Are you dressing up for your outer world?

Do you always act in a way that is congruent with who you are?
On the TV show Mash, Klinger wants to go home. He comes up with this great plan that if he can only make people believe he is crazy he will be released and sent home from the war. He decides that he will dress like a woman and pretend he believes he is one. For sure the army will believe he is crazy, release him from his duties and send him home. The only problem is everyone saw through his pretending.

Do you act like somebody you are not in order to create an image in the world? Do you find your inner world colliding with your outer world? How many times have you put on “the dress” and acted in a way to say something or do something other than what you knew to be true for you? Do you so want to be somewhere other than where you are that you “pretend”?

We often think we have to show up in a certain way in the world. We have this image to uphold. If we act a certain way then certain things will happen – people will like us, people will accept us, people will want to be our friend, people will think we’re smart, people will think…..

Sometimes our choices put us in situations we would rather not be in. We do not know how to “get out of the mess” we find ourselves in. We create a persona to deal with it. We take on traits, ways of being that are not our true self.
How many personas have you created? Are they really fulfilling what you hope they will? Do you sometimes feel like two different people?