Shannon's Journal Discussion

[robstar]

I understand Shannon, maybe you can ignore other people's judgments one or twice, but when you're constantly around people who misunderstand or criticize you, eventually you'll crack, it's just human nature.

I know the kind of person you're talking about, a person who makes their own rules and always has a high opinion of themselves, but even they have their limits, if they're in a group setting they will be influenced and change their actions to avoid criticism.

You can't avoid human nature, it would be best just to work with it.

Errr...then I would change the people I'm around and find more like minded friends.

Regarding my friends, this has happened to me and I simply made the decision to move away from those people i once resonated with and connect with people who share similar goals (speaking just of the friends side of this situation).

Also, strong spirited people generally don't change their behavior to suit those around them. Being who they are naturally helps them attract those they get along with anyway. Otherwise they're just pandering to people they may not want to be around. It really doesn't make sense that a strong assertive person would change their ways to suit the opinions of others. That's what makes them strong and assertive; they are unwilling to adjust themselves to work within a level of behavior that they disagree with. Weak spirited people, maybe. Strong spirited? Nope.

One personal example I'll share is my own family. There isn't a trace of entrepreneurial ambition that i can find aside from myself, and it's always rough talking to them about any of my stuff. But I have somehow kept my course despite a wave of criticism and constant judgement.

This wasn't being resistant to their judgements once or twice...but for decades, and from multiple family members who are 10000% convinced they are right and i am wrong. But i know who i am and what i want, so they can't touch that. They aren't going to sway my core values since they're so off track from where I'm at.

If your last sentence was really true I would have given in and slogged away at a job like what they keep hammering at me, and I'd be in the same boat they are. But that hasn't happened. Despite their best efforts, I have yet to 'crack'

Well my situation is just like yours lol, I've yet to crack but that's only because I've managed to avoid them. I'd also be lying though, if I said their attitudes and beliefs hasn't effected me, however brief or minor.

Finding friends and acquaintances who share your values is an example of working with human nature, to be honest I'm not sure if those people were around or if someone hadn't inspired you, you'd be able to break free. I know my ability to break free was because of the way I was treated as kid (my family basically treated me like a king), that always stuck with me and I probably wouldn't be who I am today if wasn't for that, maybe in your case it was one person or a group of people who inspired you. But there's always a trace, we aren't so defiant for no reason, we don't think we can do it without an inspiration.

It's unavoidable, external validation not only shapes us as kids, it defines what we think is acceptable and achievable, in more than one area. Going against this is a struggle only few go through, but never fully overcome, even if they become completely successful in their endeavours.

Given the fact that any meaning derived from anything is created in your own mind, one could argue that there is no such thing as external validation as it is all created internally anyway. When someone loves you, you don't literally feel their love, your brain creates a feeling based on what you believe that means. That's also why there are depressed people who feel completely unloved despite the fact that people love them. With the realisation of this, as well as the realisation that we control our own minds, one can begin to completely disregard external validation, as it only means what we think it means anyway.

Well any sort of calculation we make like that is still based on and dependent on our experience with others, and I don't think the solution is to interpret every social cue as a positive value assessment on the part of others, you can do that, but you'll probably end up in the mental hospital, or labelled weird.

I wasn't saying to interpret every social cue as positive value assessments, rather when you realise the good feeling you receive when others validate you is really just you allowing yourself to feel validated then you can begin to supply your own validation to yourself regardless of what's going on around you. It's a concept in the Sedona Method and Release Technique based on the teachings of Lester Levenson called "hootlessness".