by Patrick Bailey
5. Don't Worry About What Others Think of You
You can accomplish anything in life if you don't fear the ridicule of others. We all started out in school and quickly learned not to make fools of ourselves in front of others unless we wanted to be laughed at. This is part of the socialization process for children. They need to learn what is appropriate social behavior. But after we've learned that, then the field is open to us. We no longer need that inner voice telling us that we might be ridiculed for what we are trying. We no longer need to be just followers along with the pack; we can become the leader of our own life. If someone criticizes us, we should think over what is said and see if we can improve ourselves, according to our own values. If we have followed our own values in our decision-making process, we have succeeded. Let others follow their own rules. We will follow our own.
On the subject of worrying, it's a fair question to ask, "Why worry about anything?" Does worrying ever accomplish anything? Does worrying ever make you any richer? If it did, wouldn't there be a lot of millionaires in this world! The world is out there and it's big and it's sometimes a little scary to be in it. We care about others' welfare, too. Worry is only human. Remember when you worry that you are being human and love yourself for that. But don't overdo it. Think of worrying as part of life and a sign that you are connected to things and that you have a caring heart. It's a warm feeling to know someone has worried about us. It means they love us. But we know that their worrying didn't help us solve our problem. So, next time to want to spend your energy worrying about someone, why not send that person a thoughtful card instead? They'll actually receive that and it will make their day a little brighter. (And you don't have to write inside how worried you are about them.) Just send the card and tell them you love them!
It has been written that those people who are always seeking approval from others are still looking for approval from their parents. That important figures in their lives are giving or taking away approval just like their parents did. These people were never sure of how their parents felt about them, so they have continued to look for their approval through the eyes of others. Whether your parents are living or dead, this doesn't make much sense. Your parents are your parents and that's where it stops. You don't a whole mob of "parents" wandering around waiting to correct you or to praise you. Make your real parents proud of you by being your own person. If they don't like the way you live your life, the only thing you can do is love them. You can't change them. Love them and accept them. But don't let them control you through their disapproval. It's because they don't understand you that the problem occurs. Try and make them understand you. If they can't, it's still your life to live. It's still your responsibility to answer to the real "boss" of your life, that person that looks back at you in the mirror!
What others think about you is important in the sense that they provide you with a reflection of your attitudes. Other people are a gauge of whether you are giving of yourself and being considerate of them. They act as a barometer of how you are being yourself. You don't want to trample over other people's feelings and rights, waving a banner that you are just being true to yourself and not being told how to live your life. You want to be independent within the context of other people and in full respect of their independence also. Independence does not mean solitary action and damn the consequences. That's taking it too far.
Does being independent mean that you always have to get your own way? No. That's what a dictator is. Sure, a dictator could be described as independent but at what cost? A dictator is a perversion of independence. A dictator serves his own interests only and has no respect for the rights of others unless it happens to serve his whim. Using other people to further our own ends is not enhancing us. It doesn't make us better people. Maybe we get our own way through bullying or some other manipulative behavior but we are not enlarged by this. We haven't played fair and we put our need to win over the rights and feelings of others. And what do we gain by this? Do we put getting what we want above being a decent human being?
The question of sensitivity enters here and how to use it. Being sensitive is a good thing. Artists are sensitive. But it's important not to let your sensitivity hurt you by dwelling on the bumps and bruises of life. Some people will say and do things that will offend you. They may upset you and even make you doubt yourself. This is the down side of being sensitive. But you can become aware of it and recognize that you can control your sensitivity and your attitude. It won't make the remark or action that offended you go away, but you can recognize that you want to use your sensitivity for positive experiences and not for negative ones. You want to heighten and magnify the positive and beautiful in life and your sensitivity is your guide to this. You don't want to feel depressed or abused or misunderstood. You can't control other people. Be less sensitive to things that are negative, especially ones that bruise your ego. This does not mean that you don't stand up for yourself, which is the subject of a later chapter.
You have a lot to offer the world, a lot to contribute, and this will bring you satisfaction. But if you spend too much time worrying over how much you are appreciated or how much you are misunderstood, then this detracts from the attitude that is the source of your giving. A giving attitude to the world is the key to becoming all you can be. If you do something, and then wait for the accolades to come rolling in, and for some reason they don't, then you have voluntarily stopped your momentum. Don't stop yourself by waiting for others to validate what you've done. How many writers and artists could accomplish their goals if they had to be constantly taking stock of what kind of impression they were making or what kind of feedback they were getting? It's up to you to do your best and let the rest take care of itself.
6. Be Patient
Patience is like the air around us, without sufficient quantities of it on a regular basis, we will suffocate. My sister says that I should have lots of patience because I haven't used any yet. But I realize the importance of it and I can actually feel it when I exercise it. It feels good and it frees me from petty concerns. If I let patience wash over me, like a hot shower, I know that I can face the day. Patience is something that you immerse yourself in. It's not resignation or giving up or being passive about life. It's about being secure in your life and not being threatened when each little thing doesn't go according to your plan. If you have patience, others will be calmed by you. You will be a steadying force in any organization or family and you will be making a lot of good things happen (even if you are not even aware of them). Patience is not the same as doing nothing. Patience is a state of harmony with the world around you.
Look at nature if you want to know what patience is. You don't see birds in line at the home-improvement store, waiting to buy ready-built nests. Nest-building is their life. Be happy!
I often think we live in two dimensions. There is the dimension of responsibility where bills have to be paid and work has to be done. That's where we get our food for worry and there is usually plenty to go around. That's where patience is needed but not where it can be created in the first place. The place to "grow" our patience is in the other dimension, the dimension of our connectedness to others where we have our feelings. To develop patience is to find the quietude that comes with practicing harmony with other people and the world around us. We do this by listening to them and by being considerate of them and by releasing our selfish natures and opening ourselves to our potential. Patience comes from being comfortable with yourself in the world.
Patience is really strength. Its roots go very deep and it can withstand anything if it is developed. When I sense that another person is patient I feel like I'm in the presence of someone who knows about life. If it weren't for the patience of some people (including our own parents), where would the world be? How could it go on?
We might think of our inner self as a stubborn mule who just sits there some days and won't budge. We race on ahead in life without it. We don't want to be "held back" in the race because our inner self is doubtful about our choices. Eventually we have to come back to our inner self and check on him. He's asleep. Because we haven't taken him with us on our journey we don't feel complete. We sit down next to him and pat him on the head. He wakes up. We want to just sit with him a while and try and understand him. He doesn't tell us what to do. He just sometimes gets up and follows us and sometimes he won't. If you don't feel comfortable where you are in your life or where you are going, your inner self is back there on the road where you left him. Go back to him and sit down for a while and be patient with him. Next time you go forward, if he thinks you are willing to accommodate him, he will go with you.
Why would anyone want to run away from his true self? Do we think that our true self will lie to us? Don't we trust our true self? Is our true self too passive for us, not enough gumption to get us where we think we deserve to be? Why can't we beat some sense into our true self to get with the program? Do we want our true self to be slick and sharp and cut a fine figure in the world? Are we worried and embarrassed that someone will see that our true self is just an old mule? What kind of an image would that project for us?
Why don't we just make up a sign and wear it around town. Let's be honest with ourselves and our neighbors. Let's write on this sign, "I don't care who I really am but I want to convince you that I'm somebody who you can respect and love. Believe me, if you saw my true self, you wouldn't be impressed. So, don't blame me for ignoring my true self and getting on with the game." Some of us don't need to even wear the sign. Our lives make the statement for us. One of the keys to having patience is the ability to accept and live with uncertain outcomes. Some people want everything nailed down because they cannot relax if there is any doubt as to what might happen. These are the people who put their relationships to "tests" to constantly reassure themselves that they have a real relationship. This is a sign that an individual has internalized the model of powerlessness. If you don't feel you have the power to deal with any outcome then you must assure yourself that the outcome will be the one you can deal with. This is a position of weakness because you haven't had the proper confidence in yourself and those that are close to you. A truly free person is one who can wish for an outcome but who is not going to be devastated if that outcome does not occur. This is the type of person who can exercise patience because he has inner strength and knows that his identity as a person will remain strong regardless of what happens around him.
Patience and trust are necessary to have others become close to you. The ability to accept others as they are, because the way they are is not going to threaten who you are. You need to have that confidence in yourself so you can allow those close to you to be their own selves and not have to satisfy your insecure needs all the time. You need to release those around you from any mental constructs that you have made for them in your own mind. You need to find happiness in the fact that they are being who they are. The times that you are close to them become so much richer when you have freely given them their independence to act as they want to act. You don't need them to satisfy your agenda. You want them to satisfy their own agenda and you want to be there to offer your support and watch them succeed! You want to share with them your life and love, and you want them to share theirs with you. You want them to be happy and strong inside themselves just like you want to be!
7. Share with Others
If you have a big ego, I suggest you find a nice, clean, temperature-controlled safety deposit box and store it in there. It's never going to do you any good in this world nor will it do anything for anyone else. You can visit it every now and then and try it on, but for goodness sake don't carry it around with you! If you follow the right path, sooner or later you'll be uncomfortable wearing it. Maybe you'll even misplace the key to the box and never have need for it again.
Instead, develop a "sharing ego," one that thrives on sharing the ups and downs of your life with others, as well as listening and caring about the concerns of those you come in contact with. This world is not about you, though there is a nice spot reserved for you in it. But don't take up all the space around you. Let others have the spotlight as often as you. You are the star of your life but you are nothing without the supporting cast around you. The sooner you understand that, the sooner you can realize your potential.
If you don't let others into your life you will be miserable. While all the things that you need to be yourself are within your control, without other people they won't work. You aren't a machine that can be turned on and left alone and it will keep running just like when you left it. If you don't develop the ability and the desire to interact with other people then you will be just a fraction of what you could become. And that fraction won't be very interesting to you because you will be the only one to enjoy it. If you don't enjoy other people, you can't enjoy life. Life is other people.
I remember watching Westerns on television and in the movies when I was a kid. The hero was usually a loner. He rode into town and he got mixed up with some local troubles and he straightened them out and then he rode off. He was a universe unto himself. And if he showed weakness or tenderness to the woman in the movie, this was depicted as his "tragic condition" of never being able to settle down. He had to ride off. It was part of his stature as hero. Heroes don't settle down and plow the land. They ride big horses and carry pearl-handled guns.
This myth makes a man seem more like a god. Without human needs or human frailties. Without fear and without a home. A wanderer. Misunderstood, selfless, brave and gallant to women. Racing against his biological clock which will inevitably bring the loss of "his edge" when some young tinhorn will blow him away in a saloon somewhere. Some young man who has bought into the myth and wants to be respected and feared just like the hero was.
This is an attractive and powerful myth of a man. The element of the myth I want to focus on is this man's isolation from others. For I think this is where the hero, who is a man after all, plants the seed of his own inevitable fall from his pedestal and makes his life tragic. The man wants to form relationships but something holds him back. He thinks better of it. It would be better not to. Why? Is it because heroes don't plow cornfields? Is that true? Or is just our idea of a hero? A pioneer man who plowed his fields seven days a week to feed his wife and family sounds like a hero to me. Was our hero trapped in a cultural stereotype that didn't really make sense?
Another type of thinking that prevents relationships with others is not wanting to be bothered dealing with other people's problems. This isn't our hero's problem, as he is willing to lay down his life for others. But sometimes we can think that other people just have too many problems and we have enough of our own. So, unlike the hero of myth, we avoid getting involved in other people's lives. We have our own battles to fight and we don't think we have enough in us to share the struggles of others. So we fight our own fight and let them fight theirs. Other people might not think like us and we may have difficulty communicating with them. They might want to do things differently than we do. Why get mixed up with them at all? Isn't life hard enough for us without taking on their concerns and problems?
It's a choice we have to make. Do we want to minimize our meaningful connections with others in order to pursue our own lives in peace and harmony? Do we want total freedom to act just as we wish and not have to communicate and compromise with someone close to us? Is that what it means to "be your own person"? The key word is harmony. There can't be any harmony if you're playing your instrument by yourself. Maybe you play really well. But you need someone else to play along with you. You need to be in harmony with other people. Freedom in a full and rich life is not the ability to do anything one pleases without regard to others. True freedom is to know in your heart that you need other people and to let them into your life and to be honest and faithful to them.
Sometimes we have a bad experience with someone who has not been genuine with us. We don't feel that the person has given us our due in a relationship. They were "holding back" and this caused us to hold back to protect ourselves. We didn't want to run the risk of being hurt. We might even become cynical about relationships and start to use them like we use our clothes or our car. We might begin to "simplifiy" our lives by not taking other people's feeling into account when we are dealing with them. We decide that we know best what is the right thing to do. It's our life. Listening and sharing with others just complicates things. They don't understand us. They probably don't really love us. Why should we try to love them? Why should we listen to them? What good are they really to us?
A lot of our dealings in this world are impersonal. You aren't going to love the clerk at the bookstore or your accountant or your hairdresser. You aren't going to expect to come away from them feeling all warm and gooey inside. It's a professional world. People from our culture are used to it.
Once I interviewed a 10-year old Hispanic boy who lived in a middle-class neighborhood in the United States and had just visited Guatemala for the first time as part of a goodwill tour. The people on the tour visited a very poor part of Guatemala. When I asked the boy what he remembered most of his visit, I expected him to tell me all the things he missed about the United States and how he wondered how those people could live the way they do. I expected him to tell me how much he missed the conveniences, the video games, the CD players, television, etc. Instead, he just looked at me and said, "They are happy there. That's the difference."
I was curious about this and I asked the tour director later what he thought of the boy's response. He replied, "Down there people share with one another. People drop by for dinner unannounced. Everyone is always welcome. The old and the young, they all are together and they love to be around each other. It's infectious. You pick up on it right away." In our culture many of us have put up barriers to showing our loved ones we care about them on a regular basis. We wait for holidays to call them or give them gifts. We don't drop in on them unless we are invited. We don't invite them over regularly. We fall into the trap of organizing our schedules around their "functionality" instead of remembering that a schedule is just something that exists on a piece of paper. Our hearts should not be on such a schedule. They should be open to those we love and they should be sending and receiving that love on a regular basis.
Sometimes I think that life is just one long string of stories. Everyone tells us stories about themselves. Friends tell us their daily stories. People we don't know tell us stories in the supermarket. Each of us has a new story every day. I admit that I used to be impatient with listening to some of these stories. What have they to do with me? Why am I being burdened with all these details about something that I will never have to deal with personally? Why is everyone forever telling their story? Good grief, I thought, I have my own problems to think about.
Then I realized that these stories were not just personal stories. They were human stories, universal stories, stories that I could relate to. I began to see that each time a person told me a story they were telling me something about myself. I was connected to the person telling the story. Their hopes became my hopes and their failures became my failures. It was a revelation for me to listen to them in a new way. They were literally telling me things about myself. Because they are human just like I am.
We are all different. But there is so much that we have in common. There is so much that happens to us that has happened to other people. We aren't alone in this world and our troubles are not something that we have to feel isolated about. Everyone has their own troubles. Everyone has to deal with the world knocking them around and having their dreams put through the spin cycle now and then.
Now I like it when people tell me their stories. I listen to them. I don't know if I can help them or even truly understand them. But isn't it beautiful that human beings can share their experiences with one another? Isn't this one of the things that makes being a human being so interesting and so different from the animal kingdom? If we open ourselves up to other people and their stories, then our lives will be so much richer. We will feel more connected to other people and to the world.
Some people will be more successful than others. They will have glamorous stories about meeting the rich and famous. But what about the little old lady down the street? She probably has lots of stories. She may be funnier than the comedians on television. She may have an outlook on life that would rival the great philosophers. How will I ever know if I don't listen to her? Isn't it true that her life is connected to mine in some way? Hasn't she seen a lot that I haven't seen and experienced things that I haven't? She is a human being with thoughts and feelings and hopes and desires and fears just like me. Without even hearing her story I know that her story is my story. I know if I sat down and listened to it I would learn something about myself. I know that in a very real sense I am connected to her. She needs to tell her story and I need to listen.
I think I have succeeded and failed in countless ways. It's all in the stories that I've heard and read. I've been on top of the world and I've been in the worst prison. It's in the faces I see on the street. In my heart I know that I am weak by myself but that I can be strong if I realize that I have the whole world around me and it is filled with people just like me. They may not know me or want to know me. But they are human and so am I. The world is not made up of a whole bunch of people who have nothing in common. The world is made up of the same kind of people and we are all connected to each other.
It's what we can give to other people that matters, not what we can take from them. It's important to remember that we have immense resources inside us to give and that if we give of ourselves we will be constantly renewed. Giving does not lessen us; it makes us larger. Giving does not mean that we are sacrificing; it means that we are sharing our lives with others and that we are not so controlled by our situation that we can't "break out of it" by giving. Giving is really release. It's release from our program of self-absorption and self-worry. If we give to others then we are free to be ourselves in this world.
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