it’s funny how other people’s perceptions of you are often quite different than your own.

a few weeks ago, i was talking to carol about something or other and she said that i was a “people person”. i looked at her and was taken slight aback. a “people person”? i don’t think that i would ever call myself that. then a few days later a good friend of mine said the same thing.

this got me wondering…why is it that our self-assessment of our personality traits are often at odds with others?

i really don’t think of myself as a people person. my sister is a people person; former publicity chair of her sorority, active in all kinds of sports teams and generally someone you would classify as a social butterfly. i remember a few years ago when she was still in school, she estimated that she knew approximately 25% of the total student population, from freshmen to grad students. she is always surrounded by friends, always out and about at bars, restaurants, sporting events, etc. it’s almost impossible to catch her at home.

i, on the other hand, spend a lot of time at home. it’s not uncommon for me to spend either friday or saturday night at home, just relaxing with a good book or more often, catching up on the previous week’s TV. i don’t think it’s sad or an indication of a boring life; i think that i’d probably be more inclined to find something to do if i wasn’t always so busy weekday evenings. tuesday, wednesday and sunday nights are always filled with some sort of activity (thursdays too, for a couple of years), and with all the traveling i’ve done this year, i relish being able to stay at home and do nothing.

i’m not really good when it comes to meeting new people. when i’m at a party where i only know a person or two, i tend to hang around them instead of going around introducing myself to strangers. large social gatherings are somewhat frightening to me, especially if it involves expectations.

but oddly enough though, i can become comfortable with people very quickly. carol calls me an extrovert and thinking about it, i guess she’s right. i tend to be very open with people i hardly know, revealing personal facts without a blink of an eye. i’ve been told that i disseminate information too easily but it never crosses my mind when i open my mouth. so far i’ve been lucky in that the friends i have are loyal and haven’t made my decision to confide in them backfire.

i think that one of the reasons that our views of ourselves are different from others is because we are often much more critical about our personality traits. we know how we are when we’re not around other people, we know what we’re thinking behind the smiles we show other people and the motivations behind our actions. we know what makes us tick and where our desires lie. we can see past the person we project to others around us and sometimes that person is very ugly.

so when other people say that i’m an extrovert, does that mean that they’re wrong? i don’t think that it does. when asked for reasons why others say this, i can understand how they came to that conclusion. and it made me think about how to recitify this discrepency between my own self-assessment and others. i can either a) try to project more of the insecure, rejection fearing, acceptance craving traits that i believe is more my personality or b) try to change myself to be remove those traits and be more of the fun loving, friendly, chatty, open person that other people know.

and looking over those options, the choice is simple.

i will be me.

(i have no idea what that means, but it sounds good)