They’re Watching You

Adedayo Adeyanju
2 min readMay 4, 2022

— From Dayo, as she experiences and learns. Welcome to The Mind Palace!

Photo by Jeremy Thomas on Unsplash

Person A: “…yeah that’s why sometimes I want to say some things but it’s her so I drop them, you might not even get them because it’s you…”

Everyone is being watched. They’re watching you. And you better know it.

Of course, no one goes out of their way to track your life (I hope) but you leave impressions. First impressions, fifth impressions, and a thousand more. You do a thing and people attribute them to you. You do a thing and people build a lens through which they see you. Everything you do or say is interpreted in light of how they see you. They didn’t assume a thing. You laid the works, you gave them the glass and now all they do is see.

The impressions you leave on people, good or bad, build your reputation. What you give determines what you’re known for. What you give determines, to a large extent, how others treat you. Wonder how friends know, to a good extent, what you can and cannot do? What they do not know you can do is entirely because you have never done similar in their presence.

Deep this: if you want a movie you know who to go to because person X always has movies and if X surprisingly doesn’t, X would direct on where to go. If you need someone to lie for you, you go to Y because Y is that good at lying, and when you need to hear the absolute truth, you know you can’t go to Y because, well, Y lies.

Again, no one goes out of their way to track your life. It just happens because we’re humans and we collect data. What you do and say tailor how people think of you and treat you. Your reputation, image, or whatever word is very much in your control.

Until next time,

Dayo

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Adedayo Adeyanju

I live, I learn, then I write. Welcome to my mind palace! Now only on Substack: themindpalacetmp.substack.com