The shape of self-perception

To overcome a rejection is hard, but I think to not let it define our capability is even harder. When I got rejected by Cambridge at the age of 17, I was confused that my Psychology teacher got confused about me not being accepted. I thought the reason was quite obvious, I was not good enough. But after so many rejections, and possibly even more to come in the near future, I realised that being not good enough, capable enough, or intelligent enough, etc. was not really the key message of a rejection, nor why it happened in the first place. In a system where the feedback loop is rarely provided, the assumption that ourselves being not […] enough is simply our attempt to rationalise a result that doesn't seem so rational to us. And this assumption is one of the more convenient ones to make because its main subject is who we believe we know much better than the one that gave us the rejection. Therefore, if any explanation is to be made, it is much more reassuring to turn it back to ourselves, something inherently us.

But I must say that, self-perception is one of the less straightforward things that exist in life. It is highly unstable, especially during our younger days. The rejections I received early in my life did cause me a series of negative emotions which mainly pointed towards my self-beliefs. When I first got rejected by some volunteering roles I applied to at the age of 14, Gmail notifications scared me. I was not raised in a way that prepared me for being rejected, or more accurately, invalidated. I performed really well in the academic environment, which was a good thing but then also not a really good thing. This is especially true when I started going into the outer world, where the environment is much more chaotic, ambiguous, and "wicked". If the schooling system is a "kind" learning environment, with clear rules, definable expectations, available feedback loop, then the outside world is the exact contrary. It is a system where we have to find out its structure amidst chaos, clues, and noises. And, because there is no definite answer to that search, people have different systems that they found out. No one, in that reality, can impose one system on everyone and declare it as our mutual reality.

Self-perception is a part of that reality. It is indefinite. It varies from person to person. It is personal. It is also unstable. And this characteristic of instability makes it susceptible to being volatile. In other words, the fact that our self-perception changes from time to time means that it is highly likely to be influenced by external factors and events. Rejection, as we talked about at the beginning of this essay, is an example of those externalities. One day, you may perceive yourself as being highly capable because previous experiences have confirmed that belief or judgement of yours. The next day, you may disregard that perception completely because you receive a rejection which indicates something like "you are not capable enough for this opportunity". I would argue that volatility is not inherently a characteristic of self-perception. It is a consequence of its inherent instability, which happens more frequently at a younger age as there are less previous experiences to confirm a belief than at an older age. These two, age and the number of confirmative clues, may be said to exist in a linear relationship. However, the intercept which decides the slope or how ”efficiently" an increase in the age leads to an increase in the number of confirmative clues may depend on something completely different. 

It is unrealistic to aim to keep our self-perceptions unchanged. Because unchanged self-perceptions mean we are not altered at all by our experiences, which also means we do not learn anything valuable from them. This is unwanted. However, it is reasonable to aim to minimise the consequent volatility resulting from that instability of self-beliefs. And the ability to control this volatility is the "intercept" I mentioned above. There are many external happenings which add value to our changing self-perceptions. However, not all of them do and it is important to not let our self-beliefs sway too much when encountering the not-so-valuable ones. This not only helps us save a significant amount of mental energy, which could have been used up for extracting the meanings of every single event. It also makes the process of updating our self-perceptions more predictable over time, as we become clearer about what to digest and what to only glance through. 

The tendency to perceive ourselves negatively is somehow paradoxical when we think about how humans actually regard themselves very highly in terms of moral values, personality, and even knowledge. I suppose this is understandable given how much time we are "trapped" in the relationship with our own selves. We cannot stay away from ourselves as when we stay away from a friend or a lover. This may be why we can micro-examine a lot of things that we do, which include our flaws and incapabilities. Under the influence of an external event which connotes a negative meaning about us, those flaws and incapabilities are magnified and invade our self-perception until a new set of clues come to point our attention to the other positive traits of ourselves, which may then become the new magnified section. 

There are two main lessons that we can learn about all these characteristics and mechanisms of self-perceptions. 

First, how to break the link between the inevitable instability and its consequent volatility, which is very much avoidable? The joint to cut lies at the moment we just finish receiving the external clue and are about to begin analysing those clues in-depth for findings. Once we know the clue is not high-quality or valuable, we should stop analysing them straight away. This judgement can be formed based on many criteria. However, I believe the most obvious one is whether that clue provides us with feedback that can be then used for any efforts for improvements. Without this, we can't do anything more useful with it than simply absorbing it as mere information. The world is more and more filled with information. However, not all of them are worth analysing, let alone taking in. Therefore, be selective with what one decides to investigate because analysis and investigation take time and energy. Unless they provide enough foundation for progress to happen, our limited time and energy shouldn't be wasted on them. This is one of the great things that the education system offers us, feedback and the chance for improvements. These are rarer in the outside world. Therefore, if an experience, even a rejection, provides us with those, they are certainly high-quality and worth dissecting carefully. Changes in self-perceptions which result from these are active rather than passive. And this is probably one of the most significant positive reinforcers in learning and self-improvement, the feeling of control over our own growth and changes.

The second lesson concerns the temporary nature of self-perceptions. We are usually afraid of changes. Changes in beliefs or perceptions are perhaps the most difficult to accept. But knowing that beliefs should be changed to incorporate the value of experiences may make the process less reluctant. Furthermore, when our self-perceptions are currently pessimistic, the acknowledgement that they will change and become positive one day gives us enough affirmation to move on and welcome new experiences into our life. The concern here is less about the present state of the perception, but rather its potential to go through meaningful changes. More importantly, it should not be a pressure for one to make their self-perceptions really positive. The today’s world enjoys various discourses surrounding mental wellness. However, being truthful is a more realistic goal than pretending to be good. The key here is to be self-aware, being very critical with the information we receive from ourselves and from the outer world, evaluating that information critically in order to form our truthful self-perceptions. One struggle common when facing negative self-beliefs is their accompanying negative emotions, which in turn help intensify the negativity of those existing self-beliefs. It is hard to eliminate such feelings, but it is possible to slow them down and prevent them from affecting our decision-making. When we decide to perceive ourselves as terrible or incapable, what are we to do with that decision? Sometimes, under the influence of emotions, we can’t fully control how we perceive ourselves at the moment of speaking. However, we can decide what are we to do with that perception. In other words, perceiving ourselves negatively is fine. But what actions we are to take after that perception is established are of the greater importance. 

In writing this essay, I was having a little thought process, where I attempted to define some universal characteristics of self-perceptions. Based on these descriptive characteristics, I then tried to figure out how to benefit from our self-perceptions. At this point, I assumed that self-perceptions could be either controllable or incontrollable. The first lesson I explained above targeted at the former category. The second one was aimed for the latter category. This essay is open for challenges and criticisms due to the current lack of references and evidence, which I hope to be able to provide in the near future. 

BY LYNN NG.