There’s a phrase I’ve heard more times than I can count, from clients across every industry and every level of leadership:
“I wish you could see yourself the way other people see you.”
It’s usually said with warmth. Sometimes with a little frustration. Always with the underlying recognition that the person on the receiving end is carrying a negative version of themselves that doesn’t match the good that everyone else in the room can plainly see.
Most of us are far more fluent in our weaknesses than in our strengths — and we assume, almost automatically, that everyone else reads us the same way we read ourselves.
They almost never are.
A fascinating body of research makes this concrete in a way that’s hard to dismiss. Studies by researchers at the University of Texas and the University of Chicago have found that when people perform an act of kindness — something as simple as sharing a cup of coffee or giving away a cupcake — they consistently underestimate how much it means to the person on the receiving end. The giver focuses on the act itself and figures it’s a small thing. The recipient experiences the warmth behind it and feels genuinely seen. (You can learn more in this episode of NPR’s Hidden Brain podcast.)
We make up stories about how we’re coming across. And we’re usually wrong.
The same dynamic plays out in reverse when it comes to our insecurities. We see our doubts in high resolution. We know where we hesitated, where we weren’t at our best, where the answer didn’t come as quickly as we thought it should. And we assume all of that is visible — that it reads to others like a cast on a broken arm. Undeniable evidence that I am “broken.” Obvious to anyone looking.
It isn’t. What others see is almost always the act, not the doubt behind it.
When you help someone who’s fallen off their bike, they’re not evaluating your medical credentials. They’re grateful you stopped, that you can get real medical help. When you speak up in a meeting, people aren’t cataloging your uncertainty — they’re receiving your idea, sometimes just grateful you spoke up because they couldn’t. When you show up imperfectly but genuinely, most people experience the showing up, not the imperfection.
There’s a concept — sometimes called divine dissatisfaction — that describes people who are genuinely driven toward excellence precisely because they can always see the gap between where they are and where they want to be. Martha Graham, one of the greatest artists of the 20th century, called this impulse “divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.”
It’s not a pathology. It’s a gift. The people who experience it tend to be thoughtful, growth-oriented, and deeply invested in doing things well. They see the gap as a possibility, not a weakness. Motivation rather than judgment.
However, when you’re wired to see your own gaps in high resolution, you start to assume that resolution is universal. You see the mistake you made, the moment you weren’t at your best, the answer you didn’t have — that’s not divine dissatisfaction; that’s just self-judgment — and you assume it registered for everyone else the way it did for you.
It almost never did.
The dissatisfaction is real. But it’s internal. And it doesn’t project outward the way we assume it does.
There’s a scene in Ted Lasso — Season 1, Episode 8: “The Diamond Dogs” — that captures this perfectly. After spending his first night with Sassy, Ted can’t stop second-guessing himself. He’s questioning his judgment and wondering whether the whole thing was a mistake. Beard listens for a moment, then asks one simple question:
“Did you have fun?”
He did.
Then Beard asks the better question:
“Did she have fun?”
She did.
That’s the whole intervention. Because from the outside, there was nothing to evaluate. Ted had just lived his life. But from inside his own head, the critic was already in full session — certain that his internal experience was legible to everyone around him. And he missed the fun that was clearly had by all.
That’s the pattern. We see our flaws, worries, and judgments in vivid detail and assume they’re just as vivid to everyone else. The research says otherwise. Experience says otherwise. And the people who care about us say otherwise — often repeatedly, to little effect.
Learning to hold both views — yours and theirs — is one of the more useful things a leader can practice. Not dismissing your own self-awareness, which is genuinely valuable. But being willing to let the outside view inform the inside one. To take seriously what people reflect back to you, especially when it’s more generous than what you see yourself.
Because the version of you that other people experience is also real. It’s also true.
It’s just a different truth than the one you’re most used to carrying.
Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash
