How much does your inner persona agree with your outer persona? Are you truly living as the person you present yourself to be to the world? Whether the mirror test makes you think of your opportunities for more cohesion with your inner and outer states, or if the accounts of your public persona develop your mind for further inquiry; there remains an awareness of certain parts of oneself that would rather be kept silent from other discerning examinations. In psychology the term cognitive dissonance is the feeling of discomfort when simultaneously holding two or more conflicting cognition’s: ideas, beliefs, values or emotional reactions. In a state of dissonance, people may sometimes feel “disequilibrium”: frustration, hunger, dread, guilt, anger, embarrassment, anxiety, etc

The theory of cognitive dissonance in social psychology proposes that people have a motivational drive to cut dissonance by altering existing cognition’s, adding new ones to create a consistent belief system, or by reducing the importance of any one of the dissonant elements. It is the distressing mental state that people feel when they “find themselves doing things that don’t fit with what they know, or having opinions that do not fit with other opinions they hold.” A key assumption is that people want their expectations to meet reality, creating a sense of equilibrium. Likewise, another assumption is that a person will avoid situations or information sources that give rise to feelings of uneasiness, or dissonance.

Values such as Honesty, Compassion, Integrity, Forgiveness, Love, Knowledge, Discipline, Faith, and Leadership are in the foundations of many cultures around the world. These ideas are instilled within the pillars of education in many societies and have an impact on those exposed to these teachings. The beliefs we come to know are influenced by such teachings, yet we sometimes are not so good as to put them in practice. We often take these teachings for granted and the development of these social skills are not efficiently used or thought out. Thus, we fail to properly acquire the awareness that allows our behaviors to consistently follow the congruent ideals behind them.

Cohesion between the inner self and the outer persona often equivocate questions about what you know and what you don’t know about yourself. We sometimes wear many hats in our lives, but do they share the core of values we bring to the world? William Shakespeare wrote the play “As You Like It” in 1599 which included the following excerpt…

So if we are aware of such self examinations and find some incongruities, how do we decide which particular secrets and personal episodes we would share with others? The questions just keep coming! Are there indiscretions we have never shared that one should openly talk about? Are there subjects that we should discuss with others in our social networks to truly be an authentic person, or are there some subjects we should never talk about? Who will be effected knowing the skeleton’s that are buried deep within our closets? Who will we trust to keep our personal information in perspective without being unjustly judged from past volition’s? How does not being forthright complicate our dealings with our relationships, our associations, and or families? Does subduing this information affect the way we conduct ourselves in everyday life? Are we judgmental of others, and sensitive to those who may tread closely to these concealed experiences that we deny others of fully understanding?

A central proposition of existentialism is that “existence precedes essence”, which means that the most important consideration for the person is that he or she is an individual—an independently acting and responsible conscious being (“existence”)—rather than what labels, roles, stereotypes, definitions, or other preconceived categories the individual fits (“essence”). The real life of the individual is what is what could be called his or her “true essence” instead of there being an arbitrarily attributed essence used by others to define him or her. Thus, human beings, through their own consciousness, create their own values and determine a meaning to their life. Although it was Jean-Paul Sartre who explicitly coined the phrase, similar notions can be found in the thought of existentialist philosophers such as Søren Kierkegaard and Martin Heidegger. The presupposition some make is that we have the capability to connect with our divergent selves as well as recognize that we can suppress, disregard, obfuscate, and be apathetic to the discoveries we find within our inquiries when we scrutinize ourselves.

I for one think that simplifying our lives can lead to some steps in the right direction. We can only control what we can control. The power to transform ourselves into the ideal of who want to be and who we actually are is a respectable notion depending on what that ideal is. My thought is that we as a culture overwhelmingly pay little attention to syncing our internal persona’s with our external behaviors in many instances of our lives. Maybe I am just deluded into thinking that such an idea is true for the majority of us due to the chaos we seem to invoke upon one another that exists all around the world. Whether this comes down to a “Zero-Sum Game” in the process of extending our true selves for others to see, or whether we should respectfully omit certain truths about ourselves from the others around us and not completely “come clean” with our dirty laundry is ultimately up that person. I respectfully submit to the reader that in many of these cases, honesty is the best policy, but the collateral damage that can be incurred is something to consider before the decision to align one’s selves (inner and outer) is effectuated. There are many tangents not covered in this post such as confabulations, attributes of the sub-conscious, issues of self-awareness, and mental disabilities, that will obviously augment the analysis and depth one can take this topic.

“Real isn’t how you are made,’ said the Skin Horse. ‘It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”Does it hurt?’ asked the Rabbit.’Sometimes,’ said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. ‘When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.’

‘Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,’ he asked, ‘or bit by bit?’

‘It doesn’t happen all at once,’ said the Skin Horse. ‘You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”
― Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit

“The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.”
― C.G. Jung

“Our power lies in our small daily choices, one after another, to create eternal ripples of a life well lived.”
― Mollie Marti

“Sincerity is the fulfillment
of our own nature,
and to arrive at it we need
only follow our own true Self.
Sincerity is the beginning
and end of existence;
without it, nothing can endure.
Therefore the mature person
values sincerity above all things.”
― Tzu-ssu

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