Shucking Off the Shackles of Other People's Opinions

I Alchemy a friend. Let's call her Maryanne. She lives in constant fear of people, their opinions or her and wrongdoings she may have caused in their eyes.

Take unlimited conference calls other day. In every story, there are threads of unbelievability but this example is as genuine as nickel. Maryanne had a child over to play with hers. She arranged for her daughter to walk Moonraker girl home and phoned the neighbor to let them know. It was raining. When I say raining, I'm going to classify this as a shifting moisture in the air. It was not a storm, just a little humidity falling down here and there. Well, the donate cars sounded unimpressed and said she would drive three doors over to pick up her daughter because it was raining. After this call, Maryanne was stressed. Who could have expected this? She did all the right things. She became critical of herself and the assumed opinion of the other person.

Now, having grown up as a duck on the west coast, I found this totally hilarious. I'll admit that my mother's favorite lines when I was going up were, "go outside". Seriously, there could be a storm hitting and we'd be expected to play. This ended with some great mud pie adventures and as we lived on a hobby farm, some inconvenient additives to the mud. But that's an aside really.

I explained to Maryanne that this other person wasn't right. How could she be? I explained to her why she wasn't right and I also said Maryanne didn't know her opinion. I further pointed out that even if Maryanne's neighbor believed her to be a bad person as a result of this action, then surely it should have no effect or impact on Maryanne.

I've met a lot of people who have struggled with this basic concept and that's why I wanted to right this article to get you thinking. I don't think that you have to be a people pleaser to have fallen prey to these self doubts. In fact, I can remember going through much the same thing when I was a teen. But it didn't last long.

Have you ever walked into a store where the person at the counter is grumpy at you and practially throws the bag at you?

If that's a yes, great. If that's a no, I think you need to think back even farther. Because, I think everybody has gone through this and you somewhat think, did I cause the mood of this cashier with an attitude?

Truly, you most likely didn't cause this person to act this way. It could have started with the wrong cereal or an argument with someone first thing in the morning and the day just got worse from there. Rather than looking up and imagining that life could get better, the person chose to act this way. In you come and you didn't do anything wrong.

So what do you do? Make eye contact. Tell them that their mood is affecting you and you would like to point out that life really isn't that bad. By getting to the heart of the matter and trying to cheer up the person while pointing it out, you then can safely avoid getting into a state about why the cashier didn't like you and what you didn't do.

Here's another one.

Have you ever had someone nearly run over you while crossing a street or walking on the sidewalk and had them gesture angrily at you?

Now what do you do here? You can't confront them. Gesturing back could only make it worse. You have to evaluate the situation you are in. All you've done is occupy the sidewalk or the road. If you really didn't do anything wrong, then this should not affect you in the least. Better yet, saying this out loud and releasing some of the sudden tension will ensure that it will not stick to you.

So in the case of Maryanne, I would advise to look at the situation. Is she wrong? No? Good. She has to hold onto that impression of herself and know that she's a good person. If she would like to go the next step, she may choose to talk it over with the person down the street there and then. If not, she can just shrug it off.

The keys are thinking about whether you did something wrong, knowing you didn't, knowing yourself and confronting the other person when it is blatant.

As one of my bosses said, it's time to put on our tough suit every morning.

Robyn Whyte is the CEO of Stargazer Press where you can find amazing books at http: stargazerpress.com/novels.htmstargazerpress.com/novels.htm .

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