Positive People (Part 5)

Tying your self-worth to everyone else’s opinions gives you a flawed sense of reality that can cause serious trouble when it comes to your confidence and happiness.  As human beings, we do it quite often.  From wanting others to think we’re attractive, to checking the number of likes and comments on our social media posts, most of us care about what others think.  In fact, a big part of this is an innate desire we are born with.  It has been proven time and time again that babies’ emotions are often drawn directly from the behaviors of those around them.

As we grow up, we learn to separate our thoughts and emotions from everyone else’s, but many of us continue to seek positive social validation from others.  In a recent survey 67% of 1,200 students admitted that their self-worth is strongly tied to what other people think of them.  Even though that isn’t a healthy way to measure your self-worth, it isn’t surprising that so many of us think this way.

We naturally respond to everything we experience through the lens of our learned expectations, which are a set of deep-rooted beliefs about the way the world is and how things should be.  One of the most prevailing expectations we have involves external validation and how others ‘should’ respond to us. Sadly, this kind of external validation has insecurity at its core, and relying on it for even a short time chips away at our sense of self-worth and self-confidence.

Our biggest problem is we tend to forget that people judge us based on influences in their own life that have absolutely nothing to do with us.  For example, a person might assume things about you based on a troubled past experience they had with someone else who looks like you or someone else who shares your same last name.  Therefore, basing your self-worth on what others think puts you in a perpetual state of vulnerability. You are literally at the mercy of their unreliable, bias perspectives.  If they see you in the right light, and respond to you in a positive, affirming manner, then you feel good about yourself. But if not, you feel like you did something wrong.

When you’re doing everything for other people, and basing your happiness and self-worth on their opinions, you’ve lost your moral center.  If you catch yourself doing this remind yourself of the truth:  What most people think of you doesn’t matter at all.