Envisioning Ourselves

In my life lately, I've been trying to actually start growing up. I'm realizing that, even though seventeen still feels quite young to me, I'm about to have to graduate and get a job and enter the "real world." I'm kinda in limbo between being a kid and being an adult, and while it can be fun, most of the time it's just moderately scary.
So I figure if I'm about to be figuratively shoved out of the nest, I had better start getting ready. So, long intro coming to a close hopefully very soon, I've been asking God to help me mature and make me into the woman He wants me to be, along with surrendering control of said adulthood to him.
And in my process of attempting to mature, I've been noticing some things.
Tonight, for instance, upon running into an exboyfriend of mine in Wal-Mart (amazing how you can run into every single person you know while you're there. Small towns -sigh-) and hearing some of the not nicer things he had to say, I started thinking them over. (Just for the record, he wasn't, like, just flat out mean. Just a little condescending.) And then I started feeling dumb for even giving it a second thought.
And I started to realize something about myself. I let people get to me far easier than I'd like to think. I've always thought myself so tough, specifically emotionally, but I've been noticing it really isn't that hard to get in my head. So my tough guy image may not be so accurate after all.
So now I wonder, is it just me or does everyone fall victim to this? Do we all have a false image of ourselves ingrained so deeply into our minds that we fail to see who we really are?
This isn't the first time I've come to a conclusion such as this. There have been several times in my life when I've seen an aspect of myself burst forth that I didn't anticipate or even know existed.
So it causes me to wonder...
Are we lost in a world full of people, all with ideas of themselves different than they, themselves, really are?
And when it comes to our own identities, how truly clear is our vision?