Imagine if you could see yourself from a third person point of view. Not another human being's point of view because inevitably another person will always view someone else with a certain degree or partiality regardless of whether it is positive or negative or something mixed all together. It is hard enough to think of ourselves impartially so why make an experiment harder by dealing with another's potential bias. This is not about how others see you, but how you see yourself compared to how you really appear to your harshest critic, yourself.
Imagine a simple exercise of going to the market and watching yourself as you walk to the market at the same time. Would you be inclined to walk taller, but then discover you seem to tense, so you try and loosen your self up only to now discover your posture is bad again and you appear to be slouching. Now you can constantly change how you walk, breathe, stand, speak, and just about every aspect of yourself but there is a problem.
The more you watch yourself, even if you take notes and try not to change how you communicate your body language, there is still something that is more dangerous than controlling your self like a marionette doll. Just the pure attention to yourself by yourself while you are trying to perform a simple task is suddenly dangerous because if you focus too much on yourself you inevitably will fail to notice what is going around you and that is an easy way to end up in the hospital.
Yet if we were to see ourselves through another's eyes we would lose control and feel deeply embarrassed by how silly we appear and fall victim to that person's preconceived and continually evolving opinion of us.
So imagine how you were when you were an insecure teenager and all the trials and tribulations that come with puberty and then take this into consideration. Watching yourself right now is worse than your worst mental image of yourself when you were a teenager. So much so if you were able to do this as a teenager it would be so traumatic you might end up in a hospital and facing a lifetime of psychiatric analysis like another monthly utility bill.
So let me state that as confident as you are, odds are you will discover a fault about yourself faster than anyone else. So now I offer you a counter proposal. What if you decide you don't want to see yourself as you are and change anything. You reject this opportunity regardless of the consequence. Now would that decision be another form of selfish behavior because you are now unwilling to see yourself as you are to make a change or is it a selfless act of wisdom?
(C) Copyright 2014 By Mark Rivera
All Rights Reserved.
