To truly understand who you are,  you must first understand how others see you.

This is not a riddle but rather intended to highlight the fact that whatever you think about your own personality, maturity or behaviour what really matters is the perspective of other people.

Knowing Yourself

Being aware of your habitual behaviours (your personality) can be valuable when your perspective on these behaviours matches that of the general population.

Simply put, how you perceive yourself is how you are perceived, ergo behavioural decisions you make are founded on an accurate base.

Unfortunately, the opposite can apply as well.  If your own behavioural assessment does not match that of those receiving the effects of your behaviour, adjustments you make to improve and thus enhance the way others view you, are based on false assumptions

In this case the impacts of your behaviours, and the changes you made to ensure positive impacts, most likely won’t lead to the results you expect/ hope for.

Validation

One of the most difficult things to achieve is an objective validation that your perception about what others think of you is accurate.  Anonymous web  surveys hosted by a disinterested third party can be very useful in this regard but this is not always a feasible option.

For me, this is where the skill of self awareness is really useful.  How you are perceived by others is telegraphed in hundreds of ways from body language, verbal retorts to just basic behaviours ( i.e., what others do or the absense of what they do)

Being sensitive to these signs and consciously analysing them all the time may require a little more effort than reviewing the results of an independent and anonymous survey, but it works.