People and Their Perceptions

If you had to pick one person who you feel could accurately describe you as a person, who would you choose? Would it  be your parents? Your siblings? Your closest friend? Your lover? Boyfriend? Girlfriend? Nobody?

Now obviously, there probably isn’t a person walking this earth who knows yourself as well as you do, with that being said, I still always find it interesting to hear people’s perception of me and my personality. I don’t know about you all, but I’ve heard it all, especially when it comes to perceptions that directly contradict each other.

As you all may know, I’m an actor and an artist, and people’s responses to my career of choice have been… entertaining to say the least. There are people who just don’t see it, and others who think I have the look of someone who should be on T.V. I’ve been told I probably shouldn’t try to be rapper, to why haven’t I been doing more to get my name out there because they like my music.

What’s even more amusing is that there are certain instances where some of the people closest to you have the most misconstrued perceptions of who you are, mostly because they arrived at their perception of you from a long time ago due to instances or situations you may not have even been aware of. Even with that being said, it’s strange to see how many of us either consciously or unconsciously strive to live up to those same misconstrued perceptions.

I’m guilty of this too, and  I didn’t realize that and start to make changes until a few years ago. Growing up, I was raised as a ‘pastor’s child’ in a very tight knit, family oriented church. What that basically means is that with my dad being the youth pastor of the church, virtually every congregation member knew who my younger sister and I were, and made it their business to keep their “eye” on us and the rest of the pastor’s kids for both the good and bad.

This is something that I was made aware of at a very young age, and although I don’t think I could classify myself as being a “bad kid” knowing that, in at least one aspect of your life, people had you under a microscope, it makes you question even the smallest of mischievous decisions.

I remember there was one particular instance that really opened my eyes to people’s perception of me at that time, and that was when I got my first tattoos.

Maybe one day I’ll take the time out to break down my tattoos and their meaning, but for the sake of this post length, I’m going to stick to the reactions they caused. Now at this time, I had already started to venture out from my home church and had begun visiting other churches, just to experience other preaching styles, etc. so by the time I actually went and got the tattoos, a lot of the feedback from my home church didn’t really reach me because I wasn’t present to actually hear it. That’s when my ideas of people and their perceptions about me really began to change.

Thanks to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and just the Internet in general, information regarding what people you know have been up to are literally at your finger tips. There’s very little need for “hearsay” anymore outside of intimate details. So in essence, that’s right, you can now judge people from the comfort of your own home.

While you would think that would put everyone on high alert as far as how people perceive them, a lot of people, including myself, have used these social media outlets to really give multiple onlookers the general perception they’d like to have for themselves, whether it be good or bad.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that if you’re the type of person who lives their lives trying to please people based off of their perception of you, there’s never been a better time to make a change.

Now of course, a lot of people have taken this ideal to an extreme. How many people do you know have suddenly adopted a “no f**ks given” attitude or some other extreme attitude that comes off as them trying to make a certain impression rather than being who they truly are?

The best thing nowadays about people and their perceptions is that, if they’re not around for you to hear them, it doesn’t really matter! It would be pretty sad if you debated sharing joyful moments of YOUR life on social media due to OTHER people’s thoughts, especially if those people aren’t involved in your day to day life.

What are your thoughts on the matter? Let me know in the comments below.