Tag: comparison

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other people

261 – What Others Think

261 - What Others Think cover

Do you worry about what others think of you? Does it keep you from doing or saying things that you would like do? Today I want to talk about thinking errors and projection and how we can use stoic ideas to clean up our thinking.

“There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will.”

— Epictetus

A lot of what we do in our lives is geared towards what we imagine others think about us. We act certain ways, wear certain clothes, or buy certain things because we think that we will somehow gain approval or fit in with some certain kind of group by doing so.

But if we really think about it, we really don’t know what others are actually thinking about us. We are really just making assumptions and guessing based on our life experience and our own thoughts about ourselves.

What Others Think About Us

About a year ago, I did an episode about self acceptance which I consider one of my best and most important episodes. If you want to go back and listen to it, it’s episode 218 – Accept Yourself. The reason that it was such an important episode for me is that I had learned some hard lessons about how I was not very accepting of myself. Because of this, I had low self esteem, and I felt like I was just not a very good person.

At that time, I decided to figure out what it was that was so awful about me. I did an exercise where I made a list of everything that I didn’t like about myself. I realized that if I was going to work on self acceptance, I really needed to understand what I wasn’t accepting about myself. After I wrote down everything I didn’t like about myself, I realized that about half the items on the list weren’t things I didn’t like about myself, but were actually things that I thought others didn’t like about me. To be clear, these were not things that others had told me they didn’t like about me, they were stories that my mind made up.

As part of that practice I discarded those things because they didn’t fit my criteria. But it was a powerful lesson about how our minds will make up stories to keep things consistent. Meaning, if you believe that you are an awful person, your mind will try to find proof to back it up. It will catalog everything you do that you feel reflects negatively on you as proof of your belief. If it is unable to find things, it will begin to reinterpret things in such a way so that it helps to prove you right.

Because our minds seek to make sense of the world and create the consistency that it needs, our thoughts about ourselves are incredibly important. In fact, how we think about ourselves is far more important than what anyone else thinks about us. Who we think we are, guides our choices, which leads to the kind of life we have. We take actions because we think they are in line with who we are as a person. Our minds try to help us stay consistent with our identity.

For example, when I was religious, I said and did things that in hindsight I really wasn’t sure I believed in, but I repeated them because it’s what I was told was the truth about the world. Because I had a certain identity, I acted in accordance with that identity. Once I started questioning things, I chose my own belief system that felt more aligned with being the kind of person I wanted to be.

So why do we we get caught up so much in what other people think of us? There are a number of reasons.

Social Creatures

We are social creatures and we thrive when we are part of a community. We are built to connect with other people and other people are a mirror of ourselves. It is through other people that we get to know who we are. For example, how do we know if we are a kind person if we have no one else to be kind to?

Because we want to fit in with our community, we are constantly trying to be aware of social cues and body language. But, it is all a guess on our side. We may think we know what a certain look or sigh means, but we can easily misinterpret things, and since we really do not have direct knowledge of what most people think of us, we make assumptions. We fill in the gaps because we don’t know what someone else might think of us.

The problem with filling in the gaps is that we tend to assume that others think like we do. So if we don’t really like ourselves, we assume that others won’t like us either. We may even treat them poorly simply because we assume they dislike us, based upon our own assumptions. They may have done nothing for us to be able to make a clear judgment about how they feel about us, so we’re really just guessing.

You Spot It, You Got It

“Whenever you are about to find fault with someone, ask yourself the following question: What fault of mine most nearly resembles the one I am about to criticize?”

— Marcus Aurelius

In psychology, there is a term called projection. The idea behind projection is that often people will accuse others of something that they are struggling with. For example, if someone is cheating on a partner, they will often accuse the other person of cheating. If someone is insecure, they may project those insecurities on other people and accuse them of the very thing they are afraid of.

Often, we project on to others the things we are afraid to look at about ourselves. As one of my therapists would say, “You spot it, you got it.” This is why people seem to be rather hypocritical when they point out the flaws of other yet seem completely oblivious to their own similar behaviors. For example, someone who often dominates conversations may accuse others of doing the exact same thing without recognizing their own behavior.

Now, it is not always going to be the case that noticing someone else’s behavior means that you have the same flaw. But if there is something that someone else is doing that really frustrates you, take a moment to see if you might be projecting some of your own thoughts, ideas, or fears onto this other person.

Out of Our Control

“When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: the people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous and surly. They are like this because they can’t tell good from evil.”

— Marcus Aurelius

The stoics have long reminded us that what others think about us is not something that is under our control. We could be the kindest and most generous person in the world, and yet someone may form an opinion of us that is unflattering.

Since we have no control over what they think of us, we need to get comfortable with others not liking us. They may even hate us and there is little that we can do about it. And it doesn’t even matter why dislike us. They could be misinformed. They may have reasons that really have nothing to do with us. Nonetheless, we need to recognize that it is out of our control and not let what others think of us change how we act.

But, if I’m being honest, it’s hard to let go of what others think of us. Because we are social creatures, we get caught up in wanting to be liked, which is again something that is out of our control. Any time we do things to get others to like us, we are giving control of our happiness to someone else.

So how can we get better about not worrying what others think about us, and also be aware of the assumptions and projections that we make about others?

Just the Facts

“Accustom yourself to attend carefully to what is said by another, and as much as it is possible, try to inhabit the speaker’s mind.”

—Marcus Aurelius

One thing we can do it take time to be sure that we are basing our judgments of others off of the facts. If we aren’t working off of what we actually know, there is a good chance that we are making unfair assumptions or projections.

One way that projection showed up for me was with my former partner. When we would get in to arguments I would accuse her of hating me, or thinking all kinds of rotten things about me. Now these were things she had never even said, but were things that I thought about myself. I would twist things that she said to make them sound like she had said mean or cruel things to me, all in an effort to somehow prove that I was as awful as I thought I was. Basically, I thought I was not a very good person, so I would unfairly project all those thoughts onto her.

Know Thyself

“Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.”

— Marcus Aurelius

An important step to make progress in this area is to get to really know yourself. By knowing what you think of yourself and the world, you’ll be more likely to notice when you project your thoughts or ideas onto others.

I talk a lot about meditation and journalling on this podcast, and the main reason is, they are great tools for getting to know yourself. I know that many people talk about how hard meditation is, and they are not wrong. Our minds are constantly noticing the world around us, as well as constantly moving back and forth from the past to trying to predict the future.

Meditation is one of the best ways to exert your will over your mind. It is how you get started in knowing what you are thinking. Awareness is the first step in change, and meditation is how you become aware of your thinking. The more awareness we have of our own minds, the better we are able to direct our thinking.

When it comes to journaling, for me I think of it as my third mind. We all have the part of our mind that is the observer, as well as the active part which is more of the doer. When you put your thoughts down on a page, they are much easier to work with because you are no longer trying to remember them. It also gives space for the observer and doer parts of your mind to work together. You’ll start to make connections that you never made before. You may even hit some deeper parts of yourself that will surprise you.

Get to Like Yourself

“When someone is properly grounded in life, they shouldn’t have to look outside themselves for approval.”

— Epictetus

After you get to know yourself, get to like yourself. We all spend so much time worrying about if others like us, but focusing on getting to like yourself is for more productive. I know I enjoy spending my time around those who are truly comfortable in their own skin. They’re happy with who they are, so anyone else’s opinion of them doesn’t change how they feel about themselves. They don’t also don’t need to tear down anyone else to make themselves feel better.

Getting to like yourself is also something that you have control over. You can decide to like yourself at any moment and immediately boost your mood. Now, I know this is not always an easy thing. I know that I get caught up in some negative thought loops about how I’m not a very good person or that people shouldn’t like me for all sorts of reasons. Usually it’s because I have some expectations that I think I have to meet in order to be considered a good person. I’m working on just letting go of this way of thinking and just accepting myself for exactly who I am.

If this is something you struggle with, I highly recommend listening to episode 218 – Accept Yourself and doing the exercise that I talk about. It was a real game changer for me.

Principles

“The tranquility that comes when you stop caring what they say. Or think, or do. Only what you do.”

— Marcus Aurelius

The last and most important thing that you can do to not get bog down by the opinions of others is to live your principles the best you can. How we live our lives is one of the only things that is truly under our control. If we live according to our principles, then what others think or say about us doesn’t really matter. We uphold our principles regardless of the situation or what others think of us. As long as we hold to our core principles and act in a way that we consider honorable, then we should be confident with our choices and actions.

We don’t need to defend ourselves for doing what we think is right.

Conclusion

Worrying about what others think of us is not always an easy thing to do. We are social creatures and having that external validation feels good, but it is something that have no control over. When we learn to focus on what we can control, namely our own thinking and choices, we become more resilient. When we improve our own opinion about ourselves and like ourselves, then what others think of us has a far less impact on us. And, in my own experience, the happiest people I know are those that truly like and accept themselves just the way they are.

Hello friends! Thank you for listening. Stop by the website at stoic.coffee where you can sign up for our newsletter, and buy some great looking shirts and hoodies at the Stoic Coffee Shop.

Want to help support this podcast? Become a patron on patreon!

Like the theme song? You can find it here from my alter ego. 🙂

Find me on instagram or twitter.

Lastly if you know of someone that would benefit from or appreciate this podcast, please share it. Word of mouth is the best way to help this podcast grow.

Thanks again for listening.

Categories
other people

229 – Conscious Communcation

229 - Conscious Communcation cover
Conscious Communication

An ignorant person is inclined to blame others for his own misfortune. To blame oneself is proof of progress. But the wise man never has to blame another or himself.

— Epictetus

Have you ever thought about how often we have judgments in our language? Are you even aware of how often we communicate our opinions and feelings about others? What if we could remove judgments from our language? Today I want to talk about ways that we can make our language more clear, and increase our ability to communicate non-judgmentally with others.

A few months ago I picked up a book called Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenburg. The idea behind nonviolent communication, or alternatively what the author calls conscious communication is that there are many aspects of how we speak, and the way we hear things that cloud communication with others.

There are many aspects of nonviolent communication, but the part that I want to focus on in the podcast is one idea in particular. That idea is if we could strip out the judgments from our communication, then we could communicate more clearly with each other. Doing so would allow us to deal with issues for what they are rather than all the judgments about the issues, which often become a distraction or even a roadblock in communicating with others.

The process of communicating this way is not an easy because unconsciously we make all kinds of judgments in our language. Most of those judgments are what the author calls moralistic judgments, which are judgements about the rightness or wrongness of other according to our values. Each of us make value judgements about what principles we hold and how we think the world could best be served. When we make moralistic judgments we are comparing others to our ideal of what we think they should be or how they should act.

For example, if someone cuts us off in traffic, “they are an idiot”. If we think someone isn’t working hard enough, “they’re lazy”. If we don’t like the way someone dresses, “they’re dressed inappropriately”. All day long we are passing judgments on others, and ourselves, and we’re usually not all that aware that we’re doing it, and if we’re honest with ourselves, the stronger we feel about something, the more intense our judgment is about the idea.

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I’ll meet you there.

—Rumi

When we focus too much on classifying how good or bad or to what level others or ourselves are in relation to what we think they should be, we’re not paying attention to what other person, or ourselves might need. For example, if our significant other is wanting more affection from us than what we we’re giving, we might judge them as being too needy or clingy. We might argue with them to stop being so clingy or make it mean that we’re not good enough for them, rather than noticing they have some need that isn’t being fulfilled.

Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.

—Carl Jung

So how can we get better about communicating is ways that carry less judgment? As with most things, it takes awareness. Until we are aware that we’re doing this every day, it makes it challenging to change our behavior. The better we get at noticing when we’re passing judgement, the more progress we can make.

What it really comes down to is how well we can observe something or someone without evaluating. A way to practice this is to take whatever it is we’re saying and distill it to just the facts. If we only say the things in it that are verifiable or provable then we are already making a big step towards conscious communication.

In the book there is a great example where the author is working with a group of teachers who are frustrated with the principle because they feel he talks too much and overruns conversations. He asks the teachers what the issue is, and their answers include statements like, “He has a big mouth”, “He talks too much”, and “He thinks only he has anything worth saying”. All of these statements are judgements or inferences about the principle and not evaluations. It took some work to help these teachers come up with a list of specific behaviors and the outcomes of those behaviors, such as because of his extra story telling, meetings almost always ran over their time limit. Learning to separate our judgements from observations is not an easy thing to do, but pays huge dividends in communicating with others.

A simple exercise that can help us be more aware of the judgments we make is to practice separating observations from judgments. For example, if we meet someone, rather than thinking about how attractive or unattractive they are or how humorous or boring they are, we can practice just noticing factual things about them first. We can notice the color of their eyes, how tall they are, or the length of their hair. After that, we can pay attention to the opinions that we form about them, such as, “They have a pleasant speaking voice”, “They’re too tall or short”, or “They have great taste in clothes”.

Another key part of conscious communication is that we own our judgments, opinions, and feelings about a situation. If we think someone is lazy, rather than declaring that they are lazy, we can simply say, “In my opinion I think that someone that works less than 60 hours a week is lazy.” It is still a judgment, but we are owning that we are making a judgment. If we have a friend that dominates conversations, we might say, “I feel frustrated when talking with you when you interrupt me and don’t let me finish my thoughts.”

Let’s a talk a little more about value judgments. Value judgments in and of themselves are not bad. We each have principles and ideals that are important to us. We may value honesty or kindness or compassion or a host of other ideals that help us decide how we want to show up in the world. When expressing these ideals we also need to be careful not to attach judgments to them. When we express our values, we can do so in a way that expresses our feelings about it, without passing judgments on others.

For example, if we think that honesty is a very important principle, we might say, “I value honesty and people who are dishonest are awful and should be fed to a pack of coyotes.”, which obviously has a strong judgment attached to it. Instead we could say, “I value honesty, and I understand how it can be hard to do, so appreciate it when others are honest with me.”

The last bit of advice I can offer on this topic is to try and be more compassionate with your communication. Before you say something to someone, think about how it might be received. Think about how you might receive it. Is it something that would upset you if your friend or partner said it to you? Is there a way that you can remove any judgements and just state the facts? Are you saying this because you are trying to get the other person to change? The closer you can get to just stating the facts, taking out judgments, and not placing blame or having expectations, the easier it will be to work on the root of the issue, and avoid getting into an argument about how you think they are right or wrong.

One of the most important skills that we can develop in our lives is communicating with other people, and nonviolent communication is a process that can help communicate more clearly. The more conscious we become about how we’re communicating, the better we can connect with others. By learning how to separate our judgements and opinions from our observations we more likely to have our concerns received better, as well as keep the conversation focused on the real issue, and not our opinions about the issue.

Hello friends! Thank you for listening. Stop by the website at stoic.coffee where you can sign up for our newsletter, and buy some great looking shirts and hoodies at the Stoic Coffee Shop.

Want to help support this podcast? Become a patron on patreon!

Like the theme song? You can find it here from my alter ego. 🙂

Find me on instagram or twitter.

Lastly if you know of someone that would benefit from or appreciate this podcast, please share it. Word of mouth is the best way to help this podcast grow. Thanks again for listening.

Categories
Coffee Break stoicism

148 – Comparison and Self Judgment

Comparison and Self Judgment

 

Be the best version of yourself!

How often do we compare ourselves with others? Why do you we get down on ourselves when someone is better than us at something? This weeks episode is about comparison, and how to get past the need to compare ourselves with others, and change the inner critic.

In Episode 146, Fear is the Killer I touched briefly on how one of the biggest fears in life is the fear of judgment. And while I was mostly referring to the judgments of others, in this episode I want to talk about self-judgment and comparing ourselves to others.

For most of us, the person that judges us most harshly is ourselves. When we want to try something that is outside our comfort zone, that voice in our head may tell us that it’s a bad idea or that we’re stupid for even trying. Why is that? Why would sabotage ourselves? I think it’s because our brain’s job is not to help support us in our growth, but to keep us alive. And because so much of our society has been based upon our station in life and being better than others, we equate not being as good at something as someone else as something that might cause us harm. And that fear can stop is from accomplishing so many great things.

“No person has the power to have everything they want, but it is in their power not to want what they don’t have, and to cheerfully put to good use what they do have.”

— Seneca, Letters From a Stoic

When I started this podcast, I was often worried that people would think I was an imposter. I thought that if I put out a podcast about stoicism that others might put me down for it because of my lack of credentials. My wise partner reminded me that if all I’m doing is talking about how these things impact me and what I learn from it, then there was no expertise needed beyond my own experience. Thankfully, I listened to her and here we are 148 episodes later, and thankfully, you have supported me and listened to my podcast each week.

What I had to do was to be better about what I defined as success and not compare myself against others. I mean, if I was worried about trying to be as successful as Tim Ferriss and be upset that I’m never going to hit 300 million downloads, then I would never be successful. So I learned to be happy with what I have – a podcast that I can feel proud of, where I’m improving every week and I’m learning and growing each week, and I’m connecting with more and more people each week.

I know one impact of being so self-critical for me was that because I didn’t think I was all that great of a person, I would try to talk myself up to other people. Because of that insecurity, I would tell all these stories about how great I was, because I really wanted them to like me. Deep down inside, I felt like if I were just good enough at all of these things, I would be worthy of their love.

So how do we move past comparing ourselves with others?

I think the first step is finding ways to look at the success of others is not a judgment on us. The world is not a zero-sum game. Just because someone else is successful, doesn’t mean we lose. Contrary to what others try to make us think, the world isn’t made that way. We need to celebrate the success of others. We need to let go of the striving and the posturing, and the ego that makes us think that if someone is doing better than us then we’re doing worse.

William Irvine, the author of A Guide to The Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy says that we should be okay with our mistakes, and learn to give out praise for the admirable traits we see in other people. He says, “You may be extremely reluctant to do that, because in some way, they’re your competitors, but sometimes people do things that are worthy of praise, and to openly praise them in a certain culture is an act of courage because you’re admitting that they’re outplaying you in some way.”

When you can be honest about someone else’s success, then it makes it easier, to be honest with yourself. When you can remove your ego from the equation and be honest about your own skill, you can look at it as simply a measure of skill, not a judgment of whether you’re a good or bad person.

The next big step, which is still a hard one for me, is to remember the only person that you should be comparing yourself to is yourself.

“Your potential, the absolute best you’re capable of — that’s the metric to measure yourself against. Your standards are. Winning is not enough. People can get lucky and win. People can be assholes and win. Anyone can win. But not everyone is the best possible version of themselves.”

― Ryan Holiday, Ego Is the Enemy

I love that part – be the best possible version of ourselves. We need to define our own version of success that is not dependent on things outside of our control. You can’t control how good someone else is going to be at something, and when you compare yourselves with them, you are tying your success to something we can’t control. You can only control yourself and your own skill, so the only real measure should be, are you improving. And remember, failing can be improving as long as you are learning.

Lastly, we need to have self-compassion. When you screw up, don’t look at it as a failure of character, look at it as being a fallible imperfect human. Your skill at something doesn’t make you more or less worthy of love.

Be good to yourself. Be good to others.