1068 External Self-Awareness

Self-awareness is understanding you, and external self-awareness is understanding how other people think of you. One way to envision it is to think of one of those pictures of a famous person’s face that when you look closely, it’s actually made up of thousands of different little pictures of that person. The impression someone has of you is formed by which of the little pictures they’ve seen. Unfortunately, the pictures are only 2-dimensional, and they are a snapshot of the past. Also, because of the competitive & egocentric nature of people, others tend to see the least flattering pictures in your collage while you, with the same egotistical bias, see the most: no wonder that how you imagine yourself is not the same as everyone else, and self-awareness is knowing that. The question is, even if you’re externally self-aware enough to know what other people think of you, can you do anything about it? Even if you can, then you’re putting them in control your life.