TALK THE TALK, WALK THE WALK
How Others Perceive You
A self-reflection on how we can understand someone better based on their style of communication
No one will ever truly understand how it feels to be you; how you think, how you perceive information, and most importantly how you communicate. They can only perceive how you show yourself to the world, such as a presentation of yourself. This may be very limiting or broad as it is mostly decided by you, as you get to choose what you want to show to other people. I have experienced this when I did a self-presentation for my class.
I had trouble choosing what I wanted to show to my peers as I didn’t want to disclose super personal stories/memories in my presentation. I chose pictures that just seemed to fit the prompts and what I was comfortable with sharing. For my peers, they might’ve believed that I just winged my presentation as there wasn’t that much structure to it. However, I thought about each detail of my answers and how I wanted to show myself to others. While learning to be open and truthful with my answers, there were times where I still wanted to keep things private. The way I communicate is just based on who I’m with at the time and if I’m feeling confident. I felt a little more confident that day, and I didn’t want to worry for two-plus hours to wait for my turn, so I took the initiative and volunteered myself. In the past, I learned that going first allows you to make mistakes because your peers haven’t set any expectations yet. This allowed me to be a little bit more relaxed when I was presenting, a far cry from my usual self. Most people are more introverted than extroverted as they are more comfortable sharing their true personalities with close friends and family, not to classmates and acquaintances. Of course, there is a minority where people don’t feel the need to be closed off, for example, two peers in my class just let their true selves out to the world without any trouble.
Two of my classmate’s self-presentations were intriguing and I found their way of communicating drastically different from my own. The first being Jeremiah because he is carefree in the way he goes about things. The same could be said for the way he speaks as he is straightforward and tries to get to the point right away. On the contrary, I’m completely different in this aspect, I like to take my time when I try to say something. Another person that was different from my way of communication was Sid, as she expresses herself through art and painting. Her artwork allowed her to show herself how she wanted. In the end, she had mentioned a very thoughtful message.
All humans are capable of change and they have the ability to become different forms.
There are many unique ways people can communicate and I believe that we can learn a lot from each other just by the way people communicate.
