Find the right advisor for you and get started on honing a winning essay.

Essay Samples on Myself

A message to myself: reflections, encouragement, and self-compassion.

Within the depths of our thoughts lies a space where we can have a heartfelt conversation with the most familiar person of all—ourselves. This message to myself encapsulates a journey of introspection, offering reflections, encouragement, and a reminder of the importance of self-compassion. In this...

Me, Myself, and I: The Triad of Identity in 500 Words

In the intricate mosaic of human existence, the triad of "Me, Myself, and I" forms the cornerstone of identity—a fusion of experiences, thoughts, emotions, and aspirations that intertwine to create a unique narrative. In this essay, we delve into the complex interplay of these three...

How I Learned to Love Myself

The odyssey of self-love is a deeply personal and transformative one—a journey that I embarked upon with uncertainty and emerged from with a profound sense of how I learned to love myself. In this essay, I delve into the layers of this voyage, exploring the...

Expectations for Myself as a Student

The journey through academia is a pursuit of growth, knowledge, and self-discovery. As I step into this realm, I am guided by expectations for myself as a student—goals that encompass not only academic achievements but also personal development and a commitment to lifelong learning. In...

Introducing Myself: Uniqueness Within and Self-Presentation

Stepping onto the stage of self-presentation, I embark on the journey of introducing myself—an endeavor that requires delicacy, authenticity, and an appreciation for the intricacies that define my identity. In this essay, I navigate the nuances of self-introduction, exploring the essence of who I am,...

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Knowing Myself: Unraveling the Self

The pursuit of knowing myself is an intricate voyage—a path that winds through the labyrinth of thoughts, emotions, and experiences that comprise the essence of who I am. In this introspective essay, I delve into the significance of self-awareness, the layers of identity, and the...

Understanding Myself: the Complexities of Self-Discovery

Embarking on the quest of understanding myself is an odyssey of introspection—a journey that delves into the intricacies of thoughts, emotions, and experiences that shape the unique tapestry of my identity. In this reflective essay, I delve into the significance of self-awareness, the layers of...

The Place I Can Be Myself: a Haven of Authenticity

Amid the bustling rhythms of life, there exists a sanctuary—a refuge where pretenses fade, and authenticity flourishes. In this introspective essay, I delve into the place I can be myself, reflecting on the significance of finding solace in an environment that embraces my true identity,...

Myself as a Writer: Crafting Words, Weaving Worlds

Embracing the identity of a writer is a journey of words and wonder—an odyssey that unfolds through the art of crafting narratives and evoking emotions. In this introspective essay, I delve into the essence of myself as a writer, reflecting on the power of storytelling,...

Being a Writer

Myself as a Counselor: My Journey as a Compassionate Guide

Stepping into the role of a counselor is an embodiment of empathy, guidance, and a commitment to fostering mental well-being. In this introspective essay, I delve into the realm of myself as a counselor, reflecting on the qualities that define my approach, the significance of...

Discovering Myself: Inner Exploration

The journey of discovering myself is a profound odyssey—a quest that delves into the intricacies of identity, purpose, and the essence of being. In this introspective essay, I embark on an expedition through the inner landscape, unraveling the layers of my character, aspirations, and the...

How I Value Myself: Nurturing Self-Worth

At the core of a fulfilling and empowered life lies the practice of self-worth—a journey of recognizing, appreciating, and embracing one's intrinsic value. In this reflective essay, I embark on an exploration of how I value myself. From acknowledging my strengths to embracing my vulnerabilities,...

History of Myself: Chronicles of Identity and Transformation

The history of myself is a narrative that unfolds across time, encompassing a tapestry of experiences, emotions, growth, and transformation. In this reflective essay, I embark on a journey to trace the history of myself—from the origins that shaped my identity to the chapters of...

Being Myself: Embracing Authenticity and Finding Inner Harmony

In a world often shaped by expectations and comparisons, the journey of being myself emerges as an exploration of authenticity, self-acceptance, and the pursuit of inner harmony. In this reflective essay, I delve into the intricacies of embracing my true self—the challenges, revelations, and rewards...

Describing Myself: Narrative of Self-Discovery

Every individual is an intricate tapestry of stories, experiences, and emotions. In this narrative essay, I embark on a reflective journey to unveil the layers that compose the canvas of my identity. Through the art of storytelling, I delve into the myriad experiences that contribute...

How Do I Define Myself: Unraveling the Layers of My Identity

The essence of being human lies in the intricate tapestry of individuality that weaves together experiences, beliefs, aspirations, and values. In this introspective essay, I embark on a journey to explore the profound question of how do I define myself. From the colors that paint...

Self Identity

A Letter to Myself: Life's Journey with Reflection and Wisdom

Life is a tapestry woven with moments of joy, challenges, growth, and self-discovery. In this introspective essay, I embark on a journey of a letter to myself. As the author and recipient of this heartfelt correspondence, I delve into the wisdom gained from experiences, the...

Where I See Myself in the Future

The journey of life is akin to an artist's canvas, awaiting the strokes of dreams, ambitions, and actions to paint a masterpiece of the future. In this essay, I embark on a reflective journey to explore where I see myself in the future. From the...

Where Do I See Myself in 5 Years

Life is a journey that unfolds with each passing day, offering us the opportunity to set our sights on the horizon and envision where our efforts will lead us. In this essay, we embark on a voyage of introspection to explore the question: Where do...

Mapping the Future: Where Do I See Myself in 20 Years

Introduction Projecting oneself two decades into the future is a thought-provoking exercise that conjures up a mix of excitement and uncertainty. As I contemplate where I see myself in 20 years, I envision a life marked by personal and professional growth, a harmonious family life,...

About Myself

Reflections: How Do I See Myself as a Person

Introduction Self-perception is a complex, multifaceted topic, and can be influenced by many factors including our upbringing, our experiences, and our relationships. In this essay, I will explore the topic of self-perception, delving into the various aspects of how I see myself as a person,...

The Person I Am Today: A Reflection on My Experiences and Beliefs

Humans are the most superior creatures amid all the creatures in the entire universe. Being a part of this universe makes me feel small and minuscule in a world where there millions of humans like myself. Although everyone is quite unique in their own way....

Personality

How I Freed Myself From Diabetes: Strategies and Action Plan

Diabetes has become a nightmare for diabetic patients. This menace is making its roots strong in todays world. This disease has been taking colossal amount of national health budget. With the passage of time the number of diabetics are increasing. According to a report, an...

Believe in Myself

What Does It Mean to Be Successful: a Change in My Mindset

Can you ever call yourself if you don't have desires to obtain and work for it? And can you even call your self as profitable sitting without problems in your residing room except doing anything? These mindset make a character pick between being failure and...

Personal Strengths

Discovering My True Self: Embracing Confidence, Self-Belief, and Personal Growth

Before I understand myself, I started believing in myself. I started to think clearly and analyze what's my purpose in this world then I took the risk to study harder to achieve my dreams. I move forward and think positive so that I can concentrate...

Best topics on Myself

1. A Message to Myself: Reflections, Encouragement, and Self-Compassion

2. Me, Myself, and I: The Triad of Identity in 500 Words

3. How I Learned to Love Myself

4. Expectations for Myself as a Student

5. Introducing Myself: Uniqueness Within and Self-Presentation

6. Knowing Myself: Unraveling the Self

7. Understanding Myself: the Complexities of Self-Discovery

8. The Place I Can Be Myself: a Haven of Authenticity

9. Myself as a Writer: Crafting Words, Weaving Worlds

10. Myself as a Counselor: My Journey as a Compassionate Guide

11. Discovering Myself: Inner Exploration

12. How I Value Myself: Nurturing Self-Worth

13. History of Myself: Chronicles of Identity and Transformation

14. Being Myself: Embracing Authenticity and Finding Inner Harmony

15. Describing Myself: Narrative of Self-Discovery

Career Goals
Perseverance
Clinical Experience
Neighborhood

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Me, Myself, and I: How to Describe Yourself in College Application Essays

A Student’s College Application Essay Is One Of Their Best Opportunities To Stand Out…

After all, a well-written personal statement can be the difference between acceptance or receiving a waitlist letter. Often, the best essays are those that go into detail about the student themselves. A descriptive essay that shows how a student’s personal hobbies, interests, values, and career goals interconnect goes much farther than just a list of their extracurricular activities.

However, many students find it difficult to break the habit of being humble and write about themselves. In this article, we cover five different ways students can reframe the challenge of writing about themselves to make their college essays feel more personal.

The Importance Of Sharing Your Story

With over 3 million students expected to graduate from high school this year , the pool of college applicants will continue to grow. Because of this, colleges are increasingly seeking ways to adapt the college admission process to allow students the opportunity to share their unique stories.

Across the country, from small liberal arts colleges to leading research universities, schools are increasingly moving in the direction of a holistic admission process . A holistic approach to college admissions goes beyond a student’s test scores and grade point averages to take into account all that a student achieves inside and outside of school.

Because of this shift in approach, it’s never been more necessary for students to share their personal stories however they can in their college application. Most often, students are given the opportunity through essay prompts that ask questions about the student’s views, values, or interests as they relate to the institution.

While many students find these prompts uncomfortable, they are one of the only ways students can take control of the application process by choosing to put themselves in the spotlight. The person who reads a student’s college application and personal statement has no idea who they are; it’s up to each student to leave them with a good first impression.

5 Tips For Writing About Yourself On College Applications

Show personal depth.

While students may be tempted to state just the facts of their background, encourage depth and description in their application. A holistic admissions process loves to see students with interests that interconnect, especially when provided with a record of extracurricular involvement to back it up . Providing detail gives the reader the context they’ll need to get a clear picture of the student.

In other words, students shouldn’t be afraid to nerd out and get passionate! If their interest in political activism is driven by the field they’re most interested in studying, such as climate science, encourage them to work all aspects of their character into their application. Same with art, social justice, psychology, and more! Colleges provide students with essay prompts that invite them to get personal for a reason - they love the inside look at what qualities your student will bring to their campus.

However, students should be careful to not merely rewrite a list of accomplishments, extracurriculars, or commitments that can be found elsewhere on their college applications. A student’s personal essay can lean on these parts of the application by focusing on the most important accomplishments rather than trying to list all of them within a small word count limit.

DESCRIBE YOUR BACKGROUND

Today, it’s possible for students from all walks of life to attend college, each bringing their own unique perspective and background to create more diverse campuses than ever . As this diversity is continually being recognized as a driver of innovation and equality, colleges are giving applicants more chances than ever to describe their background and what factors have shaped them into the person they are today.

Therefore, if there’s a unique aspect of your student’s background that you believe is worth highlighting in their college application, don’t hesitate! Colleges are eager to hear from applicants with experiences during their upbringing that reveal grit, determination, or ambition.

MAKE USE OF STORIES

To this end, students should make use of stories in their personal statements, if given a prompt where a story would make sense. Past experiences that show personal growth, dedication to values or ethics, or willingness to reach out and help those in need can all do more to tell a college about an applicant’s potential as a student than a grade point average ever could.

Shockingly, sometimes the most powerful stories to tell in a personal statement are those where a student has failed, lost, or made a mistake. In these stories, students are not only given the opportunity to display humility and the capability for growth, but also many other soft skills often associated with success in higher education.

Even if the essay prompt doesn’t invite your student to share a story, look for ways to naturally incorporate small anecdotes. Past experiences and stories, even summarized in a few sentences, can add a personal touch to an essay that college admissions officials will notice.

CONNECT TO THE SCHOOL

Students should always aim to be truthful in their college applications and should avoid making themselves seem more connected to the college they apply to than they really are. However, if a student’s interests, values, or experiences align with a college’s, then making an effort to genuinely connect with the school in their college essay can give students an edge.

For example, a student with a nearly life-long passion for debate would be well served to mention it when applying for a school where their debate team has received national recognition.

Additionally, if your child has had positive experiences with a school, whether through official programs or interactions with current students or alumni, a brief mention of this can work well in their college essay. When a student is unsure of how to answer “why this college” essay prompts , this tactic can be a great way to bridge the gap between what first drew a student toward a school and what convinced them to apply.

ASK FOR AN OUTSIDE OPINION

If your student finds themselves struggling to weave their personal story into the essay prompt, one way to spark ideas is to ask a trusted outsider for help. From a counselor to a teacher or fellow student, chances are your student will know someone who is willing to give them an idea of how they’d describe them to others. These outside looks will do wonders for your child’s confidence, creativity, and perspective when it comes to writing their “me, myself, and I” personal statement.

Depending on who your student asks, they may even be reminded of past experiences where they showed personal growth, committed to their values, or helped someone in need. Hearing stories from a different perspective may make it easier to write about them in a way that doesn’t feel self-aggrandizing. If they’ve already written a rough first draft of the story, their helper may be able to fill in details that add strength to the essay.

Make Your Personal Statement Personal

Many students struggle with the idea of writing about themselves. However, the perception that describing your past or telling a meaningful story about yourself is “bragging” couldn’t be further from the truth. Colleges are eager to hear stories that give insight into who a student is beyond their grades and test scores, and students would be wise to take advantage of the opportunities to do so. Yet, even the most accomplished adults struggle with describing themselves and their own accomplishments. It can be difficult to sell yourself, no matter how much value you bring to the table!

If your student is having a difficult time portraying themselves in their college application, we’d love to hear from you and see where our WeAdmit counselors can help. Our counselors are experienced in helping guide students toward submitting the best possible college applications, exploring all their options, and putting their best first impression forward. We would love to hear from you and see how our team can help your student get into their dream college!

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Essays About Myself: Top 5 Essay Examples Plus Prompts

We are all unique individuals, each with traits, skills, and qualities we should be proud of. Here are examples and prompts on essays about myself .

It is good to reflect on ourselves from time to time. When applying for university or a new job, you may be asked to write about yourself to give the institution a better picture of yourself. Self-understanding and reflection are essential if you want to make a compelling argument for yourself.

Reflect on your life: look back on the people you’ve met, the places you’ve been, and the experiences you’ve had, and think about how they have shaped you into the person you have become today. Think of the bigger picture and be sure to consider who you are based on what others think and say about you, not just who you think you are.

If you are tasked with the prompt, “essays about myself,” keep reading to see some essay examples.

1. It’s My Life by Ann Smith

2. how i see myself by leticia woods, 3. the truth about myself by madeline dyer, 4. what we see in others is a reflection of ourselves by sandra brossman, 5. a letter to myself by gladys mclaughlin, 1. introducing yourself, 2. describing your strengths and weaknesses, 3. what sets you apart from others, 4. your beliefs and values, 5. an experience that has defined you as a person, 6. what family means to you, 7. your favorite pasttime.

“Sure, I’ve had bad experiences in my life too, but this is exactly what made me the way I am now: grateful, full of love, with a desire to study well because it will help me become a successful person in future and have a high quality of life. I believe that it is manifesting day by day and I feel even more responsibility for what I do and where I go. With all I already have, I know that I’m on the right path and I will do my best to inspire others to live the way they feel like living as well.”

In her essay, Smith describes her interests, habits, and qualities. She writes that she is sociable, enthusiastic about studying, and friendly. She also touches on others’ opinions of her- that she is funny. One of Smith’s hobbies is photography, which allowed her to meet her best friend. She aims to study hard so she can be successful on whatever path she may follow, and inspire others to live their best life.

“It is this drive that will carry me through my degree program and allow me to absorb the education that I receive and develop solid practical applications from this knowledge. I feel that I will eventually become highly successful in my chosen field because my past has clearly shown my commitment to excellence in every endeavor that I have chosen. Because I remain incredibly focused and committed for future success, I know that my future will be as rewarding as my past.”

Woods discusses how her identity helps her achieve her career goals. First, her commitment to her education is a great asset. Second, prior education and her service in the US Air Force allowed her to learn much about life, the world, and herself, and she was able to learn about different cultures. She believes that experience, devotion, and knowledge will allow her to achieve her dreams.

“I’m getting better as I recover from the brain inflammation which caused my OCD, but I want to have a day like that. A day where I can relax and enjoy life fully again. A day where I haven’t a care in the world. And for that, I need to be kind to myself. I need to relax and remove any pressure I place on myself.”

Dyer reflects on an important part of herself- her Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Brain inflammation has made her a perfectionist, and she cannot relax. She is constantly compelled by an inner voice to do things she “should” be doing. She wants to be happy, and will try to shut off this voice by practicing self-affirmation. You might also be interested in these essays about discovering yourself .

“Believe it or not, forgiving YOURSELF is the most effective way to disengage from negative interactions with people. We can only love and accept others to the degree that we love and accept ourselves. When you make it a habit to learn from your relationships, eventually you will discover that you can observe negative traits within others without judgment and without getting hooked into someone else’s drama.”

In her essay, Brossman writes how we see what we desire for ourselves in others. Our relationships help us understand ourselves better; we see people’s bad qualities and criticize them, professing that we will not be like them. On the other hand, we see qualities we like and try to imitate them. To become a better version of yourself, you should learn from your relationships and emulate desirable qualities.

“I never tell anyone that I am tired of work or study. Success will come to those who get up and go far. This is my life motto which always reminds me of how vital it is to be hard-working and resilient towards failures. I learn that no matter what others say (even mother and father) if their

thoughts contradict my goals, I don’t have to listen to them. Nobody will live your life, and nobody should tell you who you are and what you are.”

Mclaughlin writes a letter to her future self, explaining what she envisions for herself in the coming years. She writes about who she is now and describes her vision for how much better she will be in the future. She believes that she will have great encounters that will teach her about life, a loving, kind family, and an independent spirit that will triumph over all her struggles

Writing Prompts For Essays About Myself

Essays About Myself: Introducing yourself

Write a basic description of yourself; describe where you live, your school or job, and your family and friends. You should also give readers a glimpse of your personality- are you outgoing, shy, or sporty? If you want to write more, you can also briefly explain your hobbies, interests, and skills.

Each of us has our own strengths and weaknesses. Reflect on what you are good at and what you can improve on and select 1-2 from each to write about. Discuss what you can do to work on your weaknesses and improve yourself.

An essential part of yourself is your uniqueness; for a strong essay about “myself,” think about beliefs, qualities, or values that set you apart from others. Write about one or more, but be sure to explain your choices clearly. You can write about what separates you in the context of your family, friend group, culture, or even society as a whole.

Your beliefs and values are at the core of your being, as they guide the decisions you make every day. Discuss some of your basic beliefs and values and explain why they are important to you. For a stronger essay, be sure to explain how you use these in day-to-day life; give concrete examples of situations in which these beliefs and values are used.

We are all shaped by our past experiences. Reflect on an experience, whether that be an achievement, setback, or just a fun memory, and explain its significance to you. Retell the story in detail and describe how it has impacted you and helped make you the person you are today.

Essays About Myself: What family means to you?

More often than not, family plays a big role in forming us. To give readers a better idea of your identity, describe your idea of family. Discuss its significance, impact, and role in your life. You may also choose to write about how your family has helped shape you into who you are. This should be based on personal experience; refrain from using external sources to inspire you.

Our likes and dislikes are an important part of who we are as well; in your essay, discuss a hobby of yours, preferably one you have been interested in for a long period of time, and explain why you enjoy it so much. You should also write about how it has helped you become yourself and made you a better person.

Grammarly is one of our top grammar checkers. Find out why in this Grammarly review . If you’re stuck picking your next essay topic, check out our round-up of essay topics about education .

Martin is an avid writer specializing in editing and proofreading. He also enjoys literary analysis and writing about food and travel.

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How to write an essay introduction | 4 steps & examples

How to Write an Essay Introduction | 4 Steps & Examples

Published on February 4, 2019 by Shona McCombes . Revised on July 23, 2023.

A good introduction paragraph is an essential part of any academic essay . It sets up your argument and tells the reader what to expect.

The main goals of an introduction are to:

Catch your reader’s attention.
Give background on your topic.
Present your thesis statement —the central point of your essay.

This introduction example is taken from our interactive essay example on the history of Braille.

The invention of Braille was a major turning point in the history of disability. The writing system of raised dots used by visually impaired people was developed by Louis Braille in nineteenth-century France. In a society that did not value disabled people in general, blindness was particularly stigmatized, and lack of access to reading and writing was a significant barrier to social participation. The idea of tactile reading was not entirely new, but existing methods based on sighted systems were difficult to learn and use. As the first writing system designed for blind people’s needs, Braille was a groundbreaking new accessibility tool. It not only provided practical benefits, but also helped change the cultural status of blindness. This essay begins by discussing the situation of blind people in nineteenth-century Europe. It then describes the invention of Braille and the gradual process of its acceptance within blind education. Subsequently, it explores the wide-ranging effects of this invention on blind people’s social and cultural lives.

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Step 1: hook your reader, step 2: give background information, step 3: present your thesis statement, step 4: map your essay’s structure, step 5: check and revise, more examples of essay introductions, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about the essay introduction.

Your first sentence sets the tone for the whole essay, so spend some time on writing an effective hook.

Avoid long, dense sentences—start with something clear, concise and catchy that will spark your reader’s curiosity.

The hook should lead the reader into your essay, giving a sense of the topic you’re writing about and why it’s interesting. Avoid overly broad claims or plain statements of fact.

Examples: Writing a good hook

Take a look at these examples of weak hooks and learn how to improve them.

Braille was an extremely important invention.
The invention of Braille was a major turning point in the history of disability.

The first sentence is a dry fact; the second sentence is more interesting, making a bold claim about exactly why the topic is important.

The internet is defined as “a global computer network providing a variety of information and communication facilities.”
The spread of the internet has had a world-changing effect, not least on the world of education.

Avoid using a dictionary definition as your hook, especially if it’s an obvious term that everyone knows. The improved example here is still broad, but it gives us a much clearer sense of what the essay will be about.

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is a famous book from the nineteenth century.
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is often read as a crude cautionary tale about the dangers of scientific advancement.

Instead of just stating a fact that the reader already knows, the improved hook here tells us about the mainstream interpretation of the book, implying that this essay will offer a different interpretation.

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Next, give your reader the context they need to understand your topic and argument. Depending on the subject of your essay, this might include:

Historical, geographical, or social context
An outline of the debate you’re addressing
A summary of relevant theories or research about the topic
Definitions of key terms

The information here should be broad but clearly focused and relevant to your argument. Don’t give too much detail—you can mention points that you will return to later, but save your evidence and interpretation for the main body of the essay.

How much space you need for background depends on your topic and the scope of your essay. In our Braille example, we take a few sentences to introduce the topic and sketch the social context that the essay will address:

Now it’s time to narrow your focus and show exactly what you want to say about the topic. This is your thesis statement —a sentence or two that sums up your overall argument.

This is the most important part of your introduction. A good thesis isn’t just a statement of fact, but a claim that requires evidence and explanation.

The goal is to clearly convey your own position in a debate or your central point about a topic.

Particularly in longer essays, it’s helpful to end the introduction by signposting what will be covered in each part. Keep it concise and give your reader a clear sense of the direction your argument will take.

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As you research and write, your argument might change focus or direction as you learn more.

For this reason, it’s often a good idea to wait until later in the writing process before you write the introduction paragraph—it can even be the very last thing you write.

When you’ve finished writing the essay body and conclusion , you should return to the introduction and check that it matches the content of the essay.

It’s especially important to make sure your thesis statement accurately represents what you do in the essay. If your argument has gone in a different direction than planned, tweak your thesis statement to match what you actually say.

To polish your writing, you can use something like a paraphrasing tool .

You can use the checklist below to make sure your introduction does everything it’s supposed to.

Checklist: Essay introduction

My first sentence is engaging and relevant.

I have introduced the topic with necessary background information.

I have defined any important terms.

My thesis statement clearly presents my main point or argument.

Everything in the introduction is relevant to the main body of the essay.

You have a strong introduction - now make sure the rest of your essay is just as good.

Argumentative
Literary analysis

This introduction to an argumentative essay sets up the debate about the internet and education, and then clearly states the position the essay will argue for.

The spread of the internet has had a world-changing effect, not least on the world of education. The use of the internet in academic contexts is on the rise, and its role in learning is hotly debated. For many teachers who did not grow up with this technology, its effects seem alarming and potentially harmful. This concern, while understandable, is misguided. The negatives of internet use are outweighed by its critical benefits for students and educators—as a uniquely comprehensive and accessible information source; a means of exposure to and engagement with different perspectives; and a highly flexible learning environment.

This introduction to a short expository essay leads into the topic (the invention of the printing press) and states the main point the essay will explain (the effect of this invention on European society).

In many ways, the invention of the printing press marked the end of the Middle Ages. The medieval period in Europe is often remembered as a time of intellectual and political stagnation. Prior to the Renaissance, the average person had very limited access to books and was unlikely to be literate. The invention of the printing press in the 15th century allowed for much less restricted circulation of information in Europe, paving the way for the Reformation.

This introduction to a literary analysis essay , about Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein , starts by describing a simplistic popular view of the story, and then states how the author will give a more complex analysis of the text’s literary devices.

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is often read as a crude cautionary tale. Arguably the first science fiction novel, its plot can be read as a warning about the dangers of scientific advancement unrestrained by ethical considerations. In this reading, and in popular culture representations of the character as a “mad scientist”, Victor Frankenstein represents the callous, arrogant ambition of modern science. However, far from providing a stable image of the character, Shelley uses shifting narrative perspectives to gradually transform our impression of Frankenstein, portraying him in an increasingly negative light as the novel goes on. While he initially appears to be a naive but sympathetic idealist, after the creature’s narrative Frankenstein begins to resemble—even in his own telling—the thoughtlessly cruel figure the creature represents him as.

If you want to know more about AI tools , college essays , or fallacies make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

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Your essay introduction should include three main things, in this order:

An opening hook to catch the reader’s attention.
Relevant background information that the reader needs to know.
A thesis statement that presents your main point or argument.

The length of each part depends on the length and complexity of your essay .

The “hook” is the first sentence of your essay introduction . It should lead the reader into your essay, giving a sense of why it’s interesting.

To write a good hook, avoid overly broad statements or long, dense sentences. Try to start with something clear, concise and catchy that will spark your reader’s curiosity.

A thesis statement is a sentence that sums up the central point of your paper or essay . Everything else you write should relate to this key idea.

The thesis statement is essential in any academic essay or research paper for two main reasons:

It gives your writing direction and focus.
It gives the reader a concise summary of your main point.

Without a clear thesis statement, an essay can end up rambling and unfocused, leaving your reader unsure of exactly what you want to say.

The structure of an essay is divided into an introduction that presents your topic and thesis statement , a body containing your in-depth analysis and arguments, and a conclusion wrapping up your ideas.

The structure of the body is flexible, but you should always spend some time thinking about how you can organize your essay to best serve your ideas.

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Home — Essay Samples — Life — About Myself — Describing Myself: What Shapes Me

Describing Myself: What Shapes Me

Categories: About Myself Personality

About this sample

Words: 782 |

Published: Sep 7, 2023

Words: 782 | Pages: 2 | 4 min read

Chapter 1: the canvas of experiences, chapter 2: the palette of skills, chapter 3: the portrait of personality and values, conclusion: the mosaic of identity.

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Essay on Myself: 100 Words, 250 Words and 300 Words

Updated on
Mar 12, 2024

Every Individual is different from each other and it is important to self-analyze and know about yourself. Only you can know everything about yourself. But, when it comes to describing yourself in front of others many students fail to do so. This happens due to the confusion generated by a student’s mind regarding what things to include in their description. This confusion never arises when someone is told to give any opinion about others. This blog will help students and children resolve the confusion and it also includes an essay on myself.

While writing an “essay on myself” you should have a unique style so that the reader would engage in your essay. It’s important to induce the urge to know about you in the reader then only you can perform well in your class. I would suggest you include your qualities, strengths, achievements, interests, and passion in your essay. Continue Reading for Essays on myself for children and students!

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This Blog Includes:

Long and short essay on myself for students, tips to write essay on myself, 100 words essay on myself, 250 words essay on myself, 10 lines on myself essay for children, 300 words essay on myself.

Quick Read: English Essay Topics

Mentioned below are essays on myself with variable word limits. You can choose the essay that you want to present in your class. These essays are drafted in simple language so that school students can easily understand. In addition, the main point to remember while writing an essay on myself is to be honest. Your honesty will help you connect with the reader.

Tell me about yourself is also one of the most important questions asked in the interview process. Therefore, this blog is very helpful for people who want to learn about how to write an essay on myself.

Given below are some tips to write an essay on myself:

Prepare a basic outline of what to include in the essay about yourself.
Stick to the structure to maintain fluency.
Be honest to build a connection with the reader.
Use simple language.
Try to include a crisp and clear conclusion.

I am a dedicated person with an urge to learn and grow. My name is Rakul, and I feel life is a journey that leads to self-discovery. I belong to a middle-class family, my father is a handloom businessman, and my mother is a primary school teacher .

I have learned punctuality and discipline are the two wheels that drive our life on a positive path. My mother is my role model. I am passionate about reading novels. When I was younger, my grandmother used to narrate stories about her life in the past and that has built my interest towards reading stories and novels related to history.

Overall I am an optimistic person who looks forward to life as a subject that teaches us values and ways to live for the upliftment of society.

Kajal Thareja

Hi, I am Kajal, a pharmacy graduate, currently pursuing management and is an experienced content writer. I have 2-years of writing experience in Ed-tech (digital marketing) company. I am passionate towards writing blogs and am on the path of discovering true potential professionally in the field of content marketing. I am engaged in writing creative content for students which is simple yet creative and engaging and leaves an impact on the reader's mind.

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CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS article

“i” and “me”: the self in the context of consciousness.

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Cognition and Philosophy Lab, Department of Philosophy, Monash University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

James (1890) distinguished two understandings of the self, the self as “Me” and the self as “I”. This distinction has recently regained popularity in cognitive science, especially in the context of experimental studies on the underpinnings of the phenomenal self. The goal of this paper is to take a step back from cognitive science and attempt to precisely distinguish between “Me” and “I” in the context of consciousness. This distinction was originally based on the idea that the former (“Me”) corresponds to the self as an object of experience (self as object), while the latter (“I”) reflects the self as a subject of experience (self as subject). I will argue that in most of the cases (arguably all) this distinction maps onto the distinction between the phenomenal self (reflecting self-related content of consciousness) and the metaphysical self (representing the problem of subjectivity of all conscious experience), and as such these two issues should be investigated separately using fundamentally different methodologies. Moreover, by referring to Metzinger’s (2018) theory of phenomenal self-models, I will argue that what is usually investigated as the phenomenal-“I” [following understanding of self-as-subject introduced by Wittgenstein (1958) ] can be interpreted as object, rather than subject of experience, and as such can be understood as an element of the hierarchical structure of the phenomenal self-model. This understanding relates to recent predictive coding and free energy theories of the self and bodily self discussed in cognitive neuroscience and philosophy.

Introduction

Almost 130 years ago, James (1890) introduced the distinction between “Me” and “I” (see Table 1 for illustrative quotes) to the debate about the self. The former term refers to understanding of the self as an object of experience, while the latter to the self as a subject of experience 1 . This distinction, in different forms, has recently regained popularity in cognitive science (e.g., Christoff et al., 2011 ; Liang, 2014 ; Sui and Gu, 2017 ; Truong and Todd, 2017 ) and provides a useful tool for clarifying what one means when one speaks about the self. However, its exact meaning varies in cognitive science, especially in regard to what one understands as the self as subject, or “I.”

TABLE 1. Quotes from James (1890) illustrating the distinction between self-as-object (“Me”) and self-as-subject (“I”) and a quote from Wittgenstein (1958) illustrating his distinction between the use of “I” as object and as subject.

The goal of this paper is to take a step back from cognitive science and take a closer look at the conceptual distinction between “Me” and “I” in the context of consciousness. I will suggest, following James (1890) and in opposition to the tradition started by Wittgenstein (1958) , that in this context “Me” (i.e., the self as object) reflects the phenomenology of selfhood, and corresponds to what is also known as sense of self, self-consciousness, or phenomenal selfhood (e.g., Blanke and Metzinger, 2009 ; Blanke, 2012 ; Dainton, 2016 ). On the other hand, the ultimate meaning of “I” (i.e., the self as subject) is rooted in metaphysics of subjectivity, and refers to the question: why is all conscious experience subjective and who/what is the subject of conscious experience? I will argue that these two theoretical problems, i.e., phenomenology of selfhood and metaphysics of subjectivity, are in principle independent issues and should not be confused. However, cognitive science usually follows the Wittgensteinian tradition 2 by understanding the self-as-subject, or “I,” as a phenomenological, rather than metaphysical problem [Figure 1 illustrates the difference between James (1890) and Wittgenstein’s (1958) approach to the self]. By following Metzinger’s (2003 , 2010 ) framework of phenomenal self-models, and in agreement with a reductionist approach to the phenomenal “I” 3 ( Prinz, 2012 ), I will argue that what is typically investigated in cognitive science as the phenomenal “I” [or the Wittgenstein’s (1958) self-as-subject] can be understood as just a higher-order component of the self-model reflecting the phenomenal “Me.” Table 2 presents some of crucial claims of the theory of self-models, together with concise references to other theories of the self-as-object discussed in this paper.

FIGURE 1. An illustration of James (1890) and Wittgenstein’s (1958) distinctions between self-as-object (“Me”) and self-as-subject (“I”). In the original formulation, James’ (1890) “Me” includes also physical objects and people (material and social “Me”) – they were not included in the picture, because they are not directly related to consciousness.

TABLE 2. Examples of theories of the self-as-object (“Me”) in the context of consciousness, as theories of the phenomenal self, with representative quotes illustrating each position.

“Me” As An Object Of Experience: Phenomenology Of Self-Consciousness

The words ME, then, and SELF, so far as they arouse feeling and connote emotional worth, are OBJECTIVE designations, meaning ALL THE THINGS which have the power to produce in a stream of consciousness excitement of a certain particular sort ( James, 1890 , p. 319, emphasis in original).

James (1890) chose the word “Me” to refer to self-as-object. What does it mean? In James’ (1890) view, it reflects “all the things” which have the power to produce “excitement of a certain particular sort.” This certain kind of excitement is nothing more than some form of experiential quality of me-ness, mine-ness, or similar - understood in a folk-theoretical way (this is an important point, because these terms have recently acquired technical meanings in philosophy, e.g., Zahavi, 2014 ; Guillot, 2017 ). What are “all the things”? The classic formulation suggests that James (1890) meant physical objects and cultural artifacts (material self), human beings (social self), and mental processes and content (spiritual self). These are all valid categories of self-as-object, however, for the purpose of this paper I will limit the scope of further discussion only to “objects” which are relevant when speaking about consciousness. Therefore, rather than speaking about, for example, my car or my body, I will discuss only their conscious representations. This limits the scope of self-as-object to one category of “things” – conscious mental content.

Let us now reformulate James’ (1890) idea in more contemporary terms and define “Me” as the totality of all content of consciousness that is experienced as self-related. Content of consciousness is meant here in a similar way to Chalmers (1996) , who begins “ The conscious mind ” by providing a list of different kinds of conscious content. He delivers an extensive (without claiming that exhaustive) collection of types of experiences, which includes the following 4 : visual; auditory; tactile; olfactory; experiences of hot and cold; pain; taste; other bodily experiences coming from proprioception, vestibular sense, and interoception (e.g., headache, hunger, orgasm); mental imagery; conscious thought; emotions. Chalmers (1996) also includes several other, which, however, reflect states of consciousness and not necessarily content per se , such as dreams, arousal, fatigue, intoxication, and altered states of consciousness induced by psychoactive substances. What is common to all of the types of experience from the first list (conscious contents) is the fact that they are all, speaking in James’ (1890) terms, “objects” in a stream of consciousness: “all these things are objects, properly so called, to the subject that does the thinking” (p. 325).

The self understood as “Me” can be understood as a subset of a set of all these possible experiences. This subset is characterized by self-relatedness (Figure 2 ). It can be illustrated with sensory experiences. For example, in the visual domain, I experience an image of my face as different from another person’s face. Hence, while the image of my face belongs to “Me,” the image of someone else does not (although it can be experimentally manipulated, Tsakiris, 2008 ; Payne et al., 2017 ; Woźniak et al., 2018 ). The same can be said about my voice and sounds caused by me (as opposed to voices of other people), and about my smell. We also experience self-touch as different from touching or being touched by a different person ( Weiskrantz et al., 1971 ; Blakemore et al., 1998 ; Schutz-Bosbach et al., 2009 ). There is even evidence that we process our possessions differently ( Kim and Johnson, 2014 ; Constable et al., 2018 ). This was anticipated by James’ (1890) notion of the material “Me,” and is typically regarded as reflecting one’s extended self ( Kim and Johnson, 2014 ). In all of these cases, we can divide sensory experiences into the ones which do relate to the self and the ones which do not. The same can be said about the contents of thoughts and feelings, which can be either about “Me” or about something/someone else.

FIGURE 2. A simplified representation of a structure of phenomenal content including the metaphysical “I,” the phenomenal “Me,” and the phenomenal “I,” which can be understood (see in text) as a higher-level element of the phenomenal “Me.” Each pair of nodes connected with a yellow line represents one type of content of consciousness, with indigo nodes corresponding to self-related content, and black nodes corresponding to non-self-related content. In some cases (e.g., pain, emotions, interoceptive, and proprioceptive sensations), the black nodes are lighter and drawn with a dashed line (the same applies to links), to indicate that in normal circumstances one does not experiences these sensations as representing another person (although it is possible in thought experiments and pathologies). Multisensory/multimodal interactions have been omitted for the sake of clarity. All of the nodes compose the set of conscious thoughts, which can be formulated as “I experience X.” In normal circumstances, one does not deny ownership over these thoughts, however, in thought experiments, and in some cases of psychosis, one may experience that even such thoughts cease to feel as one’s own. This situation is represented by the shape with a dashed outline. Moreover, in special cases one can form meta-delusions, i.e., delusions about delusions – thoughts that my thoughts about other thoughts are not my thoughts (see text for description).

Characterizing self-as-object as a subset of conscious experiences specifies the building blocks of “Me” (which are contents of consciousness) and provides a guiding principle for distinguishing between self and non-self (self-relatedness). However, it is important to note two things. First, the distinction between self and non-self is often a matter of scale rather than a binary classification, and therefore self-relatedness may be better conceptualized as the strength of the relation with the self. It can be illustrated with an example of the “Inclusion of Other in Self” scale ( Aron et al., 1992 ). This scale asks to estimate to what extent another person feels related to one’s self, by choosing among a series of pairs of more-to-less overlapping circles representing the self and another person (e.g., a partner). The degree of overlap between the chosen pair of circles represents the degree of self-relatedness. Treating self-relatedness as a matter of scale adds an additional level of complexity to the analysis, and results in speaking about the extent to which a given content of consciousness represents self, rather than whether it simply does it or not. This does not, however, change the main point of the argument that we can classify all conscious contents according to whether (or to what extent, in that case) they are self-related. For the sake of clarity, I will continue to speak using the language of binary classification, but it should be kept in mind that it is an arbitrary simplification. The second point is that this approach to “Me” allows one to flexibly discuss subcategories of the self by imposing additional constraints on the type of conscious content that is taken into account, as well as the nature of self-relatedness (e.g., whether it is ownership of, agency over, authorship, etc.). For example, by limiting ourselves to discussing conscious content representing one’s body one can speak about the bodily self, and by imposing limits to conscious experience of one’s possessions one can speak about one’s extended self.

Keeping these reservations in mind two objections can be raised to the approach to “Me” introduced here. The first one is as follows:

(1) Speaking about the self/other distinction does not make sense in regard to experiences which are always “mine,” such as prioprioception or interoception. This special status may suggest that these modalities underpin the self as “I,” i.e., the subject of experience.

This idea is present in theoretical proposals postulating that subjectivity emerges based on (representations of) sensorimotor ( Gallagher, 2000 ; Christoff et al., 2011 ; Blanke et al., 2015 ) or interoceptive signals ( Damasio, 1999 ; Craig, 2010 ; Seth et al., 2011 ; Park and Tallon-Baudry, 2014 ; Salomon, 2017 ). There are two answers to this objection. First, the fact that this kind of experience (this kind of content of consciousness) is always felt as “my” experience simply means that all proprioceptive, interoceptive, pain experiences, etc., are as a matter of fact parts of “Me.” They are self-related contents of consciousness and hence naturally qualify as self-as-object. Furthermore, there is no principled reason why the fact that we normally do not experience them as belonging to someone else should transform them from objects of experience (content) into a subject of experience. Their special status may cause these experiences to be perceived as more central aspects of the self than experiences in other modalities, but there is no reason to think that it should change them from something that we experience into the self as an experiencer. Second, even the special status of these sensations can be called into question. It is possible to imagine a situation in which one experiences these kinds of sensations from an organ or a body which does not belong to her or him. We can imagine that with enough training one will learn to distinguish between proprioceptive signals coming from one’s body and those coming from another person’s (or artificial) body. If this is possible, then one may develop a phenomenal distinction between “my” versus “other’s” proprioceptive and interoceptive experiences (for example), and in this case the same rules of classification into phenomenal “Me” and phenomenal “not-Me” will apply as to other sensory modalities. This scenario is not realistic at the current point of technological development, but there are clinical examples which indirectly suggest that it may be possible. For example, people who underwent transplantation of an organ sometimes experience rejection of a transplant. Importantly, patients whose organisms reject an organ also more often experience psychological rejection of that transplant ( Látos et al., 2016 ). Moreover, there are rare cases in which patients following a successful surgery report that they perceive transplanted organs as foreign objects in themselves ( Goetzmann et al., 2009 ). In this case, affected people report experiencing a form of disownership of the implanted organ, suggesting that they may experience interoceptive signals coming from that transplant as having a phenomenal quality of being “not-mine,” leading to similar phenomenal quality as the one postulated in the before-mentioned thought experiment. Another example of a situation in which self-relatedness of interoception may be disrupted may be found in conjoint twins. In some variants of this developmental disorder (e.g., parapagus, dicephalus, thoracopagus) brains of two separate twins share some of the internal organs (and limbs), while others are duplicated and possessed by each twin individually ( Spencer, 2000 ; Kaufman, 2004 ). This provides an inverted situation to the one described in our hypothetical scenario – rather than two pieces of the same organ being “wired” to one person, the same organ (e.g., a heart, liver, stomach) is shared by two individuals. As such it may be simultaneously under control of two autonomous nervous systems. This situation raises challenging questions for theories which postulate that the root of self-as-subject lies in interoception. For example, if conjoint twins share the majority of internal organs, but possess mostly independent nervous systems, like dicephalus conjoint twins, then does it mean that they share the neural subjective frame ( Park and Tallon-Baudry, 2014 )? If the answer is yes, then does it mean that they share it numerically (both twins have one and the same subjective frame), or only qualitatively (their subjective frames are similar to the point of being identical, but they are distinct frames)? However, if interoception is just a part of “Me” then the answer becomes simple – the experiences can be only qualitatively identical, because they are experienced by two independent subjects.

All of these examples challenge the assumption that sensori-motor and interoceptive experiences are necessarily self-related and, as a consequence, that they can form the basis of self-as-subject. For this reason, it seems that signals coming from these modalities are more appropriate to underlie the phenomenal “Me,” for example in a form of background self-experience, or “phenomenal background” ( Dainton, 2008 , 2016 ), rather than the phenomenal “I.”

The second possible objection to the view of self-as-object described in this section is the following one:

(2) My thoughts and feelings may have different objects, but they are always my thoughts and feelings. Therefore, their object may be either “me” or “other,” but their subject is always “I.” As a consequence, even though my thoughts and feelings constitute contents of my consciousness, they underlie the phenomenal “I” and not the phenomenal “Me.”

It seems to be conceptually misguided to speak about one’s thoughts and feelings as belonging to someone else. This intuition motivated Wittgenstein (1958) to write: “there is no question of recognizing a person when I say I have toothache. To ask ‘are you sure it is you who have pains?’ “would be nonsensical” ( Wittgenstein, 1958 ). In the Blue Book, he introduced the distinction between the use of “I” as object and as subject (see Table 1 for a full relevant quote) and suggested that while we can be wrong about the former, making a mistake about the latter is not possible. This idea was further developed by Shoemaker (1968) who introduced an arguably conceptual truth that we are immune to error through misidentification relative to the first-person pronoun, or IEM in short. For example, when I say “I see a photo of my face in front of me” I may be mistaken about the fact that it is my face (because, e.g., it is a photo of my identical twin), but I cannot be mistaken that it is me who is looking at it. One way to read IEM is that it postulates that I can be mistaken about self-as-object, but I cannot be mistaken about self-as-subject. If this is correct then there is a radical distinction between these two types of self that provides a strong argument to individuate them. From that point, one may argue that IEM provides a decisive argument to distinguish between phenomenal “I” (self-as-subject) and phenomenal “Me” (self-as-object).

Before endorsing this conclusion, let us take a small step back. It is important to note that in the famous passage from the Blue Book Wittgenstein (1958) did not write about two distinct types of self. Instead, he wrote about two ways of using the word “I” (or “my”). As such, he was more concerned with issues in philosophy of language than philosophy of mind. Therefore, a natural question arises – to what extent does this linguistic distinction map onto a substantial distinction between two different entities (types of self)? On the face of it, it seems that there is an important difference between these two uses of self-referential words, which can be mapped onto the experience of being a self-as-subject and the experience of being a self-as-object (or, for example, the distinction between bodily ownership and thought authorship, as suggested by Liang, 2014 ). However, I will argue that there are reasons to believe that the phenomenal “I,” i.e., the experience of being a self-as-subject may be better conceptualized as a higher-order phenomenal “Me” – a higher-level self-as-object.

Psychiatric practice provides cases of people, typically suffering from schizophrenia, who describe experiences of dispossession of thoughts, known as delusions of thought insertion ( Young, 2008 ; Bortolotti and Broome, 2009 ; Martin and Pacherie, 2013 ). According to the standard account, the phenomenon of thought insertion does not represent a disruption of sense of ownership over one’s thoughts, but only loss of sense of agency over them. However, the standard account has been criticized in recent years by theorists arguing that thought insertion indeed represents loss of sense of ownership ( Metzinger, 2003 ; Billon, 2013 ; Guillot, 2017 ; López-Silva, 2017 ). One of the main arguments against the standard view is that it runs into serious problems when attempting to explain obsessive intrusive thoughts in clinical population and spontaneous thoughts in healthy people. In both cases, subjects report lack of agency over thoughts, although they never claim lack of ownership over them, i.e., that these are not their thoughts. However, if the standard account is correct, obsessive thoughts should be experienced as belonging to someone else. The fact that they are not suggests that something else must be disrupted in delusions of thought insertion, i.e., sense of ownership 5 over them. If one can lose sense of ownership over one’s thoughts then it has important implications, because then one becomes capable of experiencing one’s thoughts “as someone else’s,” or at least “as not-mine.” However, when I experience my thoughts as not-mine I do it because I’ve taken a stance towards my thoughts, which treats them as an object of deliberation. In other words, I must have “objectified” them to experience that they have a quality of “feeling as if they are not mine.” Consequently, if I experience them as objects of experience, then they cannot form part of my self as subject of experience, because these two categories are mutually exclusive. Therefore, what seemed to constitute a phenomenal “I” turns out to be a part of thephenomenal “Me.”

If my thoughts do not constitute the “I” then how do they fit into the structure of “Me”? Previously, I asserted that thoughts with self-related content constitute “Me,” while thoughts with non-self related content do not. However, just now I argued in favor of the claim that all thoughts (including the ones with non-self-related content) that are experienced as “mine” belong to “Me.” How can one resolve this contradiction?

A way to address this reservation can be found in Metzinger’s (2003 ; 2010 ) self-model theory. Metzinger (2003 , 2010 ) argues that the experience of the self can be understood as underpinned by representational self-models. These self-models, however, are embedded in the hierarchical representational structure, as illustrated by an account of ego dissolution by Letheby and Gerrans (2017) :

Savage suggests that on LSD “[changes] in body ego feeling usually precede changes in mental ego feeling and sometimes are the only changes” (1955, 11), (…) This common temporal sequence, from blurring of body boundaries and loss of sense of ownership for body parts through to later loss of sense of ownership for thoughts, speaks further to the hierarchical architecture of the self-model. ( Letheby and Gerrans, 2017 , p. 8)

If self-models underlying the experience of self-as-object (“Me”) are hierarchical, then the apparent contradiction may be easily explained by the fact that when speaking about the content of thoughts and the thoughts themselves we are addressing self-models at two distinct levels. At the lower level we can distinguish between thoughts with self-related content and other-related content, while on the higher level we can distinguish between thoughts that feel “mine” as opposed to thoughts that are not experienced as “mine.” As a result, this thinking phenomenal “I” experienced in feeling of ownership over one’s thoughts may be conceived as just a higher-order level of Jamesian “Me.” As such, one may claim that there is no such thing as a phenomenal “I,” just multilevel phenomenal “Me.” However, an objection can be raised here. One may claim that even though a person with schizophrenic delusions experiences her thoughts as someone else’s (a demon’s or some malicious puppet master’s), she can still claim that:

Yes, “I” experience my thoughts as not mine, but as demon’s.” My thoughts feel as “not-mine,” however, it’s still me (or: “I”) who thinks of them as “not-mine.”

As such, one escapes “objectification” of “I” into “Me” by postulating a higher-level phenomenal-“I.” However, let us keep in mind that the thought written above constitutes a valid thought by itself. As such, this thought is vulnerable to the theoretical possibility that it turns into a delusion itself, once a psychotic person forms a meta-delusion (delusion about delusion). In this case, one may begin to experience that: “I” (I 1 ) experience that the “fake I” (I 2 ), who is a nasty pink demon, experiences my thoughts as not mine but as someone else’s (e.g., as nasty green demon’s). In this case, I may claim that the real phenomenal “I” is I 1 , since it is at the top of the hierarchy. However, one may repeat the operation of forming meta-delusions ad infinitum (as may happen in psychosis or drug-induced psychedelic states) effectively transforming each phenomenal “I” into another “fake-I” (and consequently making it a part of “Me”).

The possibility of meta-delusions illustrates that the phenomenal “I” understood as subjective thoughts is permanently vulnerable to the threat of losing the apparent subjective character and becoming an object of experience. As such it seems to be a poor choice for the locus of subjectivity, since it needs to be constantly “on the run” from becoming treated as an object of experience, not only in people with psychosis, but also in all psychologically healthy individuals if they decide to reflect on their thoughts. Therefore, it seems more likely that the thoughts themselves cannot constitute the subject of experience. However, even in case of meta-delusions there seems to be a stable deeper-level subjectivity, let us call it the deep “I,” which is preserved, at least until one loses consciousness. After all, a person who experiences meta-delusions would be constantly (painfully) aware of the process, and often would even report it afterwards. This deep “I” cannot be a special form of content in the stream of consciousness, because otherwise it would be vulnerable to becoming a part of “Me.” Therefore, it must be something different.

There seem to be two places where one can look for this deep “I”: in the domain of phenomenology or metaphysics. The first approach has been taken by ( Zahavi and Kriegel, 2016 ) who argue that “all conscious states’ phenomenal character involves for-me-ness as an experiential constituent.” It means that even if we rule out everything else (e.g., bodily experiences, conscious thoughts), we are still left with some form of irreducible phenomenal self-experience. This for-me-ness is not a specific content of consciousness, but rather “refers to the distinct manner, or how , of experiencing” ( Zahavi, 2014 ).

This approach, however, may seem inflationary and not satisfying (e.g., Dainton, 2016 ). One reason for this is that it introduces an additional phenomenal dimension, which may lead to uncomfortable consequences. For example, a question arises whether for-me-ness can ever be lost or replaced with the “ how of experiencing” of another person. For example, can I experience my sister’s for-me-ness in my stream of consciousness? If yes, then how is for-me-ness different from any other content of consciousness? And if the answer is no, then how is it possible to distil the phenomenology of for-me-ness from the metaphysical fact that a given stream of consciousness is always experienced by this and not other subject?

An alternative approach to the problem of the deep “I” is to reject that the subject of experience, the “I,” is present in phenomenology (like Hume, 1739/2000 ; Prinz, 2012 ; Dainton, 2016 ), and look for it somewhere else, in the domain of metaphysics. Although James (1890) did not explicitly formulate the distinction between “Me” and “I” as the distinction between the phenomenal and the metaphysical self, he hinted at it at several points, for example when he concluded the Chapter on the self with the following fragment: “(...) a postulate, an assertion that there must be a knower correlative to all this known ; and the problem who that knower is would have become a metaphysical problem” ( James, 1890 , p. 401).

“I” As A Subject Of Experience: Metaphysics Of Subjectivity

Thoughts which we actually know to exist do not fly about loose, but seem each to belong to some one thinker and not to another ( James, 1890 , pp. 330–331).

Let us assume that phenomenal consciousness exists in nature, and that it is a part of the reality we live in. The problem of “I” emerges once we realize that one of the fundamental characteristics of phenomenal consciousness is that it is always subjective, that there always seems to be some subject of experience. It seems mistaken to conceive of consciousness which do “fly about loose,” devoid of subjective character, devoid of being someone’s or something’s consciousness. Moreover, it seems that subjectivity may be one of the fundamental inherent properties of conscious experience (similar notions can be found in: Berkeley, 1713/2012 ; Strawson, 2003 ; Searle, 2005 ; Dainton, 2016 ). It seems highly unlikely, if not self-contradictory, that there exists something like an objective conscious experience of “what it is like to be a bat” ( Nagel, 1974 ), which is not subjective in any way. This leads to the metaphysical problem of the self: why is all conscious experience subjective, and what or who is the subject of this experience? Let us call it the problem of the metaphysical “I,” as contrasted with the problem of the phenomenal “I” (i.e., is there a distinctive experience of being a self as a subject of experience, and if so, then what is this experience?), which we discussed so far.

The existence of the metaphysical “I” does not entail the existence of the phenomenal self. It is possible to imagine a creature that possesses a metaphysical “I,” but does not possess any sense of self. In such a case, the creature would possess consciousness, although it would not experience anything as “me,” nor entertain any thoughts/feelings, etc., as “I.” In other words, it is a possibility that one may not experience self-related content of consciousness, while being a sentient being. One example of such situation may be the experience of a dreamless sleep, which “is characterized by a dissolution of subject-object duality, or (…) by a breakdown of even the most basic form of the self-other distinction” ( Windt, 2015 ). This is a situation which can be regarded as an instance of the state of minimal phenomenal experience – the simplest form of conscious experience possible ( Windt, 2015 ; Metzinger, 2018 ), in which there is no place for even the most rudimentary form of “Me.” Another example may be the phenomenology of systems with grid-like architectures which, according to the integrated information theory (IIT, Tononi et al., 2016 ), possess conscious experience 6 . If IIT is correct, then these systems experience some form of conscious states, which most likely lack any phenomenal distinction between “Me” and “not-Me.” However, because they may possess a stream of conscious experience, and conscious experience is necessarily subjective, there remains a valid question: who or what is the subject of that experience?

The question of what exactly is the metaphysical subject of experience can have different answers. There has been a long history of theories of the self ( Barresi and Martin, 2011 ) and some of them directly address this issue. Platonic or Cartesian notions of the soul are good examples of an approach providing one answer to this question: conscious experience is subjective, because there exists a non-material being (self, soul) which is the subject of this experience (see Table 3 ). Other solutions tend to either define the self in less metaphysically expensive ways ( Johnston, 1987 ; Strawson, 2000 ; Dainton, 2008 ), define it as a formal feature of consciousness ( Searle, 2005 ), or deny the need to postulate its existence ( Metzinger, 2003 ). What is crucial here, however, is that the problem of the metaphysical self is a different issue and requires a different methodology, than the problem of the phenomenal self.

TABLE 3. Examples of theories of the self-as-subject (“I”) in the context of consciousness, as theories of the metaphysical self, with representative quotes illustrating each position.

What sort of methodology, then, is appropriate for investigating the metaphysical self? It seems that the most relevant methods come from the toolbox of metaphysics. This toolbox includes classical philosophical methods such as thought experiments and logical analysis. However, methodology of metaphysics is an area of open discussion, and at present there are no signs of general consensus. One of the most debated issues in this field, which is especially relevant here, is to what extent the methodology of metaphysics is continuous with the methodology of natural sciences (see Tahko, 2015 , Chapter 9 for an overview). The positions span the spectrum between the claim that science and metaphysics are fully autonomous on the one side and the claim that metaphysics can be fully naturalized on the other. Discussing this issue goes way beyond the scope of this paper. However, if these two areas are at least to some extent related (i.e., not fully autonomous), then one may argue that scientific methods can be at least of some relevance in metaphysics and consequently for investigations of the metaphysical “I.”

One example in which empirical results seem to be able to influence theoretical investigations of the metaphysical self is through imposing constraints on philosophical theories. For example, because the metaphysical self is inherently related to consciousness, we should expect that different theories of consciousness should place different constraints on what a metaphysical self can be. Then, if one theory of consciousness acquires stronger empirical support than the others, we can also treat this as evidence for the constraints on the self that this theory implies.

Let us look at an example of IIT to illustrate this point. According to IIT ( Oizumi et al., 2014 ; Tononi et al., 2016 ) the content of conscious experience is defined by the so-called informational “complex” which is characterized by maximally integrated information (which can be measured by calculating the value of Φ max ). This complex then defines the stream of conscious experience. However, what happens if there is more than one such complex in one person? In this case, as Tononi et al. (2016) wrote:

According to IIT, two or more non-overlapping complexes may coexist as discrete physical substrates of consciousness (PSCs) within a single brain, each with its own definite borders and value of Φ max . The complex that specifies a person’s day to day stream of consciousness should have the highest value of Φ max – that is, it should be the “major” complex. In some conditions, for example, after a split-brain operation, the major complex may split. In such instances, one consciousness, supported by a complex in the dominant hemisphere and with privileged access to Broca’s area, would be able to speak about the experience, but would remain unaware of the presence of another consciousness, supported by a complex in the other hemisphere, which can be revealed by carefully designed experiments. ( Tononi et al., 2016 , p. 455)

This fragment suggests that in IIT the metaphysical “I” can be understood as tied to a complex of maximally integrated information. In this case, a split-brain patient would possess two metaphysical selves, because as a consequence of an operation her or his brain hosts two such complexes. On the face of it, it seems to be a plausible situation ( cf. Bayne, 2010 ). However, in the sentence which immediately follows, Tononi et al. (2016) suggest that:

An intriguing possibility is that splitting of the PSC may also occur in healthy people during long-lasting dual-task conditions – for example, when driving in an auto-pilot like manner on a familiar road while listening to an engaging conversation ( Tononi et al., 2016 , p. 455)

The implications of this possibility are much more severe, because it postulates that in a matter of minutes or seconds a complex can dynamically divide into several complexes, and individual complexes can merge into one major complex. How do the complexes understood in this way then relate to the metaphysical “I”? Unfortunately, IIT is silent about this issue, but there seem to be at least two responses to this question. First, one may argue that the self does not need to be limited to one complex, but that the same metaphysical “I” can be present in all of the simultaneous streams of consciousness (complexes). However, this solution is at odds with both common-sense intuition and IIT itself. It would presuppose not only an extremely disunified view of consciousness, but even lead to self-contradictory consequences. The metaphysical “I” can be thought of as the metaphysical fact that any given stream of consciousness is subjectively experienced by some “self” (regardless of what that self might be). However, in a disunified view of an organism’s consciousness this metaphysical “I” would at the same time a) be the subject of experience of all of the complexes within this organism, and b) be the subject of experience of only one of these complexes while being blind to the others (as claimed by IIT: two complexes are not “co-conscious” with each other). It presents a contradiction and strongly suggests that the metaphysical “I” cannot be underpinned by multiple independent complexes. It leaves us with the second option, which is to bite the bullet and accept that IIT implies that the metaphysical “I” persists either as long as a given complex, or for an even shorter period of time, for example for just up to a few seconds, as suggested by Strawson (2000 , 2010 ). It means that if IIT (and the analysis outlined above) is correct then the metaphysical “I” turns out to be radically different from our intuitive understanding of subject-of-experience as persisting continuously life-long stream of consciousness. However, if empirical evidence in support of the current version of IIT becomes strong enough, it may suggest that our common-sense intuitions about self-as-subject may be mistaken. On the other hand, different theories of phenomenal consciousness (and even different versions of IIT) may imply different constraints on the metaphysical “I,” and the extent to which they are supported by empirical evidence may suggest a way to say something about what the subject of conscious experience is.

Overall, assuming that metaphysics is not fully independent from science, the relevant methodology for investigating the metaphysical “I” is a combination of toolboxes of metaphysics and empirical science. This contrasts with the phenomenal “Me,” where the relevant toolkit includes methods from phenomenology and science. The second point, which has been illustrated with an example of IIT, is that it is important to explicitly spell out the implications of different theories of consciousness in regard to what is the subject of conscious experience, as it may provide the best way forward towards solving this issue.

Understanding Predictive Coding Theories Of The Self

Recently, there has been a huge number of attempts to explain the self through the framework of predictive coding (PC) and the free energy principle (FEP). In this final section of the paper, I will use PC theories of the self as a working example demonstrating practical consequences of implementing the Jamesian distinction between “Me” and “I.” I will suggest that PC theories of the self target different dimensions of self-as-object, understood as a hierarchical structure of self-models ( Metzinger, 2003 , 2010 ), and as such provide a valuable framework to understand the self. However, I will also explain why PC and the FEP do not allow us to say much about self-as-subject (the metaphysical “I”).

According to PC, the brain can be understood as an inference machine which hosts and continuously updates a probabilistic model of the world, which it uses to infer hidden causes behind the sensory data (for a more detailed introduction see: Friston et al., 2006 ; Friston, 2009 , 2010 ; Friston and Kiebel, 2009 ; Hohwy, 2013 ; Clark, 2016 ). It accomplishes this by continuously issuing predictions and comparing them with sensory data, with the discrepancy between predictions and data being propagated further up the hierarchy as prediction errors. As such, PC postulates that the brain can be seen as a hierarchical structure of generative models (which are responsible for issuing predictions). Prediction errors which arise at lower levels serve as data to be compared with predictions at the higher levels. This view of the mind inverts the classical feedforward view in which perception is a predominantly bottom-up process. In PC, instead, perception is mostly driven by top-down predictions, with bottom-up prediction errors serving the function of feedback helping to choose model with the most explanatory power. Moreover, in an extension of PC, which is known as active inference, action is also understood as a way of maximizing the fit of one’s internal models to reality. The main idea behind active inference is that rather than changing the model in order to better fit the data, one can act on the world and change it according to predictions issued by the currently dominating model. As a consequence, the whole perception-action cycle can be understood as driven by one overarching goal, i.e., long-term minimization of prediction errors.

The FEP is a further generalization of PC. It postulates that all living organisms operate under the principle to minimize the so-called “variational free energy,” which is an information theoretical measure which roughly can be understood as a measure of uncertainty ( Friston et al., 2006 ; Friston, 2009 ). One of the main claims of this theory is that organisms which act according to FEP (i.e., they act in a way to minimize free energy in the long term) will, in effect, implicitly approximate Bayesian inference. It means that they will combine their prior knowledge (represented by their model of the world) with the incoming sensory input in a mathematically optimal way.

Both PC and the FEP have recently gained huge popularity and motivated a number of theories attempting to explain various aspects of cognition within this framework. It includes numerous attempts to understand different facets of the self, such as sense of bodily ownership ( Apps and Tsakiris, 2014 ), sense of self in agency and perception ( Hohwy, 2007 ), the influence of interoception on self-consciousness ( Seth et al., 2011 ; Seth, 2013 ), social aspects of the self ( Moutoussis et al., 2014 ; Friston and Frith, 2015 ), the relationship with minimal phenomenal selfhood ( Limanowski and Blankenburg, 2013 ), and even psychodynamical interpretations of the self ( Carhart-Harris and Friston, 2010 ; Fotopoulou, 2012 ). The most comprehensive treatment of the self from the PC perspective ( Hohwy and Michael, 2017 ) also exemplifies most of the crucial points made by other PC theories of the self. At the beginning of their paper Hohwy and Michael (2017) describe the self in the following words:

We use a general computational framework for brain function to develop a theory of the self. The theory is that the self is an inferred model of endogenous, deeply hidden causes of behavior. (…) we discuss why such a set of hidden endogenous causes should qualify as a self. ( Hohwy and Michael, 2017 , p. 363)

The self, as seen from this perspective, is essentially a hierarchical model of endogenous hidden causes of sensory input. Or, in more classical terms, it can be said that it is a hierarchical representational structure ( cf. Clark, 2016 ; Williams, 2017 ) which allows one to distinguish between endogenous causes (what is caused by me) and exogenous causes (what is caused by something else). This distinction can be illustrated with an example of a comparison between seeing a movement of my virtual hand and of a virtual hand of someone else. If adequately prepared, in both cases the image of a hand and its movement may be identical. However, in one case I can realize that the movement of the hand is congruent with my intentions (manifested through my actions performed using a computer controller) and, as a consequence, infer that the cause of the hand’s movement is me. On the other hand, I may fail to notice any congruence between my intentions and the movement and hence infer that the hidden cause behind the movement I observe is some other person. According to Hohwy and Michael (2017) , the self is just a set of such hidden endogenous causes. Although not necessarily in full agreement with this picture in regard to the details, all other PC theories of the self listed above also speak about the self as underpinned by hierarchy of generative models, which are preoccupied with conducting probabilistic inference aimed to infer hidden causes of observed data patterns. This inference is then postulated to underlie specific types of conscious self-experience, i.e., different facets of the sense of self.

As such, one common theme among all PC theories of the self is the following: aspects of conscious experience of the self are underpinned by a representational structure in the form of hierarchical generative models. In its core, it is the same idea as the one introduced earlier by Metzinger (2003 , 2010 ), i.e., that our phenomenal experience of the self is underpinned by a representational structure of unconscious self-models (see also: Crane, 2003 ; Chalmers, 2004 , for a discussion about the relationship between representational and conscious content). Once an unconscious self-model enters conscious awareness, it generates a corresponding self-related conscious content (see: Metzinger, 2006 , 2014 , for an explicit distinction between the levels of representations and conscious content in regard to the bodily self). The same mechanism is at work in PC theories – the dynamic process of model selection leads to suppression of some models but allows other models to enter awareness in the form of conscious content. This mechanism allows PC to explain self-related content of consciousness, which is essentially nothing else than the James’ (1890) self-as-object of experience. This is how PC and the FEP help to understand the phenomenal “Me” – by describing the structure and dynamics of the underlying representational architecture.

To what extent PC and FEP can provide us with any help when confronted with the task to explain the metaphysical “I”? Here, I will argue that in contrast to the phenomenal “Me,” the issues pertaining to the metaphysical “I” are outside of its reach. The reason for this is a consequence of the fact that PC is in principle agnostic in regard to the issue of what brings representational content into the scope of conscious experience. In general, this can be regarded as an advantage, because this way PC accounts of self-experience can avoid the burden of being hostage to any specific theory of consciousness, and stay in principle compatible with most of them (e.g., see Hohwy, 2013 , Chapter 10 for an attempt to combine PC with ideas from Global Neuronal Workspace theory: Dehaene and Changeux, 2011 ; Dehaene, 2014 ). However, it also makes PC fundamentally underspecified when treated as a theory which is used to explain issues related to consciousness. While, as suggested before, PC is a valuable framework to describe the representational structure underlying conscious content, it runs into problems when used to explain why certain content is conscious in the first place. One way in which PC and FEP can attempt to retain relevance is by aiming to explain access consciousness ( Block, 1995 ) – a functional mechanism which allows that “some of the attended information eventually enters our awareness and becomes reportable to others” ( Dehaene, 2014 ). However, the problem of the metaphysical “I” becomes a relevant issue only when approached in the context of phenomenal consciousness – the type of consciousness which is loaded with the burden of the so-called “hard problem” ( Chalmers, 1996 ).

This is where PS and FEP encounter a dead end, as the problem enters the area which belongs more to metaphysics than empirical science (at least in the light of the current state of affairs). In order to provide an account of the metaphysical self, one needs to begin with at least some form of a theory of phenomenal consciousness and its place in physical reality. At present FEP (and PC) does not provide such a theory. Recently, Friston (2018) suggested that FEP can be used to understand consciousness, although the fact that he discusses consciousness in functionalist terms (consciousness is related to counterfactual inference 7 ) suggests that his proposal aims to explain access consciousness, making it irrelevant for the problem of metaphysical “I.”

To summarize, the fact that PC and the FEP are not theories of phenomenal consciousness, and seem not to impose any constraints on these theories, has important consequences for what type of self they can explain. As I argued, they have the potential to substantially contribute to the issue of different levels of the phenomenal “Me” (self-as-object) by describing the structure and dynamics of the level of representational content, which are reflected at the level of conscious experience. However, they are not suited to explain the metaphysical “I” (self-as-subject) because they do not address the issue of the place of consciousness in nature. Hence, the main claim is that while PC can be seen as a useful framework to investigate phenomenology of “Me,” it is in principle unsuitable to provide answers to questions about the metaphysics of “I.”

I placed the debate of the self in the domain of consciousness (as opposed to the self understood as e.g., a representational structure, a physical object, or a spiritual entity) and argued that (1) conceptually, the distinction between “Me” and “I” may reflect the distinction between theoretical problems of the phenomenal self and the metaphysical self, respectively (although the notion of for-me-ness may complicate this picture), and (2) that what is described in the literature as the phenomenal “I” can be regarded as just a higher-level part of the phenomenal “Me” [which can be understood as Metzinger’s (2018) phenomenal self-model].

The first claim draws attention to the distinction between “I” and “Me,” which suggests that these two theoretical issues should be investigated independently, using two different methodologies. While “Me” can be investigated using phenomenology and scientific methodology, “I” is typically a metaphysical problem (perhaps with the exception of non-deflationary understandings of for-me-ness) and it is arguable to what extent it can be approached using standard scientific methods. Therefore, it is important to clearly state which problem one approaches when discussing the self in the context of consciousness (see Tables 2 , 3 for some examples).

The second claim, the postulate to treat what is usually described as phenomenal “I” as just a part of the phenomenal “Me,” has two implications. The first is constructive. Investigating issues which are typically regarded in cognitive science as “I” from the perspective of “Me” may contribute towards better understanding of self-consciousness by emphasizing that these two research areas may have much more in common than it appears. Rather than using two distinct terms, which suggest that we are dealing with two fundamentally different problems, we may approach them as just two facets of the same multidimensional research problem. One such approach is to treat both of them as just different levels in the hierarchical structure of the phenomenal self-model ( Metzinger, 2003 , 2009 , 2010 ), an approach which can be (and implicitly is) shared by recent theories of the self, especially within the framework of PC.

The second implication is pragmatic. Refraining from using the term “I” when speaking in the context of phenomenology and using it only in the metaphysical context may reduce conceptual confusion in regard to this term. However, it will also mean forfeiting an important distinction (“Me” versus “I”) which has already gained traction in cognitive science. As such, the choice to eliminate the term “I” in the context of phenomenology is a repelling option, but may be beneficial in the long term. Alternatively, one may use more specific terms, such as “sense of ownership over an experience” to reflect what is meant by “I” in the Wittgensteinian tradition, or, e.g., “sense of ownership of interoceptive signals” when discussing the role of interoception. A second option may be to recast the distinction used in cognitive science in different terms. One proposal is to explicitly speak about it as the distinction between the experience/sense of “Me” versus the experience/sense of “I” (rather than just “Me” and “I”). The task here would be, however, to prove that there is a qualitative difference between them, and to demarcate the exact border.

Author Contributions

The article has been solely the work of MW.

This article was supported by the Australian Research Council Grant No. DP160102770.

Conflict of Interest Statement

The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Jakob Hohwy, Tim Bayne, Jennifer Windt, Monima Chadha, and the members of Cognition and Philosophy Lab at Monash University (especially Julian Matthews) for discussions about the issues described in the paper. The author also wants to thank the reviewers and the editor for helpful comments on how to improve the manuscript.

^ Therefore, whenever I use the term “I” I mean self-as-subject (of experience), and whenever I use the term “Me” I mean self-as-object (of experience). This assumption reflects James’ (1890) understanding of these terms (see Table 1 ). I also assume, following James (1890) , that these two categories are mutually exclusive, i.e., if something is an object of experience then it cannot simultaneously be a subject of experience, and vice versa.
^ Wittgenstein (1958) himself did not discuss the issue of phenomenology of the self. However, his approach to the distinction between the use of “I” as subject and “I” as object can be seen as a starting point for contemporary discussions of phenomenology of the self-as-subject.
^ Whenever I use the prefix “phenomenal” I mean “the conscious experience of.” For example, when I write phenomenal “I”, I mean: the conscious experience of self as subject of experience (“I”). In a similar fashion I use the prefix “metaphysical” when I mean “the metaphysical entity of.”
^ Chalmers (1996) also lists “sense of self,” although it is highly controversial whether it can be treated as a distinctive type of conscious content.
^ Sometimes referred to as sense of authorship.
^ “IIT allows for certain simple systems such as grid-like architectures, similar to topographically organized areas in the human posterior cortex, to be highly conscious even when not engaging in any intelligent behavior” ( Tononi et al., 2016 , p. 460).
^ For example, he writes: “So where does consciousness emerge? The proposal offered here is that conscious processing has a temporal thickness or depth, which underwrites inferences about the consequences of action. This necessarily lends inference a purposeful and self-evidencing aspect that has the hallmarks of consciousness” ( Friston, 2018 , p. 1).

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Keywords : self, consciousness, self-consciousness, sense of self, self-as-subject, self-as-object, predictive coding, IIT

Citation: Woźniak M (2018) “I” and “Me”: The Self in the Context of Consciousness. Front. Psychol. 9:1656. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01656

Received: 20 March 2018; Accepted: 17 August 2018; Published: 04 September 2018.

Reviewed by:

Copyright © 2018 Woźniak. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Mateusz Woźniak, [email protected] ; [email protected]

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Know Yourself? 6 Specific Ways to Know Who You Are

6 "vital signs" are key to self-understanding, career success, and happiness..

Posted March 9, 2016 | Reviewed by Lybi Ma

Learning about the aspects of one's identity can lead to greater happiness, less inner conflict, and the ability to say "no."
Six key elements of self-knowledge are found in the acronym VITALS: Values, Interests, Temperament, Activities, Life Mission, and Strengths.
While knowing one's "VITALS" can help a person feel freer and stronger, people constantly change and society often conflicts with one's values.

"To know thyself is the beginning of wisdom ." This famous quote is often attributed to Socrates. But what exactly do you know when you “know yourself?”

This post will reveal six elements of self-knowledge that can help you understand your own identity . As you live your daily life, you can look for clues to these important building blocks of the self.

But first, why is it important to know yourself?

The Benefits of Self-Knowledge

Maybe it’s obvious, but here, in a nutshell, are a few reasons why you might want to know your own nature:

Happiness . You will be happier when you can express who you are. Expressing your desires will make it more likely that you get what you want.
Less inner conflict . When your outside actions are in accordance with your inside feelings and values, you will experience less inner conflict.
Better decision-making . When you know yourself, you are able to make better choices about everything, from small decisions like which sweater you’ll buy to big decisions like which partner you’ll spend your life with. You'll have guidelines you can apply to solve life’s varied problems.
Self-control . When you know yourself, you understand what motivates you to resist bad habits and develop good ones. You'll have the insight to know which values and goals activate your willpower.
Resistance to social pressure. When you are grounded in your values and preferences, you are less likely to say “yes” when you want to say “no.”
Tolerance and understanding of others. Your awareness of your own foibles and struggles can help you empathize with others.
Vitality and pleasure . Being who you truly are helps you feel more alive and makes your experience of life richer, larger, and more exciting.

Now that you are convinced that self-knowledge is worth having (not that you needed convincing!), we’ll move on to those "VITAL Signs" of self-knowledge.

The Building Blocks of Self: Your VITALS

The capital letters in “VITAL Signs” form an acronym for the six building blocks of the self, or VITALS, for short. The letters stand for Values, Interests, Temperament, Around-the-Clock, Life Mission and Goals, and Strengths/Skills.

“Values"—such as “helping others,” “being creative,” “health,” “financial security,” and so on—are guides to decision-making and motivators for goals. Research shows that just thinking or writing about your values can make it more likely that you take healthy actions. The motivation provided by worthwhile values can also keep you going even when you are tired, as shown in many psychology experiments. If you want to self-motivate, know your values! (For the research, click here .)

I = Interests

“Interests” include your passions, hobbies, and anything that draws your attention over a sustained period of time. To figure out your interests, ask yourself these questions: What do you pay attention to? What are you curious about? What concerns you? The focused mental state of being interested in something makes life vivid and may give you clues to your deepest passions.

Many people have built a career around a deep interest in something. For example, a friend of mine broke his leg when he was 11 years old and was so fascinated by the emergency room that he decided to become an emergency physician.

T = Temperament

“Temperament” describes your inborn preferences. Do you restore your energy from being alone ( introvert ) or from being with people ( extrovert )? Are you a planner or go-with-the-flow type of person? Do you make decisions more on the basis of feelings or thoughts and facts? Do you prefer details or big Ideas? Knowing the answers to temperament questions like these could help you gravitate toward situations in which you could flourish and avoid situations in which you could wilt.

In the 60s, spontaneity was valued over planning. I tried hard to go with the flow, but it seemed to me that I wasted a lot of time that way. Going against the grain of my own personality turned out to be a daunting task that wasn’t really worth it.

A = Around-the-Clock Activities

The “around-the-clock” category refers to when you like to do things—your biorhythms . Are you a morning person or a night person, for example? At what time of day does your energy peak? If you schedule activities when you are at your best, you are respecting your innate biology. As I look back on my life, I realize I’ve been a morning person since birth. Those fun sleepovers with girlfriends? I loved being included, but I didn’t like staying up late.

One joy of my adult life has been finding a partner with biorhythms like mine. We wake up early and go to bed early; we both get snappy unless we eat three square meals a day. We hate brunch. While the idea of biorhythm preferences may sound trivial compared to lofty qualities of the self like “values,” your daily life is more pleasant when you are in sync with your biology. In every area, it’s easier to enjoy life when you don’t waste energy pretending to be someone you aren’t.

L = Life Mission and Meaningful Goals

“What have been the most meaningful events of your life?” This was a question I liked to ask when students would see me for career counseling at the community college where I worked. One woman of about 40 years old got teary-eyed as she tried to answer. “Recently,” she told me, “I found it incredibly meaningful to care for my aging father as he declined and went into hospice. I was able to be there and hold his hand when he died.” As we talked about the difficulties and rewards of her father’s last days, she had an “aha” moment and realized she wanted to become a hospice nurse. (She accomplished her goal and was one of the leaders of her class.)

Ask yourself the same question: “What have been the most meaningful events of your life?” You may discover clues to your hidden identity, to your career, and to life satisfaction.

S = Strengths

"Strengths" can include not only abilities, skills, and talents, but also character strengths such as loyalty, respect for others, love of learning, emotional intelligence , fairness, and more. Knowing your strengths is one of the foundations of self-confidence ; not being able to acknowledge your own superpowers could put you on the path to low self-esteem . Become a person who “takes in the good,” listening for compliments and noticing skills that could be clues to your strengths. Here's an example: An acquaintance tells you that she loves the soothing sound of your voice. What could you do with that knowledge? Likewise, knowing your weaknesses can help you be honest with yourself and others about what you are not good at. You might decide either to work on those weaknesses or try to make them a smaller part of your personal or professional life.

Being True to You

Even if you know your "VITAL Signs," it’s hard to remain true to yourself because you are constantly changing and because society’s values often conflict with your own. I love this quote from fellow habits author Gretchen Rubin:

"My first commandment is to “Be Gretchen”—yet it’s very hard to know myself. I get so distracted by the way I wish I were, or the way I assume I am, that I lose sight of what’s actually true."

For all of us, being yourself sounds easier than it actually is. But there are a few signposts. When you’ve made a discovery about one of your "VITAL Signs," you’ll feel a sense of excitement. Acting on self-knowledge will give you energy and save you energy. You’ll feel freer and stronger because you no longer conform to how you “should” feel, think, or act. For example, I can remember my relief when I realized I was an introvert. How comforting it was to give myself the gift of time alone without wondering if I were a freak of nature!

This week, pay attention to these six aspects of your personality. What do you notice?

To clarify your values, take a look at my chapter on "The 8 Great Motivators:" Selig, M. Changepower! 37 Secrets to Habit Change Success (Routledge, 2009).

Rubin, G. Better Than Before (Crown, 2015)

Meg Selig is the author of Changepower! 37 Secrets to Habit Change Success .

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A Reflection About Myself and My Personality

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