When around others, just be yourself without your ego, as you are when alone with your dog or cat, naturally practicing meiosis. The advice is Robert K. Merton’s, and although he was thinking this is the way a professional association should act to be appreciated, it holds for individuals:
If the face which the profession presents to the public is more attractive than the reality, the temporary rise in social esteem will only be the prelude to a great fall. It is the task of the association to improve the effectiveness of the profession; the task of its department of public relations to see to it that the degree of improvement becomes widely known. The art of meiosis—that is, of sustained understatement—is the art appropriate to the public relations arm of a truly professional association.
(Quoted from “The Functions of the Professional Association,” by Robert K. Merton. The American Journal of Nursing. January 1958. Vol. 58, No. 1. January 1958.)
For a brief biography of Robert K. Merton, click here. For images of or relating to Robert K. Merton, click here.
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