Worry about what other people think about you?
I have been intrigued lately with the teachings of the Stoics, ancient Greek philosophers whose ideal of Stoicism basically boils down to the idea that virtue is happiness, and we should be judged solely on our behavior, rather than our words. Essentially, this means that since we can’t control external events, we can only control our responses to those events.
Deep… yet actually quite simple. We are no what we say; we are what we do. How we react to adversity in our lives determines our happiness.
I recommend that you pick up Meditations by Marcus Aurelius and start reading it and reflect on the powerful ideas inside.
One quote really struck me recently:
“We all love ourselves than more than other people, but care more their opinion than our own”.
Sound familiar?
I think we all suffer from this problem. We internalize every little piece of negative feedback we receive, feeding the cancer of self-doubt. We obsess over a negative comment from a random acquaintance on Facebook or Twitter or LinkedIn, and that little comment can derail us from the actions and the momentum that we’ve gained. One the other hand, we often brush off the compliments we receive.
When I first started my podcast, I would obsess over every comment people wrote, becoming more and more mired in self-doubt the more of them I read. “It’s too long!” “It’s too short!” It’s too complicated!” “It’s too simplistic!” I’d gloss over the positive comments, and stew over the negatives.
Over time, I learned that complaints are a valuable tool to help me reflect and improve. But I no longer let them get to me. I know that for every negative comment there are dozens of positive ones, and those gratify me much more than the negative ones could ever hurt me.
There are lot of negative people out there, people who feel better about themselves when they bring others down. Take a lesson from the Stoics: don’t let them get to you. You cannot control how others react to you, you can only improve yourself. Learn. Grow. Do something to better yourself every day.
Bottom line: we control where we get in this world. We control the path to our destination and so we got to be focused on getting better each and every day. Don’t react to negativity; use it to motivate yourself forward.
By the way, if you are interested in subscribing to a podcast that is 100% focused on mental toughness and leadership growth, you can subscribe to THE Mental Toughness Podcast with Matt Phillips by clicking the links below:
- iTunes - Stitcher - TuneIn - GooglePlay
