How well do you know yourself?

What would you say if someone asks you "Hey! What kind of person are you"? Not in an interview, but in an honest situation probably after a few drinks. And what do you think your friends would say about you? Not in front of you but at those parties that you missed or even better at that dinner your were not invited to.

Do things you say about you match with the things your friends say about you? You might think that you are very close to people and your friends think that you are too intrusive. It gets complex when you expand beyond friends. Your hiking partner might perceive you as a dare devil and your boss perceives you as exceptionally risk averse. Conflicting views huh!

Does this mean that we have multiple personalities? May be it just suggests that the perception of your personality varies on who you talk with - thyself, your friends, your family, your boss and so on.


Wouldn't it be nice to know how people perceive you? Corporations spend millions of dollars to answer this. Why can't we as individuals start thinking in those lines?

End of the day, I think it would be an interesting world if you can know thyself as people know you. Here's your business idea - develop a software application that asks your friends (from Facebook?) to define your personality type and presents you with anonymous results. Any investors or software geeks who want to take a stab at this? The dating sites can benefit from such an application. They still make a match based on who you think you are and not based on who you really are (those eHarmony ads!).

PS: Blogged from Acela train (yeah! it finally has wifi) on route to Boston from NYC, after looking at this stranger sitting in the next row on who I almost had a “personality opinion”.