Say good bye to the stranger in you

George Chingarande | Monday November 10, 2014 15:30

There are two mirrors that are important in this life. The first mirror is the one made of glass; the one that you silently consult when you put on your favorite outfit and want to convince yourself that you are immaculate. The second mirror is the mirror which no one but you will ever see. It is the mirror in your mind. How we use these mirrors has a very profound impact on our lives and what we become.

When we look at ourselves in the mirror what we see constitutes our self perception. Self perception simply put is how you view yourself. This seems very simple but it is deep.  Take a pause for a moment and try to answer this simple question. How do I see myself right now? It will surprise you that you are literally a stranger to yourself. How do you see your talents? How do you see yourself in the future? How do you see you?

Most of what we know about ourselves stems from the feedback we get from others. Your boss says that you are good at what you do, therefore you see yourself as good at what you do. The examiner fails you in the exam, and consequently you see yourself as incompetent in that department of your life. It is dangerous to imbibe other people’s opinions about you, and get drunk on them. You can easily fall into the trap of knowing other people’s opinions about you and not know your own opinion about you. What matters in life is not what other people say or think about you; but what you say and think about yourself. If your self-perception is wrong, you are likely to walk on the road to self-deception. Life is a journey of perpetual self discovery. To lead a meaningful life you must continuously surprise yourself. The magic of life is that you will never be able to discover the end of your potential, but every day you can discover something new about you.  If you continuously stretch yourself and give better than your best shot every day, you will soon discover that you are a man or woman without limits. If you don’t stretch out and reach out for more, you will live and die a stranger to yourself.

Why do you do the things you do? You are a stranger to yourself, aren’t you? Our behaviors come from our inner most dispositions. We are persuaded and inclined to act in certain ways. However, our dispositions are themselves products of our behaviors. Suppose you come across a lost purse with money and you know the owner; you pick up the purse and return it with all its contents to its owner. You have behaved honestly, and you see yourself as an honest person. In future you are likely to behave in a similar way because you believe you are an honest person. Your behavior has created in you’re the self perception associated with honest.

The more you engage in honest acts the more you get that reinforcement. Sooner rather than later you actually become a consistently honest person. The truth is that you were not born an honest person but your actions created you. We are a product of our actions; and our actions are not really a product of who we are. This is very important and very profound. In every little sphere of your life you have been shaped by your actions. Actions are important because they reveal to us what we are capable of doing, and once we get that validation we are inclined to repeat it for as long as it makes us feel good. We become what we do, therefore we are what we do.

What is the major implication of all this? If actions created you, to create a new you; you need to engage in new actions. When you look at the man in the mirror and you wish to change him in order to change his circumstances and also change the world, you must realize that what you actually need to do is to change your actions. The next three years of your life can be very different and much better than the past three years; if only you can change your actions. Changing your actions will change your results; and changed results will create a new self image.

To what extent do you get along with the man in the mirror? If you do not get along well with the man in the mirror, you cannot get along with other people and you will always face rejection. If you cannot love and treat the man in the mirror well, you are unlikely to love and treat other people well. When you do not love the man in the mirror and do not treat him well, you become estranged to him. If we think negatively of ourselves and we treat ourselves negatively; we begin to seek external validation. Because you are treating yourself badly, you hanker for other people to treat you well. Because you think negatively of yourself, you thirst for positive validation from others.  Put differently, you begin to associate your value with what people tell you. In the process you become a stranger to yourself.

Stop being a stranger and an alien; and let the real you arise.