Do you know yourself?
“Of course I do” will be the answer and it will be true, half true answer. Why half? Because we are used to getting information about ourselves from other people based on their opinions, lifestyle, experience, etc. But all those are subjective. All information is going through a lot of filters before it reaches us.
If we take a person who has a bad experience in the past with a guy with long brown hair and in a blue t-shirt and someone who looks the same way offers some promising deal, they won’t run to get it. Why? Because our brilliant brain will send us a warning signal that something wrong and 90% of the time we will trust that signal and leave even though it doesn’t mean the same story will happen again.
Based on information from the past unpleasant experience we unconsciously put this person in the black box named “untrusted”. This person can be nice seller and just a humble guy but for us it doesn’t matter because our picture of him has already taken place in our head. I’m sure we have a lot of those “boxes” with heaps of files who we should trust, who we should spend time with, where we should buy things, etc.
Let’s take my own experience. Once I was talking with my boyfriend on phone. My grandma was not far. I don’t remember our conversation but we had some fun topic to discuss, I laugh a lot. We didn’t have underground jokes or intimate discussion that why I could speak openly near my grandma.
After our call was finished my grandma said that it was not appropriate to speak with my boyfriend this way (she mostly spoke about laughing) because he could think that I’m easily accessible. Whore, in a nutshell.
When she was 19 that may have been a thing but in our days laugh is absolutely fine. I was surprised with her speech, our chat with my boyfriend was absolutely harmless. Anyway, her comment stuck in my head and I kept behaving myself cold with boys after it.
In another example, in year 9 at school my teacher said to me (not in a nice way) that I don’t have the voice to sing and you know tbh she might be right but at the same time she chose me to sing at the school event. She compared myself with herself and “herself” was singing in church that time. Even though the performance was successful I’ve lived years thinking that I didn’t have a singing voice and even was shy to sing in the shower. Only later I could solve this “problem - opinion” to get rid of my shyness to sing.
I can find many examples of people’s opinions which impact my life. I’m sure you have your own. People tell a lot about us based on their own personal opinions or experiences. Most of us take it as a basis and live with it for our whole life. But it doesn’t have to be this way. The truth is you don’t have to be the person for others, you should be the person for yourself.
People can say a lot about what you are capable of or where your talents start or finish but can you? The more important is what you can say about yourself.
P.S. In fairness, it is worth clarifying that our life is our responsibility. And only you can choose how your life will be affected by others’ opinions.