Self-Discovery: A Never-Ending Endeavor
Who knows you better than yourself? I bet you would argue that there isn’t a single person in this world who knows you more than you know yourself. If you said that to me, I would completely agree. However, I would be curious about how deeply you truly understand yourself.
It’s unfortunate that we seldom take the time to reflect and understand our thoughts. We usually default to absorbing them without delving into the reasons behind our actions.
To succeed in life, understanding oneself is crucial. Yet, interestingly, we evolve over time. This means there’s always something new to discover about ourselves as the days pass. While it’s natural for everyone to change, it’s essential to be conscious of the evolution we undergo.
This process of being aware of and understanding the evolution you experience is what we refer to as self-discovery. Your current behavior is shaped by past experiences, evidence you’ve gathered, and deeply held beliefs. All of these are influenced by your environment and the content you consume, whether it’s advice from family and friends, books, or online materials.
Given that behavior is dynamic, you’re likely to change in response to new environments, experiences, evidence, or beliefs. Consequently, you should be open to learning, unlearning, and relearning aspects of yourself. The subject of “you” is vital, and it’s something you should continuously explore throughout your life.
Self-awareness will distinguish you from your peers. Embark on this journey of self-discovery now and never tire of it. Ask yourself insightful questions and provide honest answers to continue uncovering your true self.
Moreover, once you grasp who you are, you can begin shaping who you genuinely want to be.
Dr. Ehoneah Obed (Pharmacist, Software Engineer, Health Informatician, Founder)
My work focuses on identity engineering, which is the deliberate process of designing and updating who you are, personally and professionally.
Most people experience identity as something fixed or accidental. It is shaped by parents, early success or failure, education, and society’s definition of what a “good life” looks like. They adapt to it rather than questioning it. What most people do not realize is that identity is not just something you discover. It is something you can actively engineer.
Personal identity engineering is about gaining control over how your beliefs, values, and self-concept are formed and reinforced.
Professional identity engineering is about translating that internal identity into skills, work, leverage, and visible contribution in the world.
When people feel stuck, it is rarely because they lack motivation or talent. It is because they are trying to change outcomes while leaving the underlying identity system untouched. Careers stall. Confidence collapses. Direction feels unclear. The system keeps producing the same results.
I learned this by rebuilding myself multiple times.
I trained as a pharmacist for six years. While working in hospitals, I began learning to code alongside my job. That led to building real software, selling products, transitioning into software engineering, completing a master’s degree in health informatics at the University of Toronto, and now building startups and systems full time. Each transition followed the same pattern. My identity did not change because I thought differently. It changed because I took specific actions that produced new evidence, and that evidence forced a new story about who I was capable of being.
That is the core mechanism behind identity engineering.
Identity updates when you intentionally generate evidence that contradicts your old self-image, then compound that evidence until the old identity can no longer run the system.
This blog is where I document that process. I write about how to design identity experiments that are small, controlled, and reversible. How to build proof-of-work that changes both how you see yourself and how the world responds to you. How to move forward without waiting for clarity, confidence, or permission.
This is not motivation and it is not coaching. It is systems thinking applied to human change.
I also write The Ledger, a weekly record of systems and experiments for building a life you own.
And I built the Identity Audit, a diagnostic tool that helps you understand your current identity state before you attempt to change it.
I am not presenting a finished theory. I am engineering this in real time, using my own life as the test environment. If you want more agency over who you are becoming, both personally and professionally, you are in the right place.
