"Hello! Who are you?"

"I'm me. Who are you?"

"I'm me."

"Well, we can't both be me."

That's a silly way to start an article, isn't it, but perhaps there's a tiny kernel of truth in it after all. When you think about it, there probably are two 'me's'. Supposing we're off on a hot date one night. I can't understand it, but beautiful ladies don't flock around me anymore. Come on, you old goat, they never did!

But pretending we're a notch above what we really are isn't necessarily a bad thing. We're wearing our best suit, we've treated our bodies to a bath, shoes are polished, (yes, even the instep!), and we look in the mirror just before leaving. Pretty good, we say. Man, we'll wow her tonight. The adrenaline's flowing nicely, our mind feels quick so that we can make witty conversation. Great. Off we go.

We've fixed in our imagination the fact that we're something quite special. But that's just for a date. In truth, it pays you no end to really examine yourself and find out exactly who and what you are.

Do you ever find yourself asking; 'Now, why in the world did I do/say that?' Some people have a very different understanding of themselves than the way others see them. You know the old lines by Burns?

"Would that God the gift ha' gie us/ To see ourseles as others see us." I think that's one of the wisest lines in poetry.

I remember years ago when I was working in this office, a chap coming up to me and saying, (here I blow my own trumpet. Actually, mostly hot air comes out!);

"Mike, I so wish I was like you. You're so logical!" The thought of anyone wanting to be like me completely floored me, but then to say I was logical, defeated me. I thanked him profusely, but I must admit it did wonders for my self-confidence.

Normally, I have low self-esteem. Always have had, although I'm not as bad today as I was. But there are two types of people basically. The type who thinks everyone's better than she/he is, (that'd be me!), and the polar opposite, the type who thinks he's the bees knees. No-one is better than she/he is.

But it's vital not to be self-deluded in either direction. The ideal is for the conscious and unconscious to be aligned. Being thus balanced makes you much more able to pursue your goals in a (dare I say it?) a logical, sensible fashion.

The goals too should be sensible. I don't mean small. Make them as big as you like, but they must match your desires and skills.

Yes, all right, but how do I do this? How to I 'align' like you said? It's amusing to hear people say that they must 'find themselves'. 'Yes, I'm sure I lost myself down the back of my chair with the TV remote!' The need to find themselves is often used by people anxious to back out of a relationship, marriage, or whatever. But how do we now what our motives truly are?

Most of our behaviour is governed by our unconsciousness. Scientists estimate that every second, our five senses absorb eleven million pieces of information. How do they know this? The counted them! But the point is that we can only consciously absorb about forty pieces of information every second. So there's an awful lot that is unknowable to us and is stored in our unconscious.

Certain behaviour can often be attributed to entirely the wrong set of circumstances. A very interesting experiment was carried out where a group of men were sent singly over a swaying bridge. In the middle, they met a lady. She would stop and talk to them, and the men reported that they felt very aroused; quickened heart rate, sweaty palms, much more so than if they met the lady on the ground in normal circumstances.

In fact what was happening was that they were the victims of their own fear of being in a relatively dangerous situation; the swinging bridge. We'll have another look at this later.

I do hope you enjoyed this article.