In preparation for an upcoming workshop I am giving, I watched a recording of a previous talk I gave on this topic. I cringed the entire time. Is that how people see me?! Is that what I sound like?! I found a hundred things to hate — my tone of voice (Do I talk too loudly?), the moments I rambled, the way I should have stood straighter, the joke I should have cut, the answer I wish I’d given instead.
By the time the video ended, I had picked myself apart completely. Clearly, I was awkward. Clearly, I talked too much. Clearly, everyone in that room had been politely enduring me.
And yet…I got so much positive feedback about the workshop. People told me how much it helped them. I’ve given it many times, and I was invited to give it again. So, which perception should I trust — the one from inside my cringing brain, or the one from people who were in the room with me?
We love talking about perspective. Try to see it from their side. You just need some perspective. Take a step back and look at the bigger picture. We’ve all heard some version of this, and most of us think we understand what having a proper perspective means.
But there’s one perspective we are all missing, and it’s the most personal one. You have never actually seen yourself. Not really. Not the way other people see you.
Sure, you have looked at yourself in the mirror. You have seen photos. You’ve watched videos of yourself – grimacing. But you have never observed yourself the way you observe everyone else. You have never sat across from yourself at a table, watched yourself walk into a room, or seen your own face in the middle of a conversation.
The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, a fantastic book written by John Koenig, where he coined words to name feelings we all feel but don’t have names for, has a perfect word for this: povism — the frustration of being stuck inside your own head, unable to see yourself in context, forever guessing how you might be coming across.
I think about this a lot. If we can’t see ourselves — and we can’t — then where does our picture of ourselves come from?
We made it up.
There’s an old parable about six blind men who encounter an elephant for the first time. None of them has any idea what an elephant is, what it looks like, what it feels like. They each approach it from a different spot.
The first man touches the side of the elephant. “This is like a wall,” he declares.
The second touches the tail. “No, this is like a rope!”
The third reaches out and feels the trunk. “You’re both wrong. This is clearly like a snake.”
The fourth grabs the tusk. “A spear,” he announces. “This is like a spear.”
The fifth touches the ear and says, with complete confidence: “A fan. It’s like a fan.”
And the sixth wraps his arms around a leg. “Tree trunk,” he says. “Obviously a tree trunk.”
We do something similar. We live with one view — the inside one — and treat it like the full picture.
Ken Wilber uses this story to make a point: nobody is 100% right about anything. But nobody is 100% wrong either. Each perspective is real. It’s just not the whole story.
Think about what happens after you make a mistake at work, or a date that felt off, or a moment where you said something and immediately wanted to take it back. Your brain starts running the tape. I handled that all wrong. I said the wrong thing at the worst moment. I talked too much. I was awkward. My voice was weird. I smiled too much or not enough. I came on too strong. And my face was probably doing something strange the entire time. You build an entire case, detailed and utterly convincing, and you convict yourself without a second thought.
Based on what, exactly?
Based on how you felt. From the inside. Which is the one angle that tells you almost nothing about how you came across.
Distorted self-perception is exhausting, and it has a steep cost. Psychologists link it directly to anxiety and depression. You can succeed by every outside measure and still not recognize the person everyone else sees. You have a faulty internal camera, and it’s been misleading you your whole life.
In 2013, Dove ran an experiment where they asked women to describe themselves to a forensic sketch artist who couldn’t see them. Then strangers who had briefly met those same women described them to the same artist. The results illustrated how distorted our self-perception can be. The same person, two completely different sketches. The strangers’ versions were warmer, more open, more accurate. When the women saw the two portraits side by side — the one they’d described and the one a stranger saw — many of them cried because they saw how big the gap was between how they saw themselves and how they appeared to others.
This same thing happens often in dating. You walk out thinking, “I was so awkward,” while the other person might be walking out thinking, “That was really nice, I hope we see each other again.”
You see the date from the inside — your nerves, your overthinking. They see the same date from the outside — your smile, your presence, the way you listened. Those are two completely different cameras.
It says in Chazal: כל הנגעים אדם רואה חוץ מנגעי עצמו — A person can examine everyone’s blemishes except their own. Not because they can’t see them. Because they can’t accurately assess them. Even in halacha, you are not considered a reliable witness about yourself. You are the witness with the most information and inadmissible testimony. You’re too close, too invested, the least objective person.
Which is exactly why we need in our lives — a coach, a mentor, a Rav, a trusted friend — who can see what we can’t. Someone with enough distance to be objective. Someone who isn’t too close to the story.
Is this the part where I mention I’m a coach? Asking for a friend. 😉
So, back to that video.
The outside view was there, and I still couldn’t see what they saw. I was watching myself, but all I saw was a distorted version of myself. I cringed through the whole thing, catalogued every flaw, and walked away with a verdict that had nothing to do with the feedback I’d received.
They said, “Please come back and do this again.” I said, “Never let me near a microphone again.”
It made me wonder: what if my view of myself is not the most trustworthy one? And maybe yours isn’t either.
Whose perception are you going to believe — the one in your head, or the one from the angle you will never see?
I would bet on the person on the other side of the camera, so the next time someone tells you that you look great, that you did great, that you are great, believe them. They have the outside view. The one you’ll never have.
You know those people who mispronounce words and insist they are saying it correctly? They say “char-CUTE-ery” when it should be “shar-KOO-tuh-ree.” They say it at parties. They say it on dates. They may have said it at their niece’s kiddush. And when someone finally offers the correct pronunciation, they look that person dead in the eye and keep saying it wrong.
There’s a word for that type of person.
Mumpsimus (n.) A person who stubbornly clings to a wrong belief, habit, or practice even after being shown the correct version. Also: the wrong belief itself.
It all began with a medieval scholar who kept mispronouncing “sumpsimus” as “mumpsimus.” When a colleague corrected him, he reportedly said he’d been saying it that way for forty years and wasn’t about to change now. That’s a committed man.
A mispronounced word is just the beginning. Don’t get me started on phrases gone wrong.
“I pacifically asked you not to do that.”
“The statue of limitations has expired.”
“I’ve been saying this since time and memorial.”
“All of the sudden.”
But it doesn’t stop there.
The song you’ve been singing with the wrong lyrics for twenty years. Someone finally plays you the actual words, and you say, “I like mine better,” and keep singing it your way.
The thing you’ve been doing at work forever that everyone knows is inefficient. People have shown you faster, easier ways — a shortcut, a template, a whole new system — and you nod, say “Interesting,” and then go right back to your original method.
That’s mumpsimus. It’s not just being wrong. It’s being corrected, and then doubling down.
The problem isn’t being wrong. Everyone is wrong about something. The problem is that if you admit you’re wrong now, you also have to admit you were wrong every single time before. So you just keep going. Eyes forward. Singing the wrong words.
And before you feel too smug about not being that person — meet sumpsimus.
Sumpsimus (n.) Technically, a correct belief or practice that replaces a wrong but popular one. Less technically — the person who cannot stop chasing it. Always replacing, always correcting, always onto the next thing before the last one had a chance to settle.
If mumpsimus is “I will not change even when I’m wrong,” sumpsimus is “I will change constantly because I might be wrong.”
You know this type, too.
They read one persuasive article and suddenly have a whole new way the world works, until they read the next article. For a while, everything is about grit. Then it’s growth mindset. Then it’s “boundaries,” “toxic people,” or “manifesting.” Each new big idea replaces the last one as the real explanation for why life is the way it is.
Each month, they swear by a different wellness fad. Last month, it was sourdough. Before that, cold plunging. Before that, journaling. They have a different “this is the book that changed my life” book every six weeks.
King Henry VIII said it best. In a speech to Parliament in 1545: “Some are too stiff in their old Mumpsimus, others are too busy and curious in their new Sumpsimus.” A king from five hundred years ago, tired of everyone’s nonsense. We haven’t changed.
In self-improvement, the mumpsimus says, “This is who I am,” and uses that as a full stop. The sumpsimus says, “This new framework finally explains who I am,” and genuinely means it — until the next framework arrives.
So which one are you? Most people think they’re neither. Just appropriately consistent. Reasonably open-minded. Basically fine. And that’s exactly what both a mumpsimus and a sumpsimus think about themselves. That’s the whole joke.
The real question is not whether you’re right or wrong. It’s whether you’re willing to find out.
Disclaimer: Neither of these words gets used much anymore, but they ought to.
And for the record — it’s keen-wah. It has always been keen-wah. You’re welcome.
