Finding yourself.

People always ask me how is it that I can be so secure with myself.  How is it that I can act the same no matter who's around?  Why am I the way I am?  They ask this because they want to know themselves and they want to have that same self-awareness and self-knowledge that I have.  Some find this through therapy or graphology but for me, use the money you would spend on that stuff to travel abroad. 
         Once you leave your home country and you're in a foreign place, the only thing you have is time to reflect. Ideally, you want to do this without a close friend because when you're abroad, you're surrounded with people that you know you may never see again.  You also are not in the environment you grew up in.  I'm a firm believer of "You can take someone out of the city but you can never take the city out of the person" but when you're in a different environment amongst people you may never see again, there's no reason not to act yourself.  Nobody to impress, nobody to fit in with, no reason to go against your nature.  For me, it was sitting on the edge of a cliff by myself over the Aegean in Greece with the Mountains as background.  For others it may be the clean water of the Carribbean, or the pyramids of Egypt, but when you force yourself in solitude, all there is is time to self-reflect.  And then, you just might find who you are.