I have some questions I hope to get answered. Is it possible to hack yourself? Would you have to set up a LAN in order to "see" how your computer appears from the outside? The purpose would be to get some experience and to test my own security. Thank you in advance.

I have been searching for over an hour and cannot find any guides. Can you please post some links?

I would also tell you to look over at the videos and articles Chris Gates has done here. He has done a lot of Lab network hacking and his examples of MetaSpoilt are great. If you want to learn on how to make a hackers lab you might want to take the approach of just building a small LAN and them see what tools and tricks you can use to get into it. I find that to test a good tool you can normally just aim it at a PC on your own network too see how it works. If you decide to try things (hacking) outside your network make sure you understand what the tool dose and that you have full permission of the networks owners prior to playing with it outside of a lab.

Brian