Look beyond the tousled hair and unshaved face, beyond the puffy eyes and the scars from the last lot of pimples… who is that person looking back at you? Chances are that what you see has been influenced by many factors and incidents, right from your first cry. But what are these factors exactly?

Family
The first and most important factor influencing the way you describe yourself is how your primary caregivers saw you. If your parents described you as an easy child, in all likelihood you grew up believing you were an easy person to get along with. On the other hand if your parents thought you were naughty in those early years, you would continue to live up that description.

School and friends
As you grew older, started school, made friends and your ‘social circle’ expanded, you would have started incorporating the views of these new people into your self-opinion, building upon the already existing descriptions.

The media
And then came in another critical influencer on your view of yourself – the media. Attractive faces, well-toned bodies, perfect smiles – the models we see everywhere become the standard against which we measure ourselves. And we almost always fall short. We become critical and self-deprecating – shorter, fatter, darker and never as good as the photo-shopped and facelifted examples of perfection on TV or the Internet.

LIfe experiences
Another significant influence on how we see ourselves is the life experiences we have. Not just the twists and turns that destiny brings our way, but more importantly how we manoeuvre these twists and turns. The decisions we take, the outcomes of those decisions and our understanding of success and failure. If there are tangible achievements and successes, we are likely to see ourselves as being more competent.

As you may have figured out by now, these three are not independent of each other. There is dynamic interaction between all three categories of influencers – for instance, if your parents called you “naughty” but your class teacher thought you were an obedient student and made you the monitor, it is likely that you would modify the label “naughty” and fit in the other adjectives such as “obedient” and “good leader” too.

So what DO you see when you look into the mirror?

Are you focusing on any single influencer, ignoring the cues given by the other two? For example, are you so focused on the fact that you are not as slim and fair as the model on TV that you are ignoring the fact that your children think you are a wonderful parent, your friends count on you as being “dependable” and you have successfully climbed the corporate ladder to be where you are?

'Why does it matter?' you may ask. Well, it matters because how you describe yourself determines how you behave and perform in all your roles and functions including your self-confidence, decision-making and communication skills, frustration tolerance and even how you deal with challenges and failure, as well as your relationships both personal and professional.

Do you think it is time to consciously take into account all the factors that influence your self-view and come to a reasonable, panoramic view of yourself instead of focusing on the limited restricted part of your whole self? If you do, and need a little help along the way, counselling would be a great place to start. A counsellor can hold a clean new mirror for you to see yourself as who you truly are – without blinders.