I am talking about sharing personal information with others. Oftentimes I fluctuate between sharing a too much and too less. I have been experimenting with this, actually, in the last two years. I was trying to see what works well with friends, colleagues, and family.

I realised that it’s better to know a person overall. It helps us to not get too upset or to be in too much awe of a person due to their immediate action. Remembering the dark and the bright side of the person in these situations helps us to balance our emotional response.

I have friends with whom I have had really bad experiences. I still respect them very much because I know them in much broader way. I know how they deal with other friends, their families, their colleagues. I know how they have been in the past. I have friends whom now I cannot stand for more than five minutes without getting annoyed but I still cherish them and maintain contact because I have seen them in a better light in the past. I know what they are capable of. I have people in my life that are close to me now but were not in the past due to whatever reason. Keeping the past in my mind helps me to not place high bets considering only what I am seeing now. Also, knowing how people behave in their general life gives me a balanced idea about what I should expect from them. It helps to keep a balanced perspective.

I am becoming much more open these days partly due to this reason. Ever since childhood I have a tendency to behave differently with different people. People (everyone, including my parents) often do not know me because I show only one side of mine to them depending on the kind of a person they are. It is not healthy. I don’t do it on purpose. It’s just my personality.

I suffer due to this trait of mine. People often complain they do not know me. People often misunderstand me based on how I behave with them and fail to make a balanced judgement because I never showed them the other part of me. They are either almost always happy or almost always annoyed with me due to my actions, and I often fail to show them a different side of mine. Again, not on purpose, it’s just my personality.

Now I am trying to change this. I am trying to be more open with people. I am doing this in personal and professional life.

It seems other people have already undersood this. That’s why there are bonding sessions in professional spaces so that people get to know a broader picture of each other rather than knowing each other only through their work. Conference dinners are important due to this reason. A not-so-good presentation by a person might make us feel a bit critical towards this person, but having a chat with them over dinner might change our perspective. Or we might talk to them about their other work and realise they are often very good at what they do. We might connect with them over social media and see how interesting they are in general.

Knowing a person broadly makes them feel like more human to us. Well, whatever. I lost the thought now. I am sleepy. You get the idea of what I was thinking…

All this is the reason why I am now connected to many friends and colleaues on social media than before. (This is also partly the reason why I use social media more now than I did before.) I want to share with them who I am. And I want to see who they are outside of office/friendship, outside of my direct contact with them. I used to avoid it actively with colleagues and unconsciously with friends. And this is also the reason why I write much more openly on this blog now than I used to before. I have been thinking about these things over the last three years or so.

😣 I lost my thought again… whatever…

shab bakhair!

Cheers to me for writing this blog. I am happy that I am getting more and more comfortable with it over time and it is helping me become a better person.