No One Understands You and What to Do About It

Statistically speaking, there are only weak correlations between how others see us and how we believe we are seen.

We don’t communicate nearly as much information as we think we do. When you say, “He knows what I meant” or “I made myself clear,” chances are, he doesn’t and you didn’t.

Without realizing it, you—like everyone else—are very likely operating under two very flawed assumptions: first, that other people see you objectively as you are, and, second, that other people see you as you see yourself.

He showed that while most of us rank intrinsically motivating factors—such as skill development—as the most important to us in our careers, we believe that other people care primarily about extrinsic motivators, like compensation. In other words, we believe that when it comes to work we do, our own values are more noble and authentic than those of

Psychologists call this tendency to believe that others feel the way we do the false-consensus effect, and evidence for it is all around you.

Human beings have a strong tendency to distort other people’s feedback to fit their own views. We know this intellectually, and yet we rarely seem to recognize it as it’s happening.

So if you are a very shy and reserved person who reveals next to nothing about your thoughts and feelings to the people around you, then they will know very little about you—aside from the fact that you are shy and reserved, obviously. The danger there is that people will generally fill in the blanks themselves, imagining a whole personality profil

If people are seeing you the way you see yourself, then you aren’t getting all the unsettling, self-doubt-inducing feedback that the chronically misunderstood have to endure. Life is simply easier and more rewarding when people “get you” and provide you with the opportunities and support that are a good fit for you.

When it comes to everything from religious views to favorite flavors of ice cream, people assume you see things as they do.