I don’t know who I am anymore

In order to know who I am, I must also know who I am not. The point of departure in personal myth-making is the dawning realization that I am not what I was. I am not a child anymore. The adolescent takes leave of the frameworks and certainties of the past and searches for new answers to new questions in life. Certain authority figures are made into negative identities. At the time they are created, they personify what an individual doesn't want to become.  They are the first villains and fools in the adolescent's new story. While there are villains, there are also kings and queens.

In world mythologies, the young hero frequently receives critical help from Weis benefactors— sages, goddesses, and supernatural aides.  Without their help, the hero's journey is probably doomed. We should not be misled, therefore, into thinking that mythmaking is a solitary quest. There are indeed dangerous to face, and risks that we all must take, and take alone. But the adolescent’s search for identity is initiated and played out in a social context. We come to know who we are through relationships and in social settings. To depart from the past is not to Leave the world behind. It is rather to move from one world to another. 

Dan McAdams, The Stories We Live By

Choosing Your Plan

He who lets the world, or his own portion of it, choose his plan of life for him, has no need of any other faculty than the ape-like one of imitation. He who chooses his plan for himself, employs all his faculties. He must use observation to see, reasoning and judgment to foresee, activity to gather materials for decision, discrimination to decide, and when he has decided, firmness and self-control to hold to his deliberate decision.

John Stuart Mill, On Liberty