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: