Some of us look inward, we take a look at ourselves; and then, we go about our day believing that others are seeing what we saw. A true understanding of self must come from a humble willingness to learn from the perception of others.
Everyone sees the world differently and by trying to reallign your perception to fit theirs you will only be burdened by unnecessary psychological conflicts. Hypocrisy is a natural part of living and is only a concept designed to have others change their opinions, its an ad hominem attack. What you have to realise is that to be yourself you have to be indifferent of others opinions.
Be indifferent of others' opinions, yes, but recognize their view of you as well. If you just ignore what others think, well, that can be a slippery slope to your own success or failure. I do agree that you should have a strong defining sense of self, as well as learning from others' perceptions. Different perspectives broaden your own, so that you may better understand that which you encounter, incorporate that which you like, toss what you don't, and have solid reasons as to why.
I like the point you make, to be one's self is to be indifferent of the opinions of others. The reality is, though; that our identity is, in part, constructed by who we spend time with. We, in turn, assist in the construction of the identity of all of those we spend time with. Psychologically and socially, we create each other. None of us can have many of the qualities of our characters without having others in our lives; for example: loving, sharing, competitive, different... Part of us is how we interact with others. When we look at ourselves, we have a tendency to be very biased toward the qualities we want to have. We aren't so objective about seeing the qualities in us we would rather not own. If we are open to how others perceive us we can have a more objective opinion who we are to others. From there; we can be perfectly happy with ourselves, identify qualities we would like to change and practice self improvement or learn something about ourselves which we were unaware of. Free will is preserved by the control over who we spend time with.
So in essence we are products of our interaction with others? If so then I disagree because I feel we innately like certain things, like with me I like video games [the more competitive the better] among other things and I feel that is something that will stay with me for the rest of my life. Now what I'm wondering is if our likes or hobbies are determined by other people or if they are just inherent qualities of our personality which is a unique expression afterall. If we all had the same likes and personalities then the world would suck. But what ur saying is that we pick and choose desirable features that we see in others that we want to see reflected in ourselves and therefore we are not entirely original but an assortment of different traits collected from different people? Sorry if all that sounded incoherent, I just woke up and the clock says its 00:54. FUCK.
Haha, some of it is coherent I don't believe that we are a product of the people we spend time with but we are heavily influenced by them. I mean, think about it; someone had to introduce you to video games or you would have never discovered that you are someone who loves video games, right? The fact that you are someone who loves video games is dependent on the person who introduced them to you. Without your interaction with that person/people, you would have never turned into someone who likes video games.
I think that the main thing to pick up here is that we all have quite limited perception, of ourselves especially. We may broaden our perspective via being aware of what others think of us through the mentality of wanting to learn more about ourselves. If we approach the matter from this angle, naturally there will be no internal conflicts, no ego-games or other kinds of delusion. We will not exclude someone's opinion, but accept it and Understand where they are coming from, keeping in mind that no one's perception is not limited. It is this furthering of our own understanding of ourselves and others that will push us towards self-improvement and well-being.
Right. An accurate self perception is the beginning of recognizing one's potential impact in the world. Our lives can begin to take a direction and we're at the steering wheel.