Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Journal 3
Journal 3
Understanding that it can be upsetting when you see your self-concept shifting and
changing based on the conditions, the point still stands: you’ve got the wrong goal.
The main problem here is that people are often confused about what “myself” means. If you
go with the crowd as it seems you’re doing then you have bought into the viewpoint that
your self-image or self-concept or “psychological persona” are the true meaning of “me”.
Yes? This may seem so obvious as to not even be worthy of mention: “of course I’m defined
by my self-concept, what else would even make any sense!?”
In that viewpoint, you give a lot of weight to those shifting feelings and thoughts about
yourself. It’s as if you’re walking around a maze of mirrors, where there are distortions and
pigments in the glass randomly distributed… so sometimes you look wonderful, and
sometimes you look like crap to yourself and because you believe that the mirrors are
saying something substantive and real, you then react emotionally to what you see as your
reflection. You think “oh, that’s who I am!”
But then if you’re observant, you notice the inconsistencies and it raises doubts: “wait a
minute. How come I’m sexy sometimes and stupid other times? If I’m a person with a
particular identity, why does it keep shifting and changing?”, and then maybe you start to
think there’s something wrong with you.