I really love the timeless stretch between Christmas and New Year. Like many of us, I use it to analyse what I have achieved over the past year, and to set out and plan how I’ll reach my goals for the new year.
It took me a long time to realise something simple: that goals can be framed in two ways, ones we can exercise control over and ones we have no control over. The simplest example: the goal “to get in shape” is an example of a goal we don’t have much control over, whereas the same thing framed as “to start following, and stick to every day, an eating and exercise plan drawn up by specialists” is something we can take concrete action on.
And while “getting in shape” is a common goal, which is why I used it as an example, one of my goals is a bit more unusual: to learn to see myself from the outside more often. For now this is a goal I have no control over, as I don’t yet have a clear path to achieving it.
I very often think that the hardest thing for any of us is to look at ourselves from the outside. And to take a really good look, so good that we notice even the most unpleasant facts about ourselves. You’ll say that’s very easy, especially when there are objective criteria by which we are assessed. For example: the scales (how many kg we weigh), a marking system (at school), a standard (for a sporting achievement) and so on.
Well, it isn’t easy at all. To see ourselves. We use those very same measures with great relish to assess others. Most of all we love to derive a perverse pleasure from other people’s flaws and failures. Especially those of the people we subconsciously compare ourselves to. But we invent all sorts of excuses not to put ourselves and our own flaws up for assessment. I know this from personal experience.
At 19 I went off to Australia as a student. Since in the first year I wasn’t yet earning my own money, I lived on my parents’ dwindling savings. It was crystal clear to me that on the savings of a Bulgarian family from the 90s, I couldn’t live it up in Sydney. So I tried to economise. It never crossed my mind to economise on Basic Human Needs such as NIGHTCLUBS, for instance, so my economising focused mainly on my eating habits.
My priority was to buy not good-quality food, but the cheapest possible food that would fill me up. And so I started eating mainly wafers, biscuits and other “junk”. At the same time I was going through severe culture shock (for the first few months I didn’t even understand my lectures in English), and eating junk food gave me emotional comfort.
As a result, I put on 20+ kg without even noticing.
You’ll ask how it’s possible to put on 20+ kg without noticing, despite the existence of tools for measuring objective indicators (kg), such as scales?
Very easily: by not wanting to notice. Or, to put it another way, through the power of self-deception.
At first, noticing that my clothes from Bulgaria were getting tighter and tighter, I put it down to the change of climate. I had brought my clothes from the homeland and, in my opinion, the hot and humid Australian climate had contributed to them shrinking almost by half. I eliminated the problem by throwing out the old clothes and buying new ones in Australian shops.
And so for about a year I blissfully piled on the kilos. In Australia women are generally bigger, so I fitted right in. I felt attractive and admired, and it never crossed my mind that I had put on weight.
After a year, though, I went back to Bulgaria for 3 weeks during the spring holidays. The shock began at the airport, when my own mother didn’t recognise me. It all started with enthusiastic waving at my family from my side of the arrivals terminal.
Despite my arms waving high above my head, my mother’s eyes passed indifferently over my mighty figure several times, looking for her offspring somewhere behind me. She only gave up looking when I loomed menacingly in front of her in the closest possible close-up and forced her to recognise me.
Things continued with the neighbours, who, unlike my flabbergasted mother, didn’t hold back and “pecked” at me with enormous satisfaction. Many of them would remark when we met in the stairwell:
“How are you, Niyche? I see you’ve put on quite a bit of weight… But looks don’t matter, the important thing is that you’re healthy…” A pause followed, and after it, the sly, concerned bit: “Oops, actually, it hasn’t YET come to health problems, has it?”
Jealous, spiteful Druzhba busybodies, I thought, as I carefree jiggled my bum up the stairs.
Until the next day, when I started walking around the streets of Sofia and noticing the Sofia girls, who looked like ballerinas to me. I remembered that when I lived in Bulgaria, I had been as slim as them. In Australia we loved going to restaurants, eating well and living our lives happily, I justified myself to myself; this lot probably ate one lettuce leaf a day.
But it stung my little heart how good the women I passed in the street looked. So I decided to take countermeasures: I would weigh myself on the scales at home. Just like that, just in case. If I had reached 65 kg, I vowed, I would cut back a bit on the endless stuffing myself at all the family spreads laid on for the “child’s” visit.
For my normal weight of 55 kg, 65 was a nightmare. But I was sure I was very far from it…
Holding my breath, I stepped onto the scales…… My pulse went up to 140 as the needle galloped back and forth. When it had calmed its wandering a little, it went and settled on the number 79!
You’ll say I got a fright??? On the contrary: as soon as the needle settled on 79, my pulse slowed down with relief.
The number 79 gave me a happy feeling of relief, because it was absurd.
OBVIOUSLY THE SCALES WERE BROKEN!!!
God, what a weight off my mind! I’ll eat as much as my heart desires. I won’t give in to the insinuations of broken scales and spiteful neighbours!
I wallowed in the pigsty of blissful happiness for 2 more days, for the last time. Yet more guests came round, curious to see how much I had gained (gossip spreads fast). I treated them to a sight worthy of even the boldest guesses. Probably impressed by my bulk, 2 of the lady guests tactfully decided to weigh themselves on the scales in front of me, in the hope that I might take the hint and use them too. Both women were struggling to “hit” 54 kg and were very upset to see that my scales showed they each weighed 49 kg.
“But your scales are wrong, Niyka,” they both complained.
Of all people, Niyka was the one they chose to say it to? Niyka had caught that problem oh-ho-hooo, right in the bud, and had long since stopped worrying about it.
“We’re 52, and the scales SHOWED 49 kg!” Both were adamant that they were much heavier than my scales showed.
EXCUSE ME!?!?!
How it hurt! The scales really were wrong! They made you 3 kilos lighter than the truth. Not 25 heavier, as I had thought.
In a split second it all fell into place: from the treacherous Australian climate that had shrunk all my clothes, through my mother’s goggle-eyed face at the airport, right up to the crazed needle of our broken scales…. Fact after fact that I had ignored. Because once I had looked the truth in the face, I would have to:
- Admit the truth, which, one way or another, I knew somewhere deep inside
- Take some action about it
All rather unpleasant things.
*****
Why can’t we see ourselves from the outside? And I don’t mean only physically; I just used this particular episode from my life as an example.
Why, on the other hand, do we see perfectly all the flaws of the people around us (especially the flaws we ourselves possess)?
Psychology surely has an answer to these questions and that’s exactly where it’s worth looking for it. Only, you know how the more a person needs a psychologist, the less they admit it. Along those lines, I don’t yet use the services of a psychologist, and until I start, I choose to give the following artistically clichéd answer to the question “why can’t we see ourselves from the outside?”
In short, the answer is: to manage to see yourself from the outside, you have to move far enough away from yourself. And from the prejudices built up over years about your own infallibility, which your head is full of.
I’ll use the cliché of how a person is born a blank canvas. And how life slaps them with bucket after bucket of paint, after which it starts adding outlines, figures and colours, turning the blank-canvas person into a painting person. Ugly, beautiful, meaningful, aggressive, narrow, simplistic and so on, but a painting unique in itself. There isn’t another one like it.
But one of the main qualities of paintings is that they can’t be seen up close. To see the structure and colours of a painting and to grasp the composition as a whole, you have to step back.
Looked at up close, a painting is just a collection of blurred colourful smudges.
The artist knows how to paint them so that, looked at from the right distance, they can be understood by the human eye. But we only see other people from the right distance. Ourselves, we can’t. I’ve got as far as realising that I can’t see myself objectively from the outside.
How I’ll get to the point of achieving one of my New Year’s goals, to see myself OBJECTIVELY from the outside and correct the things I don’t like about myself, I still don’t know. For now, on my list of New Year’s goals, it is defined as a goal I have no control over.
But if by the end of the year I manage to redefine it as a goal I do have control over, that is, by describing concrete steps towards achieving it, I’ll still be very happy.
