To Yourself

I saw a meme of Jennifer Coolidge looking fancy and someone captioned it, “me, checking myself out on the video call.”

Or something like that.

Sure.

We all glance at ourselves from time to time in the Brady Bunch Zoom collage.

But the art of self-evaluation is deeper. And vital.

How do you react to yourself?

We know it’s possible because we can make ourselves laugh.

Laughter, the whole vibe of it, is inherently spontaneous. But we can achieve it on our own with no one around.

Oh gosh, tripped over the cat

Everytime I see that it cracks me up

You know, last time I went there, I saw X looking Y

HA!

Hilarious.

But we can’t tickle ourselves and get a reaction. So, this is a cognitive discussion, not a physical one. Which is good news because the idea of self-reflection is itself meta-cognitive.

How do you react to yourself?

How you react to something you’ve said or done tells immensely important stories, rich with clues about your self-assessment, beliefs, values, and more.

To interrogate this could be life-changing.

Do you:

Unconditionally judge everything you do and say as good?

(They don’t get me, this is the wrong group, anyone else would’ve loved that, I didn’t do anything wrong)

Hate everything you do and say, feeling it’s ultra-cringe and ultimately useless?

(That was unbelievably embarrassing, why do you always do that, no one thought that was funny, that was a disaster)

Spend a lot of time thinking through things you’ve done or said?

(I wonder what X meant when I said Y — replay it a few times and rework how it went until it feels better)

Rarely think about anything you do or say?

Dismiss other people’s reactions to you?

(My friends/colleagues/family/kids understand — these people don’t — and I’m just going to live my truth — what they think about me isn’t right/true/accurate)

Those are a few options, one of which may feel more familiar than the others.

All of them impact how you live your life in the world with other humans every single day.

All of them, I think, are predictors for how you will continue to live that life and what will happen to you.

A healthy level of self-evaluation will be carried out in close community. Yes, that sounds contradictory. But your head is an echo chamber. You are limited to what philosophers call your phenomenal field. Meaning, what you know and have experienced and can comprehend.

However, we have this amazing resource in the world that can transform our ability to see ourselves clearly:

(Ready for it?)

Other people.

Most of the time, even when you’re having conversations, you are largely talking to yourself.

When you replay a scenario in your head, even if you view it “from the outside,” you are the main character.

What if you could have someone who reframes that?

What if you let them?

What if you let someone in so close that they joined that evaluation of the self and told you different versions of the story you tell yourself?

What if it cozied you nearer to the truth?

Nearer to yourself.

Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.