In the age of social media, where everyone can choose to share anything about their lives online, it's important for us to reflect on the type of image of ourselves that we wish to project to the world. We typically have 3 "selves".
- Personal - Your personal life is what happens within yourself - it whom you really are inside and when nobody else is around.
- Private - This is the person you choose to be around your friends and family.
- Public - This is who you are in public. You may refrain from talking about specific subjects or be on your best behavior while in public as you know that your reputation is at stakes.
Think of an onion where Personal is at the center and the subsequent layers are Private and Public.
The difference between our personal self and our private self is sometime minimal but may be vastly different than the person we choose to be in public. Who we are in Personal and our Private life isn't necessarily what we want people in our public life to know. Knowing who we are in our personal and private life can help determine what we want, or don't want, to go into our public life.
I'm one to believe that if you have evils in your personal or private life that it will eventually be found in your public life. If we think of Tiger Woods, or Bill Clinton for example we can clearly see that the mistakes they've made in their private lives has had a negative impact on their public life and ended up costing them much.
The opposite can also be true where someone has a bad public life but is actually good in his private and personal life but we don't typically learn about those situation as much because private/personal matters are typically not talked about.
If you decide to share bits and pieces or your life just think about the consequences that may come as a result and keep in mind that what you post online can be viewed by anyone - forever.
