Or debunking our own ‘after thoughts’ that we believe others hold against us and discovering, it’s all created by me.
I’ll start by sharing that I regularly write notes about things that come up within me during the day (written on the back of sales-tickets, to use that whole whiteness of paper!) and place some keywords on how I experienced myself in situation, in my interactions with people, any memories or patterns to open up, dreams, fears… and that’s how I get to have something to say and write about, which is part of the joy of getting to know oneself, when looking deeply, there’s a ton to open up and create a solution for and this point of ‘what will others say’ has been there for more than a week and I have kind of deliberately ‘skipped it’ over, lol procrastinating my own benefit, so here it goes for once and for all.
This rather common after-thought of ‘what will others say’ I’ve found to be very common in most of us human beings in terms of how we are individuals that constantly see ourselves through ‘the eyes of others’ which means: we constantly think that everything that we do is always going to be scrutinized and judged by others and usually not in the most beneficial or ‘flattering’ ways. This is something that I got to look at through listening to some parts of a ‘hangout’ between 4 young guys or teens in the Conscious Consumer Network discussing stuff about their lives, their points of view at their age and the problems that mostly press on them and a recurrent one seemed to be how other peers might judge them and how adults can also look down upon them, which also goes in the way of feeling ‘out of place’ or feeling scrutinized by others.
It got me looking into how I felt at that age in my teens or even pre-teens when I wanted to already be an adult all the time and get to do the things that ‘grownups do’ and feeling outside of the box with my own peers and just uncomfortable within my own skin, not fitting in and wanting to be alone but at the same time craving for social interaction. And a lot of the limitations as to why we many times limit ourselves in the things that we do or don’t do are based on the sneaky thinking related to ‘what will others say or think?’
This is something that until this day I can struggle with, especially when it comes to acknowledging a situation in my life where I am fearing to be called out for ‘failing’ at something or not fulfilling what I believe others’ ‘expectations’ are towards me, believing that people will diminish ‘who I am’ if I explain why I decided not to follow through with a particular life-project that I had planned for myself initially – or when I see myself not having the ‘regular profession’ that you can actually get a ‘title’ from a ‘renowned’ institution validating the very activity I am dedicating my life to – or when I can see at my past of relationships with people that didn’t end up ‘so well’ or when I’ve dared to not follow some ‘traditions’ or when I dared to follow some but not ‘culminate’ them as I believe others expected me to…. And the list could go on and in fact I will review all of this for myself because all of this that I am naming means that I am defining as ‘who I am’ and as something that I believe others are in fact ‘holding against me’ to invalidate me, to inferiorize me, to ‘not be taken seriously,’ to be diminished as a ‘dreamer that wants to change the world’ or to be defined as a ‘quitter’ or someone that has not yet ‘accomplished’ something ‘of value’ in system standards or someone that hasn’t made the brightest choices in life… and the list might go on as well.
In the past two weeks I’ve had to confront myself with my creation, my reality, the results of my starting point and choices in a point of self-creation that led me to look at myself in the mirror, in self-honesty and realize that upon having written about most of the things I was deciding and going through, I was mostly willing to walk through the process of making a somewhat tough decision in my life, yet at the same time discovering that I thought of how easy it would actually be if I didn’t have to confront it with anyone else in my life – not the society and community I live in including my family, my colleagues and friends and the rest of the people who I think are ‘out to find a flaw in me’ to then diminish myself to a point of ‘failure.’ In essence, a lot of what was bothering me was in fact the notion of ‘what will others say or think about me’ my decisions, my reality.
However as much as people can actually talk and have a say on everything – as we all do at any given time about anything we decide to create a judgment or opinion about – I realized that all of this that I was holding inside me was in fact myself, my own judgments, ideas, beliefs, perceptions, being my own worst judge, myself caring about ‘an image’ or a certain ‘ego-status’ that I have kept as an ideal of ‘being flawless.’
As I write this what comes up is an explanation of how early on this boils down to in my life, where the actual origin of this is yes, having been the ‘perfect student’ with ‘clean A’s’ all the way from the moment I stepped into a school and having people, my peers that were also 7 or 8 year olds coming at me and telling me how much they were going to ‘beat me’ next time at something, and how they would get on top of my position and I would fail and they would laugh at my misery – etc. Yes, of course not a nice thing to go through considering I had or have been very gullible about the human condition and could not understand how someone could be that ‘mean’ to me – and that caused quite a lot of commotion and uncertainty in myself but didn’t stop me from continuing doing my best and thanks to my mother from whom I learned – and still do – to focus on myself, to do it for myself, to never mind what others think or say and that their words represented them, defined them, not me.
That was supportive at the time and it did help a lot to go through every day at school where I would at times be subject of ‘whole-class’ discrimination where it was as if everyone just decided to ‘turn against me’ in a way to ostracize me. It felt horrible, I would arrive home very sad and crying out because of it and I didn’t want to go to school any longer due to that, but I did anyways – unfortunately just like many, many kids nowadays that get bullied at school and go through worse situations than I did – and having this coming from even those girls that I deemed as ‘my friends’ was my first taste of betrayal, but also of seeing how much ‘what others say or do towards me’ could affect me.
Over the year growing up I learned to create a hard veneer towards all of that kind of criticism, which also led me to become a ‘tough head’ at times, antagonistic, be defensive, be outspoken and a bit ‘over the top’ in certain aspects which at the same time I don’t regret at all because at the time, it did help me walk through the rest of school years not trying to ‘find a spot’ any longer but rather building my own space and getting along with anyone that I could, which is something I am glad I did. I wasn’t deliberately becoming ‘apart’ from others as a form of rejection to others or spiting them, but didn’t attempt to ‘fit in’ any longer, while also learning to talk to and relate to most people in my class, which is cool to do and this I’d recommend anyone around that age to do: be yourself, create your own spot, get along with everyone, treat everyone as equals and that’s what you’ll get back as well.
Back to the point of ‘What will others say’ and how it plays out into my current life situation is where I am the one that has kept that same belief within me that ‘others are out to get me’ or ‘watch me fall’ and that I have to keep a certain façade of ‘all is well’ and ‘doing great’ all the time so as to not give any ‘entry’ to a ‘flaw’ in me that could unleash criticism, judgment, opinions coming from others that might be just waiting to ‘find fault’ on me.
Now this is all that I have in fact created in my own mind, it is what I have accepted and allowed to give power away to as ‘what others will think of me’ and in fact it has been a constant point these days when having to confront people in my family, my community about the changes in my life and I could see that as much as I have done a pretty good job at presenting myself in a cool, calm and collected manner and as much as this is in fact an expression that seems comfortable in the moment – there are still discomforts in the background based on this notion of ‘how others might be thinking, judging, conversing’ about my life situation and how others will be opinionated about my choices and decisions.
One thing that has worked for me and that I have reminded myself about is to realize ‘I am the one living my life, my creation, my outcome and my choices, not anyone else’ which means if anyone has an opinion, belief, idea, perception, judgment about me, it is still their perception, their point of view or judgment that defines them and how they use their mind to assess other people’s life situation, but it certainly doesn’t define me.
Now this of course doesn’t mean that I don’t hear anyone else’s perspective on my situation, I do, do I am aware of how I also assess such feedback. I am fortunate enough to have people in my life that I know I can count on to be simply there as a reminder of my own self-honesty – which is frankly the most valuable thing to do in times where we might be losing our footing in certain situations. And these are the people I can trust on getting feedback on so that I can at the same time check with myself in my own self-trust what I can look at, what can I work on within myself, what can I focus on opening up and creating a solution for the situation I am in, what kind of ways or paths can I create to step on my way through this challenging situation I am in. Therefore this becomes a constructive form of feedback that I can not only blindly take in, but assess within my own self trust, within my own self-honesty and then take it or leave it, but it’s always ‘on me’ and about me supporting myself, me being able to ‘live’ with myself, my choices, my decisions, in my life.
I definitely would like all of our relationships to be that way and this I certainly commit myself to do as well with people that I at the same time, have the fortune to be in a position of assisting and supporting in their own lives, their own process. Supporting, meaning: being there as a reminder of one’s self-honesty, without judgment, without expectations, without prejudices, but in humbleness and understanding, being ‘there’ for another while they find their own way through as well.
This is how I realize that all of the rest of judgments, ideas, prejudices I believe others would have to say about me as all the people that come up in my mind when considering having to ‘explain’ myself and my life, my choices, my decisions are nothing else but my own expectations built through memories, past situations where I would become ‘paralyzed’ with fearing others ‘coming at me’ to point out all the potential ways in which they could watch me fall and enjoy the show… yep, it is quite a problem that this can be happening between kids at such an early age and yes, if one doesn’t have proper support it can reverberate throughout one’s entire lifetime.
Here then I opened up and discovered how this notion of having to confront myself ‘at the eyes of others’ resonates with that early memory at school I described earlier and how the same conditioning of fearing that ‘others rejoice at seeing me fail’ is still keeping me bound to not stand fully clear in my current reality, because of perceiving that ‘others’ words, expectations, judgments, ideas’ about myself can actually have an impact on me, my life and who I am – but! Guess what? They don’t!
I have to remind myself that this that I am experiencing currently as this uncertainty of confronting others in my life and having to ‘explain’ myself as who I currently am in my life and my decisions is something I can actually self-forgive and let go of, because I am the one that is making and living that decision, not anyone else – and that’s how no one really has the actual position of ‘being me’ to have an actual say on who I am, what I do, the choices I make and why I make them. Therefore any thought that comes up in me, about ‘others’ judging me, rejoicing at the notion of me ‘failing’ at something – I have to remind myself that it’s based on past memories and in no way defines ‘me’ currently.
In this I also remind myself that I can only ever be my own worst judge and that I can only be the one that accepts and allows any form of judgment to ‘affect me’ – it’s all on me, and that’s how I see that whenever I am ‘fearing’ what ‘others have to say’ about myself, my life, my choices, my decision, my ways, my principles = it doesn’t define me, but it will if I give my power away to it.
And as an extra point that I’ve proven as well is that, in our minds we tend to completely blow things out of proportion – so even in situations that we might be fearing to confront or perceive as potentially uncomfortable while participating in this backchat about ‘what others have to say’ about me, I’ve proven that most of it I completely blew out of proportion and made it a lot worse than what it actually was, and that I ended up becoming more of a nervous wreck based on my own imaginations and projections than when facing the ‘real deal’ and finding out ‘wow, it wasn’t as bad as I thought’ – this I consider is also one of those very common patterns that we can all remind ourselves about and stop torturing ourselves with it.
So! I’ll stop my own mind in relation to this and I have to say, I’ve definitely been much better at this all that I’ve described today through walking this process from consciousness to self-awareness as life, but not to a complete extent yet which is why it’s awesome to face things in my life and find out ‘hey! I still give too much value to what others might be thinking about me, gotta change that!’ and come here and lay it out for myself so that I cannot run away from my own self-honesty any longer, lol, which is actually another last minute reminder of how contradictory is that we put off or procrastinate to work on the very points that could ease our lives and make ourselves ‘know where we stand’ within ourselves again – it’s all about the power of writing and self-honest personal ‘debunkings’ that can clear the space and make us enjoy discovering ourselves as well.
So, enjoy doing yours and thanks for reading
And! Please gift yourself with this awesome recording to ‘find your way through’ even in the apparently worst-case scenario you might be at in your life, fresh from today:
Everywhere but Within – Demons in the Afterlife – Part 75
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