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Something Worth SharingThe Masks We Wear I’ve noticed numerous trends in my research over the past number of years, but one that has really been highlighted recently is based on how we believe we are seen by others. This is something that we all seem to spend a great deal of energy focusing on in a number of ways: worrying we aren’t good enough feeling we don’t belong or fit in comparing ourselves to others living up to expectations working hard to present certain qualities / versions of ourselves how to guard and protect ourselves
Social media is well known for people wearing a certain ‘mask’ - a public front that they feel is expected by others and of themselves. We judge how well we are living and how much value we have as a person based on our comparisons to unrealistic edited assumptions of others. The point being: we are all doing this, we are all guessing how we are seen by others and waste time, money and emotions on creating personas and ‘masks’. As business leaders, parents, teachers and within our relationships etc we wear masks to both hide our true self and present a fictional public version. My personal example of this was on the day that I made my uncle redundant from our business back in 2002. I very much had to have a ‘professional’ mask on. Once he’d left the building for the last time - with my children’s photos torn up in his waste bin - I got into my car and removed the mask and sobbed. Once I arrived home, I pulled on to the driveway and had to compose myself and put on the “mask of mum”. I walked into the house all happy and light to see my two young sons playing. The more we swap our masks, the more we can lose the truth of our identity, the more overwhelming it can be and the more exhausted we become. We need to be much more conscious of the masks we wear, and when, and the masks others wear and why.
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