I met up with an old class mate this week. We re-connected on Facebook a couple of weeks ago and have been interacting online and decided to take it offline and meet up face to face and catch up. Needless to say we took a trip back down memory lane and recalled things about each other from our schooldays. Not for the first time I heard someone say how shy they remember me being as a teenager and up to three years ago I would have agreed with that assessment. But I wasn’t shy, I was extremely self-conscious and as a result very reserved. I had a bad self-image and worried about what others thought of me, of making a fool of myself, of even being noticed, despite wanting to be included with the groups, but I wasn’t shy. To – let’s call her Mary – who was eleven years old, my thirteen-year-old self was very sophisticated and aloof, too sophiisticated to include a mere eleven year old and yet that was not the way I saw it.

We teach people how to treat us and that was brought home to me today while talking to Mary, who is still as lively and bubbly as she was over twenty years ago. Her perception of me was completely different to mine, she remembered how I didn’t join in with the group, while I remembered I wasn’t invited to join in. She thought I was being aloof, while I thought I wasn’t liked. Yet she remembers liking me and wondering why I didn’t just join in, and like everything in life, you stick with what you know. It didn’t dawn on her to invite me to join in because she didn’t wait for an invitation, she waded straight in. It didn’t dawn on me to wade straight in because I had been taught to wait for an invite.

How often do we do that in life? Assume that the way we see things is the way they actually are? I often hear people say “make a good first impression, because first impressions count”. I don’t really hold with that, because in my experience, my issues and the other person’s issues have clouded the judgements made on first impressions and with a second meeting and less clouding the second impression has been a lot more favourable and lasting. How often have you heard a story retold and made a judgement based only on that information only to find out later that you had not been given access to all the information, then had a complete change of heart?

If we are doing that with others, we can be pretty sure we are also doing it to ourselves. For years I accepted the label “shy” because that was what others said about me and I didn’t question it, but instead of being shy I was either afraid, or self-conscious. I’m not shy and I never have been. I’ve always had an inner confidence in myself and my abilities and my desire to learn and gain more knowledge and answers has always won out over any supposed shyness I had. I was never afraid of asking the awkward questions, especially if it meant getting answers. By delving into my perceived realities and testing them I’ve discovered a person with a love of life that was kept hidden because of “labelling” others handed to me and I accepted.

What will you find when you pull back the covers on the perceptions you and others have about you?