Mack Knueppel

Dr. Hoehl

Interpersonal Com.

Sept. 18, 2019

Professor Hoehl, welcome to my self-identity paper. You will now attempt to decipher

my paper and how I view myself. I wish you the best of luck because I still do not know who I

am. Now let's get into the deep stuff.

I find communication in relationships is very important. To be able to express my

thoughts and concerns while the other party listens and the other way around makes a

relationship or friendship work very well. When I look at myself, it is hard for me to see who I

am. Self- concept is the idea that my attitude, values, and beliefs construct who I am. I believe

that idea is somewhat true. I think it can be difficult for a person to figure out those things and

how it makes them who they are. My attitude towards life has always been positive because I

believe that there is no reason to be negative, nothing good comes from being negative. This

attitude affects my relationships because of how positive I see that person or just how I

communicate in general. The idea that my attitude affects my relationships with others makes

sense to me, but I have a hard time grasping who I am through the positivity. I once heard the

phrase “Fake it till you make it.” It means that a person should fake confidence or positivity until

that fake feeling becomes real. Well I think that can change our belief in self-concept. I fake the

positivity sometimes just because I know that’s what I should be doing in that situation. Yet, I

know I am faking the positivity and I know that deep down I think so negatively of myself at that

moment. So in that way, attitude within self-concept sometimes confuses me, because I know I
should have a certain attitude and I have that attitude but I do not truly feel that way. I fake the

attitude until it becomes something real. Then I have the question, Is it truly real if I know I’m

faking it to get there? I have no clue.

Dealing with self-esteem is such a difficult topic to talk about and something everyone

feels differently about. I personally feel like my self-esteem is okay. There are some days where

I feel extremely good about myself and that I am a good person and I am doing the right thing.

Then of course, there are days where I feel that I am not enough or worthless. Self-esteem is

something that is only known within a single person. That feeling that can be so hard to explain

in any relationship. It can be hard to tell the other person that you have doubts about yourself. It

can also be hard to explain to someone the confidence you have because they don’t know what

you feel. I have the problem of showing like I have so much confidence and that I have high

amounts of self esteem, but deep down I struggle with feeling worthless. I obviously do not

know for sure, but I feel like most people feel this way. That is the importance of facework and

projecting a positive face towards others for them to judge accordingly. On the concept of

judging other people. I try on a daily basis not to judge anyone poorly but always give them the

benefit of the doubt because of my positive outlook on life. I wish I could say the same for other

people, but I have been told multiple times that I come off as arrogant and cocky to people who

don’t know me. That is something that upsets me, because if they knew anything about me they

would find out that I am completely the opposite. I guess I just have that face. Now, knowing

that is how they feel about me coming into a relationship or friendship, how do I disclose to them

that I am different? To be honest, sometimes it is very difficult for me to even open up and try to

change their opinion about me. I don’t want to waste my time trying to prove to someone that I

am not who they think I am. Also, do I want to change that perception and show them that I am
actually very broken and struggle daily with things I cannot control? I think I would rather have

them believe I am cocky and arrogant. That way I fill the male athlete stereotype and I am

looked at in that way. Disclosing to people is an extremely difficult thing for me to do. There

have been three people in my life that I have felt comfortable disclosing anything to and that's

including all one hundred Knueppels. That was an exaggeration, there are more like forty of us.

Self-Disclosure is difficult to bring out in a person who doesn’t know who they are. That is what

I struggle with. I mean, this whole paper I attempted to look at other people and how they view

me and these concepts we discussed in class instead of looking at myself. There were some

moments where I said some things about myself, but I did write a paper filled with “you” which

is not a good thing. Yet, I am going to keep all of them in because after all, this is a paper about

me and my self-identity, and I identified my mistakes in my paper. That is some real self

identification there. Now I just disclosed what my thoughts were on this paper and I did enjoy

writing it.

To finish the paper, I would like to disclose the information that I hope to get a good

grade because I am looking at the rubric right now and believe I hit all the boxes except for

probably the grammar one, because of the “you” use. I think that sentence was at least a little

funny and I am also wondering if anyone has asked for a good grade at the end of their paper

before. I like when professors tell students to write with creative language. It opens up a little bit

more into who I am.