Who Are You Without the Mask? How to Stop Playing a Role and Become Yourself

Main subjects

AVAlexander VolchekThe social maskF/Friend / friendsIdentity, masks, and other people's expectationsBoundaries, expectations, and the right to be yourselfForgiveness

Main threads of the conversation

• 00:00What does it mean to “seem like someone else” instead of being yourself?
• 01:45“Who am I really?”
• 03:32How do people form opinions of us?
• 07:14We overestimate what others remember about us: different perceptions
• 08:56Dependence on an image: the more you keep up appearances, the less you know yourself
• 09:41How to stop being afraid to be yourself
• 10:19An awareness practice for getting to know yourself
• 11:05Want to change someone's opinion of you? Then you want to use them

Claims made here

Individual claims identified in the material: who said them, when, and what kind of thought they express. Each timestamp opens that point in the video.

• 00:01

  For example, someone works as a taxi driver and says, “I’m not really a taxi driver. I have a business.”

  Alexander Volchek

• 00:32

  Notice that if someone driving a taxi says they are not a taxi driver, that they have a business, to many people they will begin to seem worse, not better.

  Alexander Volchekrecommendationcomparison

• 00:46

  Many people don’t understand that: they don’t seem better.

  Alexander Volchekcomparison

• 00:51

  When a person tries not to be themselves, they don’t simply want to be better.

  Alexander Volchek

• 01:12

  First, they have stopped developing, because someone who does not live their own life is defeated from the outset and will live in great suffering.

  Alexander Volchekcause

• 01:28

  And second, they have lost because they set out to be, to seem better, but other people actually formed some opinion of them.

  Alexander Volchekcomparison

• 01:37

  “How do I understand who I am if it seems to me that I’ve spent my whole life playing—” Yes, if you ask yourself that question... I just told you that you are constantly trying to play the role of someone else in front of other people, to look better so people will think better of you.

  Alexander Volchek

• 02:13

  Look, you are saying, “I am someone who manipulates in front of other people and wants to be better or different.”

  Alexander Volchek

• 09:03

  A person's main task is to get to know themselves, know their own causes and effects, understand themselves.

  Alexander Volchekprinciple

• 11:13

  I discuss this on my Telegram channel, on Instagram and here on YouTube.

  Alexander Volchek