Over the past year and a half I've been undergoing major changes and awakenings, embracing my better, truer, and happier self. This is a process that began about ten years ago. A process that I have come to understand as not one with a destination, but one that is an ongoing journey. In the various reading I do on and offline I always come across one point that makes every "How To Be Happier" list. That is: stop worrying about what others think of you.
Easy to say. Easy to understand. Not so easy to do. I've always been aware of the people pleaser inside me. Someone so concerned with what everyone else wanted and needed. Someone so worried about what everyone else would think that I put my own desires and happinesses aside so they wouldn't be inconvenienced. Guess who was the one that always wound up unhappy and feeling unfulfilled? Through some deep introspection and rigorous honesty from the above mentioned journey, I know and understand where that desire comes from, and why I'm so concerned with what others think of me. That's a story for perhaps another posting, however.
What is important, and curious to me, is how deeply-rooted that worry about what others think of me was/is. It was easy to recognize the glaring, immediate ones. What if they don't like the dinner I prepared? What will people think of the sweater I'm wearing? What if he doesn't like the movie I suggested we see? Behind all of those questions was a fear of being rejected, not being liked, people being angry with me.
As I progressed in my journey of self-discovery and understanding, I came across deeper, more subtle, and dare I say sneaky places where the fear of what others thought of me resided. Recently I decided to make a career change. I was burnt out and unhappy in my current field and wanted to move to something more fulfilling. Something more worthwhile. When I decided on what it would be I began taking college courses to fulfill my goal. All along, however, I felt a sheepishness, a sense of humiliation, an embarrassment about it. What would people think about me changing careers? He couldn't hack it in his current profession so he's running away. I worried what people would think if I took to long at the gym. Worried what my partner would think if I brought home the wrong kind of coffee creamer. Scared what people would think if I moved the date of a get together. It was constant and deep. I came to realize most everything I did had behind it the guilt and terror of what would people think. It was what I like to call the Russian Nesting Doll Syndrome. Open one and there's another. Open that one and there's another. Open that one and there's another still. And on and on it goes, never ending.
Each day I uncover some new area where I find my thinking has been subtly twisted by this fear of what others may think of me. It perplexes me and intrigues me. Its tentacles have reached almost every aspect of my life. The difference today is that I have stopped allowing myself to be hostage to that way of thinking. Recognition, understanding, and the ability to look into these places with honesty and openness, unafraid of what I will find strips these places of their hold on me.
Quotes by two people come to mind. My friend Dan who says, "I can honestly say what other people think of me hasn't been a consideration of mine for years. Who cares? Many of them don't even know what to do with their own lives, let alone mine." And Eleanor Roosevelt so wisely advises, "You wouldn't worry so much about what others think of you if you realized how seldom they do."
I must agree with those philosophies. With conscious effort, mindfulness, nonattachment, and an honest desire to find out more about myself, my journey will be an adventurous one for sure.
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