January 13
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Today's
quotation:
Just being ourselves is the biggest fear of
humans. We have learned
to live our life trying to satisfy other people's demands.
We have learned to live by other people's points of view because of the fear of
not being
accepted and of not being good enough for someone else.
Don Miguel Ruiz
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Today's
Meditation:
Can
you accept yourself as you are--exactly as you are right
now? Can you consider what other people say you
should be and realize that they truly have no clue as to
what makes you, you? And if they don't know this,
how can they possibly say what you should be? We
grow up being taught that we have to meet other people's
expectations in our actions and our ideals, but who
created those expectations? Do they allow you to be
truly the person you're meant to be?
Other
people's demands come from outside of ourselves, and thus
come from a point of ignorance. Why should I get A's
in math in school when math bores me to tears? Why
should I become a physician just because my father and
grandfather were physicians? Well, my father may
reject me as a person if I don't follow in his footsteps,
right? But if he does, that becomes both of our
problems, and the easy way out is to do what he wants me
to do.
If
I do so, though, I lose any chance of becoming my own
authentic self. I lose the opportunity of exploring
my own paths and learning my own lessons in life.
I
have learned--often in very difficult and painful
ways--that people respond to me much better when I'm being
myself and not trying to be what I think they want me to
be.
I
have learned that if I try to build a relationship that's
based on me being what I think someone wants me to be,
that relationship is doomed to fail.
I
have learned that being myself and doing things as I see
right is an awful lot of fun. Other people may not
understand what I do or why, but when I no longer care
about how others react, that's okay!
(Of
course, I'm not talking about breaking laws or doing
things that hurt others--some expectations that others
have of us are legitimate!)
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Questions to
consider:
Do you do anything out of the fear of being
rejected? What?
How many people who seem to be helpful are being that
way because they crave the acceptance of others? How
does that affect them?
Why do others have so many expectations of us?
(Think about our need to have control and to have others
act in predictable ways in order for us to feel
comfortable in our realities. . . .) |
For further
thought:
If
you teach people to keep their eyes upon what others think of them,
unthinkingly to lead the lives and hold the principles of the
majority
of their contemporaries, you must discredit in their own eyes
the
authoritative voices of their own souls. They may be
docile citizens;
they will never be men and women. It is ours, on the other
hand,
to disregard this babble and chattering of other people better
and
worse than we are, and to walk straight before us by what light
we have. They may be right; but so, before heaven, are we. They
may
know;
but we know also, and by that knowledge we must stand or fall.
There is such a thing as loyalty to one's own better self; and
from those
who have not that, God help me, how am I to look for loyalty to
others?
Robert
Louis Stevenson
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