Have you ever thought about how you act in public? That very sentence is interesting, because it is understood and accepted that we “act” in a certain way. We are told from birth to act nicely in public. We put on our best behavior for fear of feeling shame and embarrassment. They are pretty much the same thing.
How often do we behave so differently from what we actually feel? We become removed from ourselves. We build masks and pretend, which is very draining.
We apologize to strangers for nothing. We can stand in front of a shelf looking for a product in a store, someone else comes over, and we immediately apologize. We can be walking somewhere while someone else is there, and we immediately apologize. Someone can say something and we do not hear it, and again we immediately apologize.
Think back on today. Review it thoroughly in your mind. How many times have you apologized? It becomes ingrained in our psyches that we are people who should say sorry for just being.
If we are out and our child is misbehaving, we feel shame. We talk to our own child differently than we would at home because not feeling embarrassed becomes more important than our interaction with our own child.
It is interesting that we do this. It is interesting that we have this automatic perception that people we do not know are perceiving us negatively. What is even more interesting is how this makes us react in situations. We impulsively react as if we are bad children and the others are adults shaking their fingers at us.
We also take offense so quickly when strangers react in any way other than the most positive way. We take offense and feel bad about ourselves. Eleanor Roosevelt said, “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent,” and this is very true.
We allow what we fear others will think to completely dictate our actions, feelings, and the way we view ourselves.
Take the next week and observe yourself. Observe how often you feel uncomfortable at work and in public. Take a few moments to observe how you feel when you think about how others think of you. It is very interesting what you can reveal about what you think of yourself and also how you think others perceive you.
