To see ourselves

A well know Scottish poet of the 18th Century, Robert Burns once wrote: "O wad some Power the giftie gie usrnTo see oursels as ithers see us!" (O would that some power gave us the ability to see ourselves as others do)rnAdmittedly he was writing rather unkindly about an insect seen on a Lady's bonnet at church but the truism is stated very clearly. Very few of us actually have 20:20 vision when it comes to ourselves. In fact self deception and illusion often appears to be the order of the day. A question often asked is how does one rate oneself. For many people there are a whole host of criteria that contribute to one's own assessment of oneself. These may include some or all of the following and more:rnLooksrn- Am I good looking / beautifulrn- Am I slim / muscular / fatrnIntellectrn- Am I bright / dimrn- Are my grades A or Frn- Do I grasp concepts easily/ have difficultyrnSportsrn- Am I sporty / not sportyrn- Can I run fast/ not fastrn- How well do I do Swimming, Football, Hockey, Basket Ball etc.rnPersonalityrn- Am I interesting / Dullrn- Do I have many friends / Few friendsrnAm Irn- Energeticrn- Trustworthyrn- Chattyrn- Honest And so on. The simple fact is that most people will not confront all these facts about themselves. Either they cannot truly assess the situation, or they deceive themselves or do not really want don't want to know. But now there is an opportunity for your friends and acquaintances to tell you truly what they really think of you. They will be asked to rate you on 6 scales so none is too personally threatening and yet gives a true picture of how others see us. Most of the Social media sites could have the ability to deliver this information albeit not very clearly. The other thing is that most of the "friends" one has on Facebook, for example, cannot even be rated as acquaintances. The chances are good that 80% or more of these people one has either never met or are likely to meet, or haven't seen or actually spoken to in ages. So rating one's self esteem by the number of Facebook friends or Twitter followers or visitors to one's MySpace page is not a true assessment at all. The other thing about the social media sites is that they are all extremely busy. If as is not unlikely one has say 100 friends on Facebook 20% update their status on a daily basis (and of these a few are going to have 5 or six entries a day) unless one is constantly monitoring the Facebook page one is going to be swamped. One's inbox is going to be full of messages and when one does login there are going to be pages and pages of "stories" to go through that one is as likely to miss anything as not. So a Webpage inviting those people who actually know one to rate you on a few criteria may just be the beginning of a truer assessment of exactly how we are seen by others.