We’ve all heard the phrase “rose colored glasses,” implying that the person wearing them had a skewed, albeit happy, view on the world.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about a different kind of glasses and they are far from rose colored. Two different kinds, actually.
Fractured puzzle
I was talking to someone recently about how others view us and how, in turn, we use their perceptions to shape our own worldview of ourselves. The discussion was based from a book, which has a title that has clean left my memory. The idea was that it’s easy to take how others see us and adopt it as our own self viewpoint. The problem with that is, the glasses through which others see us is shattered because they only see one side of us, one piece. The shattered pieces also come from their own lenses, their own filter.
When we take the shattered pieces of those lenses and use the pieces to create our own lenses, we are looking through some pretty messed up peepers, right? We would never do that with real glasses…we would never just take a bunch of prescription lenses that are all different shapes, sizes and even colors and piece together new lenses and expect to see straight.
So why do we do this to ourselves and our self esteem?
Not the right prescription
I later talked to someone else about the above analogy and they raised another, very good point. Sometimes we (*cough* I *cough*) think I’m aware of how others see me or a situation and base my thoughts on the relationship or given situation based on those assumptions. I’m looking at me (or a situation) through what I think are their lenses, their glasses, and see a screwy picture so I assume that’s the view the person has. But can’t that be kind of like when, as a kid, we grab our grandma’s glasses and put them on? The prescription is so strong that we can’t see a thing. Nothing is wrong with the glasses, they fit the person for whom they were meant just fine. But when others try to see the world through their “eyes,” the picture gets blurred.
To me the hardest part is always recognizing…then changing the inaccurate self perceptions. What about you?