Excerpt #1: Do I really know Myself?

 

  Well, do you?
  Do you really know yourself?
  And, if you do know yourself, are you happy with your self? Do you like you?
  If you do…great! If you don't…not so great….

 

  I've been a management consultant for some 16 years, working in both the public and private sectors. This has often involved close coaching and/or mentoring with senior people, leading sometimes to deeply personal conversations and periodically therapeutic interventions. For the last 6 years I have also worked as a practitioner in 'personal change therapy' for people from all walks of life.
  And still, occasionally, it surprises me how many people who come to me on a professional basis either don't know who they really are or what they're about. Or they don't understand why they behave in certain ways. In other words, they don't understand themselves. Why they are like they are. In some cases, they can't really see what they are like - and the impact what they are like has on others. Often the people they care for most!
  These folks are confused. Sometimes they really hurt.
  It's even worse when they do recognise what they are like …and they really don't like it.
  So what are you like…?

 

Many people, when asked whether they know themselves, will give an answer that makes some kind of sense. They can give some description of 'self' - from the physical (eg: “I'm average-looking” or “I'm on the tall side”) to metaphysical personality traits (eg: “I'm quite shy” or “I'm kind and caring” or “I'm very ambitious”).
  Some deeper thinkers may go 'all philosophical' and say things like: “How can you ever know your true self?”. This kind of thinking implies there is some deeper, almost mystical self - spirit, soul? - which is unknowable in cognitive terms that can be languaged.
  Yet others may attach the issue of personal bias to the question and suggest you consult with others who know them well - family, friends, work colleagues, etc - to build a true picture of what they are really like. It's almost as if they can't trust their own perception of their self!

  So, is there a deeper, unquantifiable self? And how much do we define ourselves in terms of how we perceive others around us to perceive us?
  Then there is the question of whether we always appear to be the same self.

  Have you ever said: “ I don't feel like myself today”? or “That's not like me”? Or have you had other people say to you: “That's not in character” or “That's not like you”?
  Almost everyone has had some experience of not feeling like themselves or somehow acting 'out of character'.
  Have you ever found one part of you wanting to do something that another part of you disapproves of? (For example: I want to eat chocolate but I know it won't do my diet any good.)
  Perhaps worse, have you ever found one part of you, which says you should be doing something, castigating another part of you for finding reasons not to do it? (For example: My friend's suggested we go walking this Saturday and Sunday; although that's going to be another weekend I don't start the decorating.)
  Again, these are fairly common experiences.
  But what exactly do we mean by all this talk of self and not myself?
  If I am not myself on some occasion, then who on earth am I? Am I still my self…but somehow different?

  Before we work on answering that question, let's ask another. Can you identify circumstances or contexts when you act 'out of character'?
  If you were to examine your life in detail, would you find a number of circumstances or contexts where you seem to have different 'characters'?
  An example of someone exhibiting different characters might be a married man who is a doting father to his teenage daughter and a regular churchgoer but enjoys watching strippers and chasing lots of different women. Or, what about the female office manager who dominates her staff, men and women alike, but is a demure 'little wife' at home?

   Margaret Thatcher, Britain's famous 'Iron Lady' prime minister of the 1980s, was, in public, at least, a ruthless visionary.
  She had strong and clear ideas on how she wanted political life and economic life in this country to change and appeared to care little about the huge social costs involved. She culled the moderates, the so-called 'wets', from her first Cabinet and replaced them with 'yes men' and equally hard-nosed right-wingers. She didn't hesitate to go to war both abroad (the 1982 Falklands War) and at home (the 1984 Miners Strike).

  Yet it was an open secret that husband Dennis 'wore the trousers' at home and that 'Maggie' mostly deferred to him on domestic and family matters. She was devoted to him right up to his death in 2003. In fact, in some private photographs and video footage which have leaked into the public domain, she appears positively fawning - an impression largely confirmed by various comments from family 'insiders'.

  Two quite different personalities in two different contexts, apparently. How come?
  One of the few occasions the public and private Maggies collided was when son Mark was lost in the desert for 6 days during the Paris-Dakar Rally in 1982. The media had a field day filming a tearful and at time clearly distressed mother trying to carry on with her work.

 

   Thinking of your own life, could it be that you're more assertive and demanding with some people than you are with others? Or, maybe you're quiet and considered with some but lose your temper easily with others?
  Differences in 'character' could be as simple and as trivial as not swearing in front of your children but using unsavoury expletives frequently in conversation near the end of a night with your friends in the pub.
  How is it that we can have these different 'characters'? - some of which seem closer to our 'real self' than others and some we're not too comfortable with at all?
  Could it, in fact, be possible that we have multiple selves which manifest themselves in different circumstances?
  Perhaps the question which titles this chapter should really be: 'Do I really know my selves?'