Latest / YINWorldWide / The Mask You Wear When No One Is Watching
Transcript
- YIN: Imagine this. Sitting in a room with five people who know you: your mother, your closest friend, your partner, someone you used to work with, and someone who used to be part of your life, but isn't anymore. Now imagine each of them is being asked the same question. Who are you? And there's one rule: you aren't allowed to speak. You can't explain what you meant. You can't correct their memories. You can't interrupt when they describe something differently from how you remember it. All you can do is listen. your mother might describe you as sensitive. Someone at work might laugh at that description because they've never seen you show much emotion. Your closest friend might talk about how generous you've always been, while the person you no longer speak to remembers a time where you seem to care about nobody but yourself. And your partner might describe someone the rest of the room barely recognizes. Now imagine one of them begins to tell a story. Something you said 15 years ago. You don't even remember saying it, but they remember the conversation. where you were standing and exactly how it made them feel. as you listen, you start realizing something. Every person in the room believes they know you, but they're not describing the same person. So which one of them is right? And what happens if you hear something about yourself that you've never been willing to believe? Because we spend our lives showing different versions of ourselves to the world. Versions shaped by our experiences, the people we've encountered, and the circumstances we've lived through. And there's one version we rarely stop to question. The person we believe ourselves to be. And I want to know how much of that person is real and how much of that person is another mask. This is Yin. And these are conversations about discipline, direction, and identity, and how they quietly shape who you become. Today, I want to talk about the mask that we all wear, the different versions of ourselves that exist in our relationships, how those versions develop, and why sometimes we go extraordinary lengths to protect them. We're often told to be ourselves, to stop pretending, to let people see who we really are. But that assumes that there's one authentic person underneath everything else. And I'm not convinced it's that simple. Person you are around your parents may not resemble the person you are around your closest friends. Neither one of those people might resemble who you become when you're completely alone. but does that mean that some of the versions of you are fake? Or could they be parts of someone who's been shaped by different experiences throughout the entire lifetime? And if these versions have taken years to develop. What happens when something threatens the person that we've become? Because the more I examine this, the more I question whether the masks we wear are always about hiding from other people. Sometimes they might be about protecting something within ourselves. Picture yourself at work. You're having a serious conversation with a customer or sitting in a meeting where an important decision needs to be made. You're composed. You're choosing your words carefully. You understand your responsibilities, And you're speaking with confidence, the conversation ends. few seconds later, your phone rings. It's your mother. and before you've realized what's happening, the way you're speaking begins to change. Your tone softens. You become more playful. You might even find yourself getting defensive about something that you wouldn't think twice about if anyone else brought it up. She asks whether you've been eating properly. You're a grown adult, responsible for your own life. And somehow you're explaining yourself like you're 16 again. Nothing about your life has changed in those 30 seconds, but something about you has. Now imagine visiting the house you grew up in. You walk through the kitchen and sit in the same place you sat as as a teenager. your parents bring up something you did when you were younger. And before long, you'll respond to them in ways you haven't responded to anyone else in years. It's almost as though the room remembers a person you spent your adult life growing away from. And being there brings part of that person back. We tend to think of identity as something we carry independently of the people around us. We believe we know who we are because we spent our entire lives being ourselves. But relationships have a way of bringing different parts of us to the surface. An old friend can make you laugh in a way nobody else can. A parent can make you feel like a child long after you've built an entire life of your own. and someone who once hurt you can bring back feelings that you thought you had moved beyond. Those reactions don't necessarily mean you're pretending. The person you are at work is not less genuine than the person sitting at your parents' kitchen table. Different relationships Bring out different parts of us. And that is an important distinction. Because when we hear the word mask, we usually imagine somebody deliberately pretending to be something that they're not. But not every difference in our personality is an act of deception. Sometimes we're responding to the history we share with someone. And sometimes we carry patterns of behavior into adulthood simply because they became familiar when we were younger. But there are versions of ourselves that didn't develop because we didn't feel comfortable expressing them. Some developed because we learned that being any other way came with consequences. And once those versions become part of our lives, we don't always know what would happen if we stopped being them. I think we need to reconsider what a mask actually is. Because when we describe someone as wearing a mask, we often assume that what's underneath is real and what's on the outside is false. But human beings aren't born with fully developed personalities. That simply gets covered up by the world. We become who we are through experiences, the way we're raised matters. The people who accept us matter. So do the people who reject us. Over time, we learn which parts of ourselves help navigate the world and which parts seem to make the world more difficult. And then we adapt. Think about someone who grew up in a household where showing emotion was treated as weakness. Every time they cried, someone told them to toughen up. Eventually, they stopped crying in front of people. as an effort to avoid embarrassment became something that carried into adulthood. They learned to remain composed in difficult situations. They became comfortable handling problems without showing what they were feeling. And people begin describing them as strong. They admired their ability to remain calm under pressure. But was that strength fake simply because it began as a form of protection? I don't believe so. Our experiences can produce genuine characteristics, even when those characteristics begin as a way to protect ourselves. That's why I don't believe every mask is something we need to remove. some helped us survive difficult circumstances. Others helped us become people that we can be proud of. But once a version of ourselves becomes familiar to the people around us, something else happens. They begin expecting us to remain that person. Imagine someone who has always been described as the strong one in their family. They're calm when things go wrong. They rarely show fear. And people have come to admire the way they handle difficult situations. Now imagine that family loses someone they love. While everybody else is grieving, this person starts making arrangements. They answer the phone calls. They help organize the funeral. They make sure relatives know where they're supposed to be. And people keep telling them how strong they're being, how impressed they are with the way they're handling everything. But imagine what happens after the funeral. The relatives go home. The phone has stopped ringing. And this person is sitting in their car outside their house with the engine turned off. They can see the lights on inside. But they haven't brought themselves to open the door. For the first time in days, there's nothing demanding their attention. and without anything to distract them, everything they've been holding back begins finding its way to the surface. Then their phone rings. Someone asks how they're doing. And the answer comes almost automatically. I'm good. I'm just tired. They hang up and they stay in the car. Because for years, they've been the person handling things. And even now, when they're struggling to hold things together, they don't know how to let anyone else see them differently. there's a history behind that version of themselves. Years of experience that shaped it. Years of people recognizing it. Years of being proud of the strength that they developed. And giving somebody access to something different can feel like threatening all of that. Now imagine that same person eventually deciding they need to change. They can't keep carrying everything the way that they always have. so they begin setting limits. They start admitting when they're overwhelmed. And somebody close to them responds with four words. That's not like you. They might not mean anything harmful by it. They're simply describing a change from the person that they've always known. But now the person trying to change is confronted with the possibility that becoming someone different could mean disappointing the people who've spent years admiring them. At some point, the mask stops protecting you. And you start protecting the mask. Not because everything about it is false, but because it becomes part of your identity. And there's a difference between choosing which parts of yourself to share and reaching a point. Where you no longer know how to reveal them. One is a boundary. The other can become a kind of isolation. You can be surrounded by people who genuinely love you and still feel completely unknown in a certain part of your life. Not because those people don't care, But because they've spent years knowing the version of yourself that you've constantly shown them and allowing them to see something different can feel like risking the very relationship you've spent years building. But the versions we create are not the only versions of ourselves that exist. people carry their own understanding of who we are. And those versions don't always resemble the people we believe ourselves to be. Imagine you're sitting at dinner with your family. Your younger brother starts talking about something he wants to pursue. Maybe he wants to be a musician. He's excited about it. He's been thinking about it for months. And this is the first time he's really talked about it in front of anyone. You listen and then you make a comment. Well, you should probably have a backup plan. You say it casually. You're not trying to hurt him. You just know how difficult it can be to build a career like that, and you want him to be realistic. Someone at the table laughs. He laughs too. And by the time dinner is over, you've forgotten the conversation. But years later, the two of you are talking and he brings it up. He remembers the exact words that you said. He remembers everybody laughing. And he tells you that after that dinner, he stopped telling you about the things that he wanted to do. Now imagine how that would make you feel. Because in your memory, you weren't trying to discourage him. You thought you were just looking out for him, but in his memory, you were somebody who didn't believe in him. and that version of you has existed in his mind for years without you even knowing about it. Your intentions can be sincere, and someone else's experience can still be painful. You remember what you meant, they remember what happened. And those are not always the same thing. now, not every perception somebody has of us is automatically accurate. People misunderstand situations. Memories are imperfect. and one moment. does not necessarily define an entire person, But neither does our explanation of somebody else's experience. And that's where this becomes uncomfortable. Because we spend years developing an understanding of who we are. we know the things that we've been through, the decisions that we've made, and the reasons behind those decisions. And eventually we begin building a story about our own character. Then Somebody tells us about an experience that doesn't fit that description. and our first instinct is to defend ourselves. We explain what happened in our lives, what we meant, and all the times that we behave differently. Some of those explanations might be reasonable, but sometimes we're not simply defending the decision. We're defending the person we believe ourselves to be. because accepting that you behave selfishly when you believe yourself generous, or that you've hurt somebody when you believe yourself compassionate challenges the story that you've spent years building about yourself. And the people we've affected don't need our permission to remember us differently. The younger brother doesn't need you to agree with his interpretation for the experience to have mattered to him. He carries his memory and you carry yours. of you continue living with a different version of the same person. Now consider every relationship that you've ever held. There are people who remember moments that you've forgotten, people whose lives you've affected. without realizing it. people who formed an understanding of your character based on experiences you may barely remember. You will never know every version of yourself that exists in those memories. and you won't have the opportunity to explain every one of them. But the most difficult parts goes beyond what other people believe. because we aren't just capable of hiding parts of ourselves from the people around us. We're capable of hiding them from ourselves. Imagine you've had an argument with somebody you care about. The conversation ended badly. You said something you wish you hadn't. And now a few hours later, you're sitting alone with your phone. You open your messages and start typing, I shouldn't have said that to you. You read it, then you delete it. You try again. I'm sorry about the things that I said. You stare at the screen for a while, then you put the phone down without sending anything. And as the evening goes on, you start replaying the conversation. You remember what the person said first. You remember how frustrated you were. You remember everything that led up to that moment. And slowly, the version of the story you tell yourself begins to change. At first, you knew you said something hurtful. Now you're telling yourself that anybody in your position would have reacted the same way. You didn't really have a choice. They pushed too far. They should have known what would have happened. And by the time you go to bed, you're no longer thinking about apologizing. You're thinking about why you were justified. And nobody else was there while it happened. There wasn't an audience you needed to impress, nobody watching you. Yet somehow the person who began the evening believing they owed somebody an apology ended it believing they were the ones who had been wronged. That's the mask we wear for ourselves. Because we have a reputation with ourselves as well. an understanding of our character that we've spent years developing. And when our behavior threatens that understanding, sometimes we change the way we explain what happened before we change the way we see ourselves. if you've built your identity around being honest, admitting you've been dishonest can be difficult. have spent years making decisions that genuinely reflected your values, but now there's something you've done that doesn't fit. And accepting it means acknowledging a side of yourself you'd rather believe wasn't there. So we find ways to protect the identity that we've built. We justify the decisions that make us uncomfortable. We give ourselves credit for intentions that never became actions. We convince ourselves that certain moments don't represent who we really are. But if every time that our behavior contradicts our identity, we decide that behavior wasn't really us, how much of ourselves are we refusing to acknowledge? I don't believe our worst moments define everything about us. That would be just as incomplete as pretending those moments never happened. But there is a difference between recognizing that a mistake doesn't define your character and refusing to acknowledge that it reveals something about you. And that's why I question the familiar idea that our true character is revealed when nobody is watching. being alone removes the pressure of the other person's expectations. But it doesn't remove our own. have an image of ourselves that we want to preserve. And sometimes admitting the truth threatens the image more than anybody else's judgment ever could. Think about how difficult it can be to admit something to yourself that you've never said aloud. There might be no immediate consequence for acknowledging it. Nobody is waiting to judge you. And still, you resist. Because once you acknowledge it, you can no longer understand yourself in exactly the same way. That's what makes this mask different. When we're hiding something from other people, we often know we're doing it. But when we're protecting our understanding of ourselves, the explanations can feel so reasonable that we don't recognize what we're avoiding. we know what we intend. And that knowledge can make it easier to excuse what we actually did. But knowing what our own thoughts are don't automatically make us the most accurate judges of our own character. people do not know everything about us. and we don't necessarily know everything about ourselves either. Some parts of our character may only emerge when life places us in circumstances that we've never experienced. Other parts can be revealed and we'll find ways to explain them away. So when I ask, who are we when nobody is watching? I don't believe being alone automatically reveals one true person beneath every mask. We're still carrying years of experiences, relationships, and expectations that have shaped the people that we've become. and even in complete privacy, we can remain invested in protecting that identity. I want to return to that room that we imagined at the beginning of this conversation. Only this time, there aren't five people sitting in it. There's everyone who has ever known you. The people who raised you, the friends you grew up with, the people you loved, disappointed, and eventually lost touch with. Even the people who no longer want anything to do with you. Somewhere in that room is somebody who remembers you showing up for them during one of the hardest moments of their life. and somewhere else is a person who remembers waiting for you to show up when you never did. There's somebody who remembers something kind you said without thinking twice about it. And somebody else who can still remember words you wish you'd never spoken. They are not holding complete accounts of your life. They are holding different parts they experienced. and as you listen, there will be contradictions. Stories that make you proud. Stories that make you uncomfortable. And moments you might not even remember. you will want the opportunity to explain yourself, to tell them what you meant, what you were going through, and why you made the decisions you did. Some of those explanations will deserve to be heard. But even after everybody has finished speaking, there would still be one person in that room whose understanding of you hadn't been fully examined. And that person is you. Because you've spent your entire life witnessing your decisions from the inside. You've had access to every intention, every private fear, and every explanation you've used to make sense of the person that you've become. And somewhere along the way, you've built a story about who you A story that probably contains a great deal of truth, but not necessarily the entire truth. No single person in that room knows everything about you. And that includes yourself. So I'll leave you with this. If the person you believe yourself to be, the person the world experiences, and the person you are when nobody is watching are all different. Which one are you afraid to confront? This is Yin. If this resonated, share it with someone who needs to hear it. Not everyone, just someone who's ready. You can find Yin Worldwide Podcast on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. If you want to go deeper, visit our website at live yin.com. subscribe if you're committed to the work. If not, that's fine too. This isn't for everyone. Remember Move with intention.