Do You Perceive Yourself Accurately?

We’ve all heard those cliche expressions before:

I’m a real hard-worker…

I’m easy to get along with, I have a lot of friends…

Or something along those lines. And chances are that pretty often you roll your eyes and say yeah right and laugh to yourself. I know I do.

But that goes two ways.

Lately, people have been telling me that I have an inviting personality, that I’d be good for marketing. I laughed. Maybe you did too. But when more and more people comment on something, at some point you have to consider that it may be true.

It seems that lately none of my confidence is original. By that, I mean that I don’t just wake up one day and think that I have certain skills or capabilities. Other people are telling me what they see. Little by little, I’m accepting the possibility that my perception of myself may be off.

A few years ago, I could not have seen myself in a management position. Recently, I’ve handled situations that would have made me want to crawl under a rock and hide from the world. But in some instances, people have been right about me. Or at least that’s my perception right now.

How do you see yourself? How do you think others see you? Would you dare ask? Should you twist people’s perception, or should you play into it? I think these are all very important questions that we should ask ourselves sometimes.