The "Self" in self awareness

I come from a school of thought where the opinions of the people around you determine who you are, not your opinion of yourself. Let's face it, we as individuals are VERY bad at recognizing our downfalls, our vexing personality traits, and especially how we are perceived by others. One can tell themselves till they are blue in the face and completely brainwashed that they are humble, empathetic, reliable, not spoiled or self righteous, but the truth according to others, may be the exact opposite. Therefore I ask, "How self aware are you if you do not know how you are perceived by others?"

I think it is important just to mention, that every profession it seems and personality trait comes with a certain grouping of negative traits, I was going to give a few examples but thought it too harsh so instead I am going to share the one major personality flaw that is vexing all of us regardless of who we are, or what we may do. SELF IMPORTANCE. We have all come to believe that we are the most important people, that others bow down as we walk by, when we leave the room people are so enthralled by our beauty, intelligence, intrigue, mystery etc that they cannot stop talking about us. The truth is, none of us are that important. We do not part sounds waves, the ocean, the air we breath as we walk by, nothing happens, nothing at all. All that is left is maybe a faint whiff of our perfume or cologne but we as a person an idea are not there, we are all but forgotten.

For so long now we have been told by prominent members of society, or just our very own parents that all that matters is what you think about yourself not how others perceive you. I say BULL SHIT. It is all about how others perceive you. The problem is most people never ask what people really think of them, they just ASSUME to know what others think about them. The devil is in the assumption, if we never ask we never know the truth, and we just make ourselves paranoid with the assumption. What we all need to do is allow ourselves to ask others- allow ourselves to be vulnerable, naked, bare- what they really think about us. This will bring us to self awareness, because then we know who we really are, not who we think we are. Ask for the truth, it shall set you free (or at least upon a path towards freedom of self, real freedom is another matter altogether!)

Ciao