Self-perception

I was thinking about something this week. I had the experience of hearing a person who I know fairly well describe him/herself to someone else. You know how it is, when you make a new friend or meet someone, you spend that getting-to-know-you time explaining to him or her some basic things about yourself. The thing that caught my interest was that this person was saying things that were completely untrue!

I thought about this for a while because it struck me as funny, but really I think it’s completely normal. We tell people we are the way we want them to think we are, or the way we tell ourselves we are. I also think it’s human nature to see ourselves differently than other people see us. Case in point: I was at dinner with a friend the other night, and I said something to him and then corrected myself, pointing out that it was rude of me to say that. He gave me a blank look and said, “I don’t think that was rude at all.” I know this person quite well, so we talked it out, and we honestly went back and forth for probably about 5 minutes because I think I’m rude but he thinks I’m polite.

A few things are at play here. First of all, his definition of rude and my definition of rude may be completely different. After some analysis of the situation, I think it’s more likely that I perceive myself as rude when really I’m not. I’ve now started to wonder what other skewed self-perceptions I have. Maybe I think I’m driven but in reality, most people think I’m overbearing. On my mission, people told me all the time how patient I am, but I think I have very little patience.

I’m not really sure what my point is here. I think I’m just trying to decide how many of our self-perceptions are based on truth and evidence, and how many of them are based on other people’s opinions of us. Is this even making sense? Anyone else ever run into this issue?