Set Of Beliefs Held And Taught By A Religious, Political Party Or Other Group

The opinion of others

The third major cause of negative emotions, according to Ouspensky, is inward considering. This occurs when because overly concerned with the way people are treating you. If you perceive that someone is not giving you the respect that you feel you deserve, you can feel insulted and angry, and want to strike back. If people are rude or indifferent to you, you can experience their behavior as an attack on your personality or character. This interpretation of their attitude or behavior can make you angry or depressed.

Psychologist say that everything we do is to increase our self-esteem and sense of personal value, or to protect it from being diminished by other people or circumstance. If your self-esteem is not as high as it could be, you will be senitive to the actions and reactions of others people toward you. You will take everything personally, exactly as if what they said or did was consciously and deliberately directed at you. However, this is seldum the case.

The fact is that most people are preoccupied with themselves and their own problems. As much as 99 percent of the time, people are wrapped up in their own thoughts about themselves. They devote the other 1 percent of emotional energy they have available to everyone else in the world, including you. The person who cuts you off in traffic is so involved with his own thoughts, he is not even aware of your existence. It would be silly to become angry or upset over his thoughtless action.

Set Your Own Sails

There is a rule that I have learned from experience: Never do or refrain from doing something because you are concerned about what people might think about you. The fact is that nobody is even thinking about you at all. Of course, I am not talking about criminal or antisocial behavior. But it is amazing how many people make decisions to set into or to not get into relationship, business new endeavors, adventures, and other things for fear that someone else might not approve. They turn down business opportunities for fear that someone everyone, might criticize them. The truth is that no one cares more about your key life decisions then you do. Plan accordingly.

In Abraham Maslow’s studies of self-actualizing people, those 1or 2 percent of men and women who are fully mature, fully functioning adults, he found a particular quality that they all had in common: They were completely honest with themselves. They were objective and clear about their own strengths and weaknesses. They did not hope or pretend that they were other than they were. This self-acceptance was a foundation stone of the self-esteem and self-respect.

Because they know who were, and who they were not, they did not feel that they had to continually earn the approval of others. They took the opinions of others into consideration, but then they made there own decisions. They were not overly influence by the possible approval or disapproval of other people. You should do the same. You are the one who cares the most and who is most affected, in any case.