Self-Creation

Are you trying to find your ultimate true inner self?

STOP
you'll end up with nothing!

What is This Thing Called Self?
Just try this little exercise.

Disidentification Exercise Draw up a list of ten things that you are. Things that are important about you, about your self. Like: "I am a wife... I am intelligent... etc. Now, one by one, cross off each item on the list and try to imagine what you would be without that aspect of self. When all items are crossed off, what's left? Who or what are you when all aspects of your self-as-structure have been chiseled away. You return to pure awareness, pure mind. It's a self without content, it's "no-self."

Inner and outer self
Now we've (un)learned a bit about our "inner self", what about our "outer self" ?
Is our "outer self" always the same or is it influenced by our environment?
For example, are the 'you at home' and 'the you in cyberspace' the same?


A Jewish Canadian sociologist named Erving Goffman studied these questions in his 1959 book

The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life



Think about these Key Questions:

• Are you always the same in every situation?
• In what circumstances would you present yourself differently?
• What remains constant about you regardless of your circumstances?

Goffman's answers the question of how an individual in everyday situations presents himself in the presence of people?
He uses the metaphor of "Theatrical Performance" to explain people's social behavior
People are constantly involved in different dramas, changing their roles and performances in different situations.


According to Goffman:

• Life is like a stage
• We are the actors on this stage
• We act out our ‘scripts’
• We pick out our ‘costumes’
• We manage our impression on the audience

So on Goffman's stage called 'Life' we act in front and backstage zones.
Back stage we are relaxed and natural, Front stage is our professional persona, using rules and scripts to act out our roles in public.

Now let's go back to the real YOU en conclude that although you've become what you are :

Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself... George Bernard Shaw

So go out and create yourself !

---