People will always have opinions about you. You will please them, enrage them, annoy them, delight them. If you tried to keep up with all these reactions, you would drive yourself crazy. That is why most of them take place without our knowledge.
This is good.
Problems result when you pay too much attention to these reactions and try to change your behavior. You let people hold referendums on your worth with their opinions, and you hand over your power. It’s called people pleasing and results in midlife crisis and martyrdom.The older you get, the more you see that these judgments are often more about the other person and their particular bugaboos than about you.
Yes, sometimes people will give you the truth about yourself; but often it is distinctly colored by their own issues and less-than-reliable. At best figuring out the objective truth is an imprecise science, which is why you need some healthy detachment.You can’t care.
Exercise
The way to free yourself is to make yourself absurd to others and learn not to care. Guess what? It’s really hard. You must do something that others will judge as uncool. This may be a stretch, but over time your dependence on approval will lessen. Habituation over time brings results.
Try: Singing along with the radio in the car where everyone can see you. Especially at traffic lights. When you get really proficient you can even look over and smile at the next car, while singing. At the next level, roll the windows down and allow that Barry Manilow to float out. Be okay in whatever you do…and nameless people will no longer have your power.(You will.)
