Self Perception

Recently, I've read a few blog where people have posted photos of themselves and looked at their imperfections. This has prompted me to do the same. I have posted photos of myself in lots of other posts on this blog, so I'm not too self conscious about how I look. However, taking a close up photo of yourself and analysing it carefully does make you see yourself in another light.

When we look in the mirror, that is a reflected image. I don't know if it's that or something else, but I always seem to think I look better in the mirror image. I always think that I look pretty bad in photos and it doesn't look like me. Generally my hair looks terrible, my skin looks even worse than what I think it looks and everything just looks bad. Sometimes I might see a photo that I like, but that may be 1 in 20 photos.

This brings me to the issue of our own self perfection, not just our looks, but all aspects of our lives. We generally tend to think that we are better than what we are. Thats just human ego at work. I think you can clearly see this from contestants on singing competition. Some people sound terrible, but are so deluded that they think they are actually good. This is a two part problem. With sound, we are hearing some of the sound direct from our ear canals when we sing, and that sounds entirely different from the sound that is projected outside that everyone hears. If you have ever taped yourself and listened back, I'm sure you'll be shocked at what you hear. Slowly you adjust to it, but since you hear your own voice each day mostly when you talk, you never really get used to what you really sound like on tape. In regards to those contestants, I'm sure some of them have taped themselves. Even if they are awful, they only want to hear what they perceive rather than reality.

It's good to believe in yourself and have a good positive perception on yourself, but when you totally overestimate yourself, then you're only setting yourself up for a fall. I think you need to take into account a bit of what others think of you, as they see you in a different light, a more unbiased light.

Back to my photos, if I were a slightly delusional person with an overly high regard for myself, I might think that I looked like this, with great skin, a smaller nose and nice shiny white teeth (ah the power of Photoshop).

But I think I'm quite a grounded person and know that in reality I look like this, with quite a bad outbreak of pimples recently, bad yellow teeth from my immunisation injection as baby in Vietnam (I forget what the injection that causes this yellow teeth, must ask Pharmacist friend again next time) and a large nose that I inherited from my dad. But that's all ok with me, I accept who I am and my self perception is one based on reality more than fantasy.