Monday Morning Surprise

Surprises are awesome right?

This morning as I savoured turning over the page of my very cool Snoopy calendar (one comic strip per day) there was an awesome quote on the back that got me thinking … 

“Whenever two people meet, there are really six people present.  There is each man as he sees himself, each man as the other person sees him, and each man as he really is.”  – William James

When I read it I thought … no wonder communication can be problematic for some.  Who do we bring to the conversations we are having?  Are we bringing our real selves?  Or who we want the other person to think we are?  Or who we see ourselves as? 

Here’s my thought on this … if we’re not bringing our real selves to the conversation, we make things tricky for ourselves.  Why?  Well, we may be having the verbal conversation with another person while there’s another one or two conversations in our head.  And it can be tricky keeping up.  For example, if we’re being our perception of ourselves, there’s the constant internal checking that the perception we’re portraying is aligned with our real self in some way.  Or, if we’re bringing how the other person sees us, then there’s the internal dialogue between our real self and who we think they think we are.  Whew!  Even trying to explain it is a mind bender!    

When we move into our real, true selves, it becomes easy to have one congruent conversation and save ourselves bunch of energy and stress.  What are your thoughts on this?