He asked me why I put ‘nervous’ as one of my adjectives. Psst! While you're here, have a listen to the latest episode of The Undone - where Lucy and Em talk all things dating with an STI. I hadn’t even considered that, but it obviously held some importance to him, which intrigued me and opened up a very candid conversation about money. His response? “Well, financially, you’re one of the most sensible people I know.” Especially considering he is one of the very few people who have seen me at my least sensible. I was drawn to ask him, why? Why ‘sensible’. In all fairness, I’d like to think I am pretty sensible but there were definitely words I thought depicted me better. I skimmed over the list and saw that there were quite a few words that I agreed with but wouldn’t necessarily have put in my top ten.
(These were the words he had picked to describe me that I hadn’t picked myself.) He was clearly more confident in who he perceived me to be than I was.Īfter letting go of my initial shock, I glanced down to the quadrant titled “The Blind Self”. I was confused, not just because of the lack of matching words but because while it took me a whole five minutes to select the words, it took him all of about 40 seconds. To my surprise, we only had 3 words that overlapped. Once we had both picked our chosen words, I eagerly snatched his paper and began to sort them into the Johari Window diagram. Separately, we scribbled down words we thought best described me. This was the guy who knew he was about to be forced to do some sort of quiz just by the look in my eye when I said “Oh my god, I have to show you something.”Īfter a rushed elevator pitch of what the Johari Window was, I grabbed two pens and a couple scraps of paper and we got to work. He’s hard-wired my behaviours into his brain and watched me exhibit every mood on the spectrum. My boyfriend is the kind of partner who knows my nuances so well he can sense something is up without me having to say anything. Thinking ahead, on the grounds of how well my boyfriend knew me, I expected that we would have at least 7-8 words that overlapped and maybe just a few obscure ones that didn’t. What you don’t know about yourself (The Undiscovered Self)Īfter reading about the Johari Window, there was no way I wasn’t convincing my boyfriend to do the exercise with me.
How you truly see yourself (The Private Self) How openly you present yourself to others (The Public Self) Depending on whether your answers correlate, each quadrant will reveal one of four situations. Using a diagram as seen above, you write all the adjectives that overlap and those that don’t within four quadrants of the window.