Do you recall your favourite people and best experiences? A Self-Analysis exercise

Tomek Maciaszek | Inner Peace — Trauma Therapy | Gdynia & online

Understanding what has shaped you positively is as important as understanding what has hurt you. This guided exercise uses your best memories — the people and experiences that made you who you are — as a doorway into deeper self-knowledge.

Table of Contents

1. Why Start with the Positive?

2. The Problem with Self-Analysis

3. How Memory Shapes Identity

4. Exercise Part 1: People Who Have Influenced You

5. Exercise Part 2: Experiences That Have Shaped You

6. What to Do with What You Discover

7. FAQ

1. Why start with the positive? {#why-positive}

We are all drawn to self-improvement. Ways to understand ourselves more clearly. Tools that might explain why we behave as we do, why certain patterns keep appearing, why some relationships bring ease and others bring difficulty.

But most self-analysis frameworks begin with the problem. With the gap. With what needs to be fixed.

There is wisdom in beginning differently.

The positive aspects of our history are not merely pleasant memories. They are blueprints — records of the conditions in which we flourished, the people who helped us become more fully ourselves, the experiences that pointed toward our values before we had words for them.

Understanding what has influenced our growth and brought us genuine love and happiness gives us something essential: a foundation. Getting to know the positive aspects of our history refreshes our memory, introduces us to our unconscious patterns, and prepares us for the more challenging work that follows.

Knowing what has shaped us well gives us more support when we later turn toward what has shaped us painfully.

There is also a simpler, physiological reason to start here. Reminiscing about people we love and experiences we cherish has a direct effect on the nervous system. Your breath becomes calmer. Your heart rate stabilises. The body shifts — even slightly — toward a state of greater safety. And from that state, the capacity for genuine reflection expands.

2. The problem with self-analysis {#problem}

We are all interested in self-improvement. There is no shortage of programs, frameworks, or books for those who wish to study the complex nature of their own mind and emotions.

But one of the most consistent difficulties in self-analysis is the inability of an individual to look at themselves with sufficient honesty and accuracy. We often seek the remedy using the same faculties that created the problem. Our attitudes and basic concepts of life have somehow failed us — and then we try to analyse that failure using the very same lens.

Nearly always, a person is overruled by their complex personality when they attempt to reach a clear conclusion about themselves.

We suffer from the problems we have created or are avoiding. We never suffer from a problem we have genuinely solved. And in seeking solutions, we tend to turn to the opinions of others — yet we can often see that the person giving the opinion rarely lives by its rule themselves.

This is why self-analysis works best when it begins not with what is broken but with what is whole. Not with the opinion of an expert, but with the living texture of your own experience.

What follows is an invitation to that kind of exploration.

3. How memory shapes identity {#memory-identity}

We are, in large part, the accumulation of our experiences and relationships. Not in a deterministic sense — but in the sense that what we have lived through leaves its mark on the nervous system, on our sense of what is possible, on what we believe about the world and ourselves.

The positive experiences and relationships in your history are not neutral background. They are active participants in who you are now.

The person who taught you that it was safe to be vulnerable. The experience that first showed you what you were capable of. The relationship in which you were seen for who you actually were, not who you were expected to be. The moment that gave you a sense of genuine belonging.

These are not just fond memories. They are evidence — of what is possible for you, of what nourishes you, of what your nervous system recognises as home.

Recalling them deliberately is not nostalgia. It is research.

The broader our understanding of why we admire certain people and value certain experiences, the easier it becomes to understand the patterns they reveal — and to try to recreate those conditions in our lives today.

4. Exercise Part 1: People who have influenced you {#people}

Take your time with this. You may want to write your answers in a journal — writing slows down the process and makes the discoveries more concrete.

Begin by making a list. Name all the people whose memories bring a genuine smile to your face. These may be family members, friends, teachers, mentors, strangers, or public figures. Living or no longer alive. Relationships that lasted decades or encounters that lasted an hour.

Once you have your list, choose two or three names and explore each one with the following questions:

1. What is the reason you value this person? Try to be specific. Not "they were kind" but how were they kind? What did they actually do or say?

2. How did they make you feel? Again, be specific. Safe? Seen? Capable? Free? Proud? Loved?

3. Have you told them how they make you feel? If yes — what was that experience like? If no — what would you say if you could?

4. How influential was this person in your life? In what specific ways are you different because of having known them?

5. What does thinking about this person do in your body? Pause and notice. Is there warmth somewhere? Tightness? A shift in breathing? A smile that arises without effort?

6. Is there something unfinished in this relationship? Something you never said. Something that ended before you were ready. Something you wish had been different. Simply notice — without needing to resolve.

7. If you wanted to honour what this person gave you, what might that look like? This last question moves from reflection to intention — from understanding what shaped you to asking how you carry it forward.

5. Exercise part 2: Experiences that have shaped you {#experiences}

Now turn to experiences — moments, periods, or events rather than people. The same principle applies: focus on what brought genuine joy, growth, or a sense of being fully alive.

Make a list. Don't filter or edit. Include small moments alongside significant ones. A summer afternoon. A journey. A creative project. A conversation. A period of your life when things felt aligned.

Then choose two or three and explore them:

1. What made this experience special? What were the conditions that allowed it to be what it was? The people present, the setting, the timing, the state of mind you were in?

2. Have you tried to recreate it? If yes — what happened? Did it carry the same quality? What was different?

3. What does this experience say about what you need to flourish? This is the key analytical question. Behind every experience we cherish is a set of conditions — for connection, for safety, for freedom, for meaning. What conditions were present here?

4. Have you expressed your feelings about this experience with anyone? Shared experiences are often deepened by being named. Is there someone you could tell this story to?

5. What do you feel in your body when you revisit this memory? Notice. Describe the sensations as specifically as you can.

6. What aspect of this experience is most available to you right now? Not everything from the past can be recreated — but often something of its essence can be brought into the present. What is that, here?

6. What to do with what you discover {#what-to-do}

Whatever arises during this exercise is worth attention.

Maybe you found joy you hadn't touched in a long time. Maybe some of the people on your list are no longer alive, and the exercise brought grief alongside gratitude. Maybe you realised you've never told someone what they meant to you. Maybe you found yourself surprised by what appeared — by a memory you'd almost forgotten, or by the intensity of feeling that accompanied it.

All of this is information.

The exercise invites you to move this information from passive memory into active knowledge — to understand not just that certain people and experiences mattered, but why they mattered, and what that tells you about who you are and what you need.

This does not mean trying to live permanently in the past, or believing that what was good then is unreachable now. It means building an inventory — a set of reference points that you can return to when you need to remember what is true about you at your best.

Each piece of that inventory is something to carry forward. Not as nostalgia, but as evidence. As orientation.

Remember this inventory each time life gets a little harder.

7. FAQ {#faq}

What if few positive memories come to mind? This is worth noticing gently, without judgement. It may reflect genuine difficulty in one's history, or it may reflect how much attention has been directed toward painful experiences at the expense of positive ones. Start with very small things — a meal you enjoyed, a moment of physical ease, a time you laughed. The practice of noticing small positive experiences, over time, genuinely shifts how the nervous system stores and retrieves memory.

What if positive memories come with sadness? This is entirely normal and actually a sign that the memory matters. Grief often accompanies love — particularly for experiences that have ended or people we have lost. Allow both. They are not in contradiction.

Should I share what comes up with someone? You don't have to. But if there is someone trustworthy — a friend, a therapist, a partner — sharing discoveries from exercises like this often deepens and clarifies them. We understand ourselves partly through the reflections we see in others.

How does this connect to trauma work? Understanding what has shaped you positively is not separate from trauma work — it is its necessary companion. Trauma therapy often focuses extensively on what has been damaging. This exercise develops the counterweight: an equally clear understanding of what has been nourishing, and what that means for the kind of life you want to build.

Tomek Maciaszek — certified psychotraumatologist, CPT and PE specialist, Mindfulness practitioner. Gdynia & online.