What you think of me is none of my business.

We spend so much time in other people’s stories - worrying about the role we play and often making ourselves the central focus and pain point in their lives.

We assume they are judging us or may think less of us because we are not doing or being “enough”. We ascribe meaning to every look, lack of response, and interaction. We play a part to “fit in” to the narrative of those around us - or, at least, the narrative we are assuming they are existing in. But the more we do that, the more we distance ourselves from who we really are, exiting our orbit to circle around theirs. 

A friend said to me many years ago that I spent too much time worrying about how other people perceive me and that it, ultimately, was not my business what other people thought. Of course, I pushed back and made the case that I should care about what other people think because I didn’t want to be an asshole.

And to all of you who are having the same thought or reaction, this argument was definitely weak and invalid.

See, while that is true, to this day, that I don’t want to be an asshole, there is a lot of space between that and allowing other people’s assumptions, judgments and feelings about me - both real and perceived - to affect the way I show up in the world. The reality of what my friend said was not an either or — you care about people or you don’t. It was about putting up space between me and the world’s perception of me. It was about giving more space to understand subjective interpretations and experiences of ourselves and others to be able to see that it is more important that I am able to check in with myself, know my values and to be able to anchor my thoughts, feelings and behaviors on those values rather than worry about how someone else experiences them.

Whose story are you living in?

Is it one where you are worrying more about the character development in the stories of people around you or are you writing your own story where you are the central and key character and assessor?