Harmonize Your Private and Public Selves

How to integrate private interests into work-life performances

Colm Toibin writing in the New Review of Books suggests that journal writing uncovers the conflict between the secret personal life and the need to transform it.

Whatever means you use, I bet one of your deepest desires is to integrate your private interests with your public life. Imagine the satisfaction of incorporating your true self into your work life.

This integration is what happened to me. Intense introspection about my early life and its later evolution made me realize I needed to transform my conduct.

I wanted to act in public in a way that reflected the interests and values of my private self.

Instead of being a self that only wrote down his thoughts for my benefit, I wanted to become comfortable sharing my thoughts with others.

If you are going to integrate public and private selves, how can you bring this about?

Cope with Fear

Here is where the first block arrives: Fear. We fear that what is within us won’t be accepted, will be condemned, criticized, or rejected.

To banish erroneous and deluded beliefs is the first task. Such was my experience in manifesting private wants into the outside world.

It is a safe assumption that many of us hold beliefs that do not help us achieve what we want. Hence the need for tests, small, incremental steps to determine whether our assumptions about what MIGHT happen are correct.

The Value of Direct Experience

The only way to do this is by direct experience. For example, when I started making sales calls in real estate years ago, I believed that the prospect would reject my initiative and I would feel embarrassed.

However, a small sampling of encounters proved otherwise. The norms of politeness protected me from rude rejection. Furthermore, I could cope with rejection with a bit of practice. It wasn’t the devastating feeling I thought it might be.

If you review your life experiences, you will find examples of how your initial ideas of how something might turn out proved incorrect.

The key move here is to clear away presumptions, especially rebuttable presumptions. These beliefs, like those above, are assumed to be valid until a person proves otherwise.

Scripting

The next step is to find a script to ease yourself into performance. The kind of script I have in mind influences you and the outside world.

A script must contain the rationales behind your decision to ‘go public.’ You must know the rewards and justifications for being a public performer.

For example, I decided to go public with my identity as a personal change consultant; I wanted to help people maximize their self-respect. In doing so, I had to know what that meant and to disclose this mission in ways that accurately portrayed my aim to different audiences.

Putting together your package or ‘brand’ is crucial; it involves knowing your aims, practical steps, and foundational beliefs that sustain the enterprise.

A short script enables you to say, within ten or fifteen seconds, what you are about, why, and what benefits you will promise.

Deepest Desires

Finally, you need a statement of your deepest desires or holy grail. Self-vindication must come before your public performance, a justification before denial or censure.

You need to know why you are doing what you propose and are ready to defend and justify.

In my case, I wanted to focus on correcting the deficit in self-worth. And I wanted to do this in health and fitness and later in volunteer work.

And I wanted to do these activities to build my confidence and self-approval.

In sum, if you want to unveil a secret self, find a way to deal with your fears. Next, create a script that covers your underlying aims and justifications for your new identity. Lastly, articulate your deepest desires so you can know how to vindicate or defend yourself in the face of pushback, doubts, and criticism.

Integrating your private interests into your public life will inspire exceptional rewards. As I have found, the sense of well-being that follows is worth the effort. What more remarkable thing is there than to feel good and think well of yourself because of how you decide to live your life?

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