A person is often judged for things he did not do, and is defined by characteristics that do not resemble him, just because someone told an incomplete story, conveyed a distorted impression, or interpreted a situation from his own angle. This is how an image of a person is formed in the minds of others, an image that has nothing to do with his reality.

When contemplating the Johari window theory, it becomes clear that it is not just a psychological division of personality, but rather a deep introduction to understanding how images are formed in people’s eyes, and how these images can sometimes be fair, and sometimes distorted.

The Johari window divides a person’s self-knowledge into four areas:

An open area that a person knows and others know, a hidden area that only he knows, a blind area that others see but not, and an unknown area that has not yet been discovered. However, reality reveals a situation that the theory does not explicitly mention: a situation in which the defect is not in vision, but in the window itself, when people see what does not exist in the first place.

The open area is clear actions, words, behavior, and everyday choices; It is reality that is presented to the world clearly and honestly.
The hidden area is feelings, intentions, and internal conflicts, things that people do not see but that constitute the essence of the personality. Realizing this area makes a person more compassionate, because he realizes that everyone has something that is unseen.

The blind area consists of the observations of people who have lived direct experience, and it arises from real contact and realistic knowledge.

But the problem begins when an image is formed that does not belong to any of these areas: an image created by someone who did not live the truth, but rather heard it and then transmitted it, thus building an idea about a person who was not actually known. Here Johari’s window is no longer a mirror, but rather the glass becomes cracked; People do not look at a person from his window, but from someone else’s window. He is judged based on an incomplete narrative, a personal interpretation, a passing impression, or a misunderstanding that has magnified over time. And here the real injustice occurs: that a person is seen with eyes that have never seen him in the first place.

This understanding changes a person’s outlook on life. It is no longer necessary to correct the image of everyone who misunderstood, because the real responsibility does not lie in pursuing every wrong idea, but rather in maintaining clarity of behavior and sincerity of intention in the open area.

Johari’s true window is not built on word of mouth, but on direct experience. He who truly knows a person does not need to hear about him, and he who only listens will never know him. From this perspective, life becomes less stressful; The focus goes from trying to convince everyone of the truth to actually living it. Time, interaction, and situations are enough to reveal the truth to those who want to see, not to those who are satisfied with hearing.

Thus, life is understood as a window wider than people’s judgments, truer than their narratives, and deeper than stories circulated without knowledge. A window through which a person can look at himself first, before looking at others.

As Stephen Covey said: “We see the world not as it is, but as we are designed to see it.”