You do it almost every day of your life. You don’t have to but you act like you do. It’s just this routine that is so embedded in your being that you don’t even recognize it as a choice. It is the suit of thoughts that you wear through life all day. It’s an idea you have about yourself and you behave as though other people can see your thoughts rather than theirs.
Maybe you think you’re fat. Or too old to find true love. Maybe you think you’ll never financially recover. You put those ideas on each morning. You repeat them to yourself. You pull on your pants and remind yourself of your weight. You put on your shirt and think about your broken heart. You check your empty pockets and remind yourself that you are poor. And you pile these ideas onto yourself to the point where the real you is completely obscured by your self-critical thinking.
No one else sees that suit. Did you get that? They don’t see your thoughts. They would see the suit they have for you, which will be totally different than yours because it will feature moments you didn’t know were included, or lies from other parties, or misunderstandings etc. etc. No one really knows anyone. It’s too complex a question because you have to ask, under what circumstances and in precisely what context? So we must either decide people’s spirits are pointed in generally the same direction as ours and then let the rest of the details wash out, or we need to find people who are more aligned with us. But even then, you’ll still need forgiveness just as much as everyone else.
Even if people could see the suit you see for yourself, they wouldn’t notice because virtually all of them are fully invested in worrying about the comparison between the suit they have for themselves and the suit they have for you and everyone else. In short, they’re doing exactly the same thing you are. They are wishing for the life they imagined rather than the one they have, and like you do, they think we see the disparity between their two stories when we’re not even aware they exist. So if you don’t think you’re beautiful, that presumes you know what people think of as beautiful, plus you’re forgetting the enormous impact your 
personality can have on someone’s assessment of your beauty. Everyone’s dated at least one person where, no matter how good looking they were, they were overshadowed by ugly behaviour. You don’t live with beauty, you live with behaviour.
Each day really reconsider the silly futile quality of having that thought suit. Why on Earth would you repeat those ideas to yourself? Why would you put that outfit on every day? Because you know the feeling when you don’t put it on. Those days where you feel smart and sexy and capable. Your good hair days. Well those are created within your own consciousness. You don’t become that person you have to actually be that person. There cannot be wishing. You must act as though it is already true and it will be. It is a leap across nowhere. There is nowhere to fall. Just take it. Take the leap. Believe that you are already great and you will begin to act from a place of greatness. That’s always how it’s worked. I know it’s weird to do but it really does work.
Take your life back. Walk naked through it. Allow people to see the real you. Yes, some won’t like it. But what difference does that make? That’s true now. The point is, the people that really matter to you will never have found you if you hadn’t revealed yourself so honestly. Forget the thought suit. Be a spiritual nudist. Go right past clothing and skin and strip right down to your soul. It’s a wonderfully freeing feeling and it creates stronger bonds than you may have thought possible.
Trust yourself.
Much love. s
A serious childhood brain injury lead Scott to spend his entire life meditating on the concepts of thought, consciousness, reality and identity. It made others as strange to him as he was to them. When he realized people were confused by their own over-thinking, Scott began teaching others to understand reality. He is currently CBC Radio Active’s Wellness Columnist, as well as a writer, speaker and mindfulness instructor based in Edmonton, AB where he still finds it strange to write about himself in the third person.