Years ago, I was overjoyed when my father decided that we can have an encyclopedia collection for the family. I couldn't remember the collection's name now, but I do remember, vividly, many of the first-time-seen images that had made an impact on my young and impressionable life then.

And now, I remember about a particular one. A graphical illustration from the volume on psychology - science of the mind. It was an illustration of a young lady's different portrayals of herself as she assumes various roles in her life.

She was an obedient daughter, an agressive lover, an outspoken worker and a competitive friend. But as she was each one of these, she was also another. Another self, which she didn't and couldn't show to anyone else. An introverted self which she kept only to herself.

We all know this. About ourselves. Aren't we all just - to some extent - similar to this young lady? We project different facets of ourselves to different people that we interact with everyday. It's our way of getting what we desire, protecting ourselves from emotional hurt, asserting our influence at work and make ourselves liked (or hated) by the world. We manage our relationships and we do it around our true inner-self.

Our true inner-self is who we really are, defined by our temperament, reinforced by our beliefs and values.

Each portrayal has a distance from this inner-self of ours. The further the distance, the more extreme it is. Occasionally, we wonder how can a sweet looking girl who appears to be such a loving daugther to her father, can behave so maniacally in front of hundreds other vehicle drivers along the freeway. Many times, we also find ourselves in a conflicting situation where we are the rebellious child to our parents but a strict parent when in comes to our kids.

Because we manage each of our personalities, sometimes at great emotional costs, we should not let the distances be too great between our portrayals and our inner-self. We should always mindfully search for our center and subsequently seek to reduce the gaps with our portrayals. Reduction in distance can only be achieved by realigning our interval values with our external behaviors and actions.

Being 'true to yourself' is about re-aligning who ourselves really are with the myriad of personalities that we project to the people whom we care, whom we work with and whom we meet even when its only a brief acquaintance. Only when there's less conflict within ourselves can we then achieve real happiness.

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