Their Opinions Aren't Your Problem

What’s the greater risk? Letting go of what people think? Or letting go of how I feel, what I believe and who I am? ~ Brene Brown

How much do you allow yourself to be a prisoner of what others think?

Of what others think about you, about what you ‘should’ and ‘should not’ be, do or have?

About the choices you should make and the life you should live?

About whether or not you are good enough?

So many people’s lives fall so far short of what they could otherwise be because they allow so much of it to be defined FOR THEM instead of BY THEM.

They allow so much of their life experience and their sense of themselves to be shaped, mangled and directly determined by whether or not others would approve of their choices.

But take a moment and consider what this means.

When you allow what others think to take precedence over what you think, you are by definition making yourself DEPENDENT on them.

Your sense of yourself becomes dependent on their sense of you.

Your feelings about your life choices become dependent on their feelings about them.

Your choices, decisions, behaviours and actions become dependent on the approval of them by others.-

Your life cannot be your own and so cannot work for you or make sense TO YOU until you let go of this most destructive way of thinking.

Most people recognise that you need to become functionally independent as you shift from childhood to adulthood.

That you look after yourself, make your own money, wash yourself, feed yourself etc.

But the journey to adulthood, the journey to creating your life on your terms requires you to become EMOTIONALLY INDEPENDENT.

That doesn’t mean that you casually ignore or dismiss what others think.

It does mean that you are not captured by it, defined by it, that your sense of yourself isn’t dependent on it.

The greatest freedom and the greatest power most deny to themselves is the freedom to simply be authentic and make authentic choices.

But all it requires is for you to make a different choice.

One you can make today, if you want to.