I’m a fan of the Jay Shetty podcast, discovering it about six months ago. He has a fascinating backstory, which includes spending three-years as a monk. During a recent episode Shetty used a quote that really stuck with me:

“I am not who you think I am; I am not who I think I am; I am who I think you think I am.”

As Shetty puts it, we “live in a perception of a perception of ourselves. If we think someone thinks we’re smart, we feel smart. If we think someone thinks we don’t look good, we think we don’t look good.” As I often do, I immediately wrote the quote down and really pondered it. Over the span of a several days I thought deeply about this statement. While out socially or in sales meetings in front of clients I thought of the concept and how it holds so much insight into how we build out identity.

The quote is attributed to American psychologist Thomas Hart Cooley, who coined the term “looking glass self” in 1902. The Looking Glass Self is comprised of three main components, which are all unique to humans:

We imagine how we must appear to others in a social situation.
We imagine and react to what we feel their judgment of that appearance must be.
We develop our sense of self and respond through this perceived judgments of others.

Again, funny how the mind works.

We often change our behavior or moods based on what they feel others people think about us, even if those feelings in no way represent the truth. Thus, our social interactions act as a "mirror" or a "looking-glass," since our self-esteem is built off of others. Just yesterday, via our youngest daughter, my wife and I were reminded about this concept. Our daughter decided she wanted her hair cut shoulder length and went to school with a cute new hair cut. The night before she clearly loved her hair while she admired herself in the mirror and had my wife take pictures. Unfortunately when my wife picked her up at school yesterday she was near tears, stating that she “didn’t like her new hair cut.” What happened? She didn’t get the reaction she wanted from all of the kids about her hair. Rather than getting a positive reaction from all of the kids, she received a lukewarm or negative reaction from a couple of the kids, changing her perception of the hair cut.

The good thing is that kids are very malleable and we were very easily able to turn her mood around. Still, it’s a prime example how our attitude is often controlled by how we perceive the reaction of others to be. Knowing someone has a positive opinion of us bolsters our confidence, while a negative opinion can have the opposite effect.

When I think of this phenomenon I think of the popular phrase “zero fucks given”. It’s a popular saying, but how many people actually go through life with zero fucks given? In fact the act of saying that you give zero fucks is molded via social interactions. The person that gives, “zero fucks” has formed that persona via how they react to the perceived judgement of others. The summarize Mark Manson, in his phenomenon of a book, “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck” wrote (paraphrasing here), it’s not about giving “zero fucks” it’s about giving a fuck only about what is true, immediate and important and focusing in on your true and finely honed personal values.

It’s very simple to say can’t create your identity around what others think of you, but that is much easier said then done. And, forming your identity based on others perception isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Let’s take the example of public speaking, which many people rank as a bigger fear than death. It’s a major phobia for millions of people. For many people the anxiety of speaking publicly stems from a previous experience that ended with them making a mistake or being judged by their audience, or the perception that the audience wasn’t as interested in the topic as the speaker thought they would be.

I battled a fear of public speaking for years, and I can remember when it started for me, during middle school when the teacher would go around the room and ask students to read aloud certain passages. Prior to that I had no issues reading in front of class. In fact I was a tremendous reader, near the top of my class at an early age. Teachers would commend me for my reading and I took pride in it. But it all changed in an instant in middle school. As I got older and the typical adolescent anxiety set in I started to become self conscious in general. I can still remember the 9th grade English class when I froze up, suffered dry mouth, and couldn’t complete a passage in front of class. I can’t even remember if anyone even laughed or reacted negatively to my struggle that day, but it didn’t matter. I perceived that they reacted negatively and laughed at me. From that point on, for years, I had trouble speaking in public. One single moment triggered it. I went from someone who was a “good reader and good public speaker” to someone with anxiety speaking in front of class. For years I avoided it as much as possible.

My fear of public speaking was based on a perception that I embarrassed myself and my reaction was to absolutely avoid doing it again. The reality is that the vast majority of that 9th grade class was dealing with the same anxiety and adolescent struggles that we all deal with. It didn’t matter.

“I am who I think you think I am.”

I had a perception of what others thought of me and my struggles reinforced it. I was the kid that couldn’t read aloud in class.

So are we trying to be what people think we should be? Of course we are, and it’s a key part of human identity. The challenge is when we perceive negative reactions in others. Back to the example of my daughter and her hair cut. When we sat her down and asked her what the kids actually said, we found out a couple of things. First, the kids that had a “negative” reaction in her mind were not close friends of hers and really didn’t say anything all that bad. Second, one of the reactions was from a child who has never had a haircut, isn’t allowed to have a hair cut.

She was projecting negativity in their reactions and allowing it to ruin her day and invade her headspace. Granted this is the reaction of a eight-year-old girl, but full grown adults let similar situations ruin their day.

Embarrassment is a learned act. It’s like dancing in public. People who refuse to dance in public aren’t “embarrassed” by how they dance, they’re embarrassed by the perceived reaction of others. I’m not embarrassed to dance in public and I’m a TERRIBLE dancer. But I know that the other people dancing don’t particularly care about how bad of a dancer I am— they’re just worried about having a good time and their own dancing.

The opinion of some people should matter of course, but you can’t go through life making decisions based on what other people think of you, especially when these are “perceived” opinions.

I’ll close with a quote from my favorite Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius, who, as always, commented on this very subject over two-thousand years ago:

“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself but to your own estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”

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