I still recall a slogan that my wise Fenton High School speech teacher H.L. Connelly would boom out to our 1969 senior “baby boomers” class. “They say you are the world’s biggest liars!” he would caution us. And, he would add in a wise-cracking tone of voice, “And you young people can’t afford the luxury of a negative thought!”
Are “they sayers” controlling you? Do you worry too much about what “they sayers” will think of you IF you do/say something that doesn’t fit someone else’s image of you? “Stop listening to all the ‘they sayers’ for gosh sakes,” is a message that I needed to hear in high school because I was SO afraid of social disapproval as a teen that I tried to bend and fit in until I almost broke in two.
O.K. Then listen up. How much of your mature adult life is being run by the pushy opinions of the popular crowd every single day. I say, “There is nothing to fear, especially fear itself!” Or is there? The fear of social disapproval…social shaming…social ostracism…social criticism…social exclusion…social unpopularity…social pressures to conform against our will…social perfectionism pressures, etc. are ALL death rays that make you shrink yourself into a very tiny person and make you shrink away from being who you are.
GIVE YOURSELF FREEDOM TO BE A BETTER YOU
For example, do you feel free to change into a better you? Do you feel free to “shrug off” social rejection? Do you feel free to change into a better you…FOR YOUR OWN SAKE, FOR GOSH SAKES? If you are a pleaser, you actually confuse pleasing yourself with hurting others, and pleasing others with helping yourself, when the reverse might be truer for you and me.
What does it mean to “give yourself the freedom to be a better you?” Psychological maturity encourages you to:
- Be yourself even when you are pressured to be someone else
- Talk constructively to people you trust
- Solve problems that pop up
- Find it in your heart to enjoy life even when life sucks pears
- Choose friends who aren’t gossipers, kiss-ups or backbiters
- Take social difficulties and frustrations in stride
- Communicate positively because “communication is everything”
- Respect yourself…your tastes in clothing, music, food, friends, hobbies
- Please yourself for a change of pace
- Stop trying so hard to be what others want you to be
- Think your own thoughts instead of lazily repeating what you are told to say or think
- Adopt relationship rules that bring on your optimism and off pessimism
“THEY SAYERS” TAP INTO YOUR FEAR OF DISAPPROVAL
“They sayers” deliberately tap into your social fear of disapproval to control and manipulate you. Who cares what “they sayers say or think?!” You will procrastinate living this one life when you use this fearful idea: “I can’t/shouldn’t really do what I want to do because that would be incredibly selfish of me and WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF…. What might people say? What would my family and people I know think of me?”
If you worry too much about what other people are thinking of you…then you aren’t thinking enough of yourself!
WHY “I’M TOO SELFISH!” IS A GOOD THING
Living a good life IS selfish. If you are living your life effectively, others will disapprove of you. Negative ducks are always squawking and quacking about how you or I aren’t living m/y/our life according to the standards of “they sayers.” Enough of stressing yourself out by worrying what others will think of you IF…or “BUT IF I DO WHAT I WANT…WON’T THEY THINK LESS OF ME?”
RELAX…WE’RE ALL AFRAID OF BEING VOTED OFF THE ISLAND AND KICKED OUT OF THE TRIBE TO TRY AND SURVIVE IN THE WILDERNESS
Listen to what songs your self is singing. Stress, or anger about m/y/our life choices, results from pleasing others in preference to pleasing yourself and meeting your own needs. Who cares what “they say” because “they say are the world’s biggest liars.” Here is a stress-reducing “TO (DO)NE ideas that can hasten your freedom to stop fearing the disapproval of people who are important to you:
- Give up trying to change others and focus on changing yourself.
- Control only what you can control.
- Stop being a control freak because you know “The harder I try to control…the behinder I get!”
- Engage in the benefits of a positive attitude
- Overcome anxiety or social shyness by learning how to “make a pig talk”
- Believe your way into new behaviors, or you can behave your way into new beliefs.
- Use anything that works to solve problems
- Set your true goal to improve yourself a little every day
- Enjoy yourself for a couple of minutes when you have no reason to
- Draw a target on a piece of paper and put a few self-improvement goals in the bulls-eye
- Purposefully make a few mistakes so you can relax about being IMPURRFECT
- Notice that most of the criticisms that make you super-anxious come from inside your own skull
- Throw away your ticket to the “blame and shame show”
- Change poor attitudes into richer ones, for example, “There’s nothing/something I can do about IT”
- Accept help “communications coaches” or an inner circle of advisors
- RELAX…we’re all scared out of our wits and only pretending to be sane
MINE FAILURES FOR SUCCESS
You don’t fail when you fail to live up or down to others’ expectations of you. Why NOT feel free to GO LIVE IN THE WORLD OF “WHAT IF I CHOOSE MY OWN FUTURE?”…and stop reacting to what others think would be best for you to do for a change? You can choose again today. You don’t have to replay past painful patterns of conditioning from childhood and your family of origin…or remain stuck in past decisions that you’re re-living today that add stress to your life.
Mine your old failures for success, and turn old frustrations into new motivations. Dr. Manuel Smith in his classic assertiveness training, books and Assertive Bill of Rights says we all must “Be the final authority on yourself!” It’s a nice way of saying we are all wise to stop lazily allowing others to tell us what we should think, do or say.
YOU’VE GOT NOTHING TO PROVE TO OTHERS
It is an act of quiet courage to express your talents and express who you truly are.
You’ve got nothing to prove to others. You don’t need the approval of others to feel O.K. You don’t open emotional blackmail. You don’t recoil at failure nor fail to forge into the unknown. What IF you worried more about what you think and less about what others think of you? Wouldn’t life be a whole lot sweeter? I’ll bet ya’.
Dr. Dennis O’Grady wrote for the Xenia Daily Gazette for many years and encourages his clients to stop trying so hard to win the approval of others who won’t ever approve of them. He believes negative people won’t ever be pleased for very long unless they keep doing what the “they sayers” tell them to do, which might not be very good for any of us. Prejudiced people, displeasers and controllers are only too glad to tell you what to do, how to live and what to think. Dennis is the author of the “communication is everything” handbook called TALK TO ME.