THAT'S MEN:Our behaviour is often ruled by a desire to give a particular impression to others, writes Padraig O'Morain.
I WAS TRYING to impress someone the other day and it didn't work. Why should I care about this and why should I bother you with it?
I care about it because the experience brought home to me the extent to which I have spent my life trying to impress people while denying to myself that I was doing any such thing.
And I should bother you with it because this whole business of impressing other people is so important in all of our lives.
There is good impressing and there is bad impressing. When you're impressing with a purpose and you know this is what you're at, that's good impressing.
A taxi driver in New York explained to me once that he avoids danger by the way he carries himself.
His walk and general demeanour is one that tells anyone who needs to know that they better not mess with him or they will suffer serious consequences.
If you were a taxi driver in New York and if you appeared in any way vulnerable, you would be in serious trouble, he said.
That's healthy because he's deliberately setting out to impress bad guys with the idea that he is not a man to be interfered with.
Suppose, though, that he adopted a don't-mess-with-me demeanour, not to scare bad guys but because he was afraid that if people got to know him they wouldn't like him? And suppose he didn't know that this was what he was up to?
That's bad impressing because it would rule his life in ways he was not aware of.
Suppose you work 16 hours today and you've already done that yesterday and you're going to do it tomorrow as well.
Who are you trying to impress and why? Are you deliberately trying to impress a customer into giving you a big order or a boss into giving you a promotion? If so, that's fine. You know what you're doing and why you're doing it.
But what if that's not really it? Suppose what you're really doing is trying to impress your father who died 20 years ago?
That's not healthy because it's an endless task with no end to it. You could find yourself ignoring today's real-life relationships with your family in order to go on impressing somebody who isn't there anymore.
And because your motivation is so old that you're not even aware of it now, you may be fooling yourself into believing that you're really doing it to support your family.
Good impressing tries to influence another person's response for an above-board purpose.
You know those killer hats women wear to weddings? The ones that look like Klingon battleships from Star Trek?
Now, if a woman is wearing one of these things just to impress the other Klingons with her dress sense, that's okay, that's good impressing.
The hat may be terrifying to the male eye but everybody ooohs and aaahs and goes home happy, no harm done.
But suppose the mother of the bride is wearing one of those really mean hats - the sort with the brim that could decapitate a row of enemies if flung by Bruce Lee - and suppose the aim is to show the groom and his family that she is top dog and they'd better not forget it.
Suppose also that she doesn't realise that this is what she's doing. That's bad impressing. The purpose is buried and unrecognised and the scene is set for years of conflict.
I'm assuming here that the mother of the groom doesn't have an even more terrifying hat. If she does, sit back and enjoy the show - and God preserve the happy couple.
What can you do with this sort of information? All you can really do is be aware of the possibility that your motiv- ations may not be what you think.
If you're working 80 hours a week, every week, or trying desperately to please people, asking yourself who you're trying to impress, and why, can bring answers and a change of behaviour.
And remember, it's when something occurs that stops you in your tracks, as happened to me, that you can most benefit from asking yourself what's really going on.
Padraig O'Morain's book, Thats Men, a collection of That's Men columns, is published by Veritas. His blog is at www.justlikeaman.blogspot.com