<i>Intro music by Lisa Thiel: Kuan Yin's mantra</i> Hello there. Some of us seem to have thick skin. Now the verdict is, of course, still out about whether these people are
quite literally unaffected by disapproval or whether they are just
more adept at suppression. Whatever the case may be,
some of us on the other hand, have very thin skin. Like a bullet, every disapproving thought or word
or action directed at us by others, penetrates us straight to our core. We are more than affected by it. We feel destroyed by it. We would love to be unaffected by
other people's thoughts and words and actions,
but let's face it, we're affected badly. First things first. If you really do care
what other people think, telling yourself that you shouldn't care
or to stop caring what other people think isn't actually going to cause you
to stop caring. And if you know somebody
who really cares what other people think, telling them they shouldn't care so much
what other people think, isn't actually going to stop them
from caring what other people think. Also, there's a great many people
who will tell you to stop letting what
other people say hurt you so badly, as if it's just a conscious choice. I can assure you that if you're the kind of
person who really cares what people say and who gets hurt by
what other people say, you're not going be able to just
consciously choose to snap your fingers and suddenly, what other people say or do
doesn't hurt you. In scientific experiments,
laboratory animals like rats are conditioned using
sugar pellets and electric shocks. Sugar encourages
a desired behavior, electric shocks stop the animal
from the undesired behavior. Humans are not
so different from rats. In fact, most of us were
conditioned in similar ways. We were rewarded
for desirable behavior with treats and punished for
undesirable behavior by, for example, being yelled at, which
produces a physical response in the body which is almost identical to
an electric shock. For some of us,
there were big consequences when the people in our early lives
disapproved of us. Our boundaries were
violated. They were either hurt by
incoming boundary violations such as spankings or insults
or shaming. Or we were hurt by
outgoing boundary violation like time-outs
and parental withdrawal. I find that people who have the biggest
issue with caring what other people think were most often damaged by
outgoing boundary violations. They were punished in ways that felt
like abandonment as children. The message we learned is
we did not deserve love if we were not pleasing our parents
and everyone else for that matter. This is a big issue
when you remember that love is survival for the
physical human, especially when we are relationally
dependent on others like we are
when we are children. To our little minds,
disapproval meant death. When we grow up,
it doesn't change. Disapproval still means death. It's a common thing when people notice
that we really care what other people think, that they start telling us to
stop taking things so personally. This is a minimization because you can't simply
stop taking things so personally. So what I want to do is to
explain why you take things so personally. The reason is, is that when we
were very little, and we did something that was
"wrong" or "bad" our parents treated us
as if we were bad. It wasn't about the action. We learned it really was about us. Doing something wrong made us wrong. Doing something bad made us bad. So now we have serious issues with rejection, disapproval and negative criticism. because our self esteem was and still is
essentially dependent on approval. In Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, he states that the need for love and approval
is only secondary to the need
for shelter, food and water. No disrespect to Maslow, but
I actually disagree. What I have noticed in my own studies,
is that love and belonging is actually the highest need that the physical human
possesses How do we know that this is the case? Because when someone is faced
with losing love or with not belonging, they tend to neglect and abandon
their survival needs completely. They stop eating, they stop drinking, and they even go to the extent
to commit suicide sometimes. This suggests that obviously
the need for belonging and love is an even higher need
than our basic survival needs. Any of you who have had a particularly
bad breakup know exactly what I mean. Before we go further, we all need
to ask ourselves a question: "Should I actually stop caring
what other people think?" The answer isn't as easy
as it may seem, and I am not going to present to you today
the idea that I have the right answer. Rather, I want you to really
ask yourself that question, and figure out
what your answer is. I have done this for myself,
and the answer that I came to is no, we shouldn't stop caring
what other people think and this is why... Try reversing the statement,
"I shouldn't care what other people think" to
"I should care what other people think" How is it true? Also, try reversing
"I shouldn't let what they say get to me" to
"I should let what they say get to me" How is that true? If we stop caring what
other people think and stop caring
what other people think of us, we are meeting a distancing behavior,
which is what disapproval is, with another distancing behavior. We separate ourselves from each other
by not caring what each other thinks. We also deprive ourselves with the opportunity to see things from another perspective. Therefore, we deprive ourselves from
the opportunity to see ourselves in a different light. Self awareness will be much more difficult if we stopped caring what other people think. So the higher truth is that we should care what every person thinks and feels in our reality. We should not be belligerent or defiant to what other people think, cause that is just defense. But there is a difference between caring what other people think and letting our entire self concept ride on what other people think. That there is the real problem. It's normal to feel happy and good about ourselves when we're praised, and to feel defensive when we are insulted. But, when we tend to find that insults spiral us in a negative direction, what exactly is it that we can do? I'm about to present to you 10 steps to take,
if you're the kind of person who fits this bill. Step 1: Acknowledge that you take everything personally, that you can't take criticism, that you care what other people think
and that you have particularly low self esteem. We have to admit to where we are,
in order to move anywhere. You would not believe how many people are suppressing and denying the fact that they do have low self esteem or that they do care what other people think,
or that they can't take criticism. And as long as we're in resistance to where we are, we're not going to be moving forward. Most of us spend our lives trying to suppres and deny the truth that we care what other people think, because we think that that truth is unacceptable. After all, enlightened people don't think that way. But ask yourself,
"Why do I care what other people think?" Not one person exists that doesn't care what other people think, because everyone has at least one person whose opinion seriously matters to them. 2. We need validation. Most of us don't understand what validation really is. We think that validation is some sort of encouragement or praise. When it actually isn't. Validation is comfirmation that something
is logically or factually sound. Basically, to validate somebody is to say that they are truthful and right in their perception. Validation is the recognition and the acceptance that your feelings and thoughts are true and real to you, regardless of logic or whether it makes sense to anyone else. This developes a strong sense of self that is not dependent on other people. When we are children, validation from our parents helps us to feel and express our emotions, develop a secure sense of self, gain confidence, feel more connected to our parents and have better relations in adulthood. But parents who are concerned with approval and disaproval, right and wrong, punishment and reward, are not concerned with validation. So for those of us who are demolished by what other people think, our parents and their lack of awareness really did do a lot of damage, and now it's up to us to validate ourselves and validating ourselves is just what the doctor ordered. To validate yourself you need to acknowledge the truth of your own internal experience. We need to drop the idea of whether that internal experience is right or wrong, cause validation has nothing to do with
whether it's right or whether it's wrong. For example, if we killed someone,
we're not validating that it was right to kill someone, what we're validating is that we had good and sound reason to feel like we wanted to kill someone. There are two ask Teal video's I want you to watch
in order to start this process of validation within yourself. The first is "The Emotional Wake-up call". The second is "Is your mind friend or foe?" In the first video I put forth a step by step process,
which will help you to adress your emotions. In the second video I put forth a step by step process, which is very similar, which will help you to adress your thoughts. Apply these processes to yourself,
and remember that there is always a very valid and real and reasonable reason
why you feel the way you feel, why you think the thoughts that you think, and why you are the way that you are. On a sidenote, people who have trouble feeling validated have resistance to disagreement. Expect that you will hate it when people don't agree on truth, especially when people don't agree with you. It makes you feel invalidated,
misunderstood, seperated, alone and worst of all like something is wrong with you. 3. If we are hurt by what someone thinks,
it means that there is already a sore there. That sore or that wound within us,
is a vibrational match to injury because it is an injury. For this reason we continue to attract people in our experience, that cause us injury. Other people's opinions are hitting up
against a pre-existent bruise. This is an unhealed wound from childhood
and it's the perfect opportunity to find a way to heal ourselves and also to practice some integration. What we want to do is to work
with our particularly strong emotional reactions. We want to work with those emotions
that vibrate at a frequency of the lack of self worth. Things like intense shame,
things like mortification, embarassement. All of these kinds of emotions are the ones
that you wanna pay special attention to. Because using them as a rope to access the original wound, which is way back in your past, is the perfect opportunity to solve the origin
or the root of these issues in your adult life. And when you do that, they disappear in your adult life. Watch my video on Youtube titled
"How to Heal the Emotional Body." Apply the process I put forth in that video, to heal
and integrate the real source of your poor self-esteem. Experiences in your past. As we heal, there are less and less raw spots
for others to hit and hurt. There are less opportunities and reasons for us to react. In other words, heal your wounds and it won't hurt. 4. If you really care what other people think, then chances are you live your life in a state of self criticism and hyper perfectionism, so that you can create an existence where
no one else has any reason to disapprove of you. We spend our lives trying to avoid disapproval,
that's why we're perfectionists in the first place. The answer is, to stop avoiding
the thing we're trying to avoid. Become okay with being disapproved of. Easier said than done, but if we're no longer running away from the demon, it can't keep chasing us. We must develop a willingness to feel. This is probably the most important part
of this whole video. Quite naturally, we are trying desperately
to get away from discomfort and pain. We are living our lives trying to avoid it. A life lived to avoid something, is no life at all. We have to stop trying to not get hurt and instead unconditionally sit with the feelings that are within ourselves,
including the feelings of being hurt. Shift your attention from
what someone said or did
to how you feel. It's no longer about avoiding disapproval. It's about being able to sit in and sit with
the feelings of disapproval as those feelings arise as sensations within my body. What you will find is that you absolutely have
the capacity to feel them. And unbelievably, contrary to our opinion,
we aren't actually going to get killed by feeling hese things. They're not going to do any damage, unless we're resisting them. There is an unparalleled inner peace that arises
as a result of knowing that you can trust yourself to be able and willing to experience and feel anything. 5. Anything that increases
your self worth or your self-steem is going to work to help you
to 'stop caring' what other people think. Meaning to stop letting it throw you
into a downward spiral. Write a list of the things
that you approve of about yourself. Now what I don't want you to do is to involve
anyone else's opinions in this particular process. Because, let's face it, regardless of whether somebody else is saying something good about you or bad about you,
our problem is still that we're letting what they say, be the basis of our entire self concept. So what I want you to do,
is to pretend that you are a space alien, from whatever distant galaxy
you want to pretend that you're from. Come down to planet earth and observe yourself,
this earthling (insert your name), and think about what this space alien
would approve of about this particular earthling. Pretend that this particular alien
can also see into this earthling's past. You are not born in a state of doubt
about your own self worth No baby is born thinking that it is unworthy
of the milk that it's drinking or the cuddles it's getting. And nobody is born innately doubting
whether they can do something. This is a learned behavior. It's what happens when people
start covering over your self worth. For those of you that want to work on your self worth, you can watch my Youtube Video titled
"How do I Discover Self Worth." 6. Find the positive intention,
behind why you take things personally, why you care what other people think and why you let what other people think, hurt you. This may seem like an odd request, because why would anyone have a positive intention for those things that are so obviously negative. But I can assure you, that if you have
any kind of detrimental behavior, you are continuing that detrimental behavior,
because it is somehow serving you. Don't take that to a place of self blame What do you get out of it? This is a very individual thing,
that starts with the wilingness to consider that your being is subconsciously
getting one of its needs met by doing the things that ultimately harms you. For example, one person might find that depending what other people think, keeps them included by others. This person may feel that unless they are involving oher people in their opinions and every process of their life, that they will be all alone. A good way of finding out what the positive intention is, is to find out what bad thing you think will happen, or what bad thing it would mean,
if you didn't take things so personally, didn't let things hurt you, weren't dependant on what other people think and didn't give your power away. 7. Recognize how critical you are of other people. Ofcourse, being critical of other people
is just a reflection of how critical you are of yourself. But making an effort
to withdraw that criticism and instead, reach toward an understanding of the other person,
is an important step towards loving ourselves enough that we no longer take
what other people say about us so personally. so as to spiral into an abyss. A great many of us become critical of others because it's the only way we can feel
a sense of our own rightness. We are drowning in the pain
of self doubt and self hatred. Notice how you feel when you are being critical of others. Are those feelings draining or empowering you. Would you rather be right or happy? All people, including us do the things we do
in order to meet a need. That means that the story
that you've been telling yourself about how they or you could
or should have done things better, or the story that their actions were a deliberate attempt to hurt, sabotage or damage you is fundamentally flawed. They and you had no knowledge
of a better way of meeting their needs. Find out what those needs are. Try to understand them and even potentially meet those needs for them or for yourself if you can. On one level when you sense disapproval or dissatisfaction, all you're sensing really is a reflection of your own disapproval and dissatisfaction with yourself. Most of the time you have no idea
what the other person is thinking. So the thoughts you attribute to them are speculation. They can only come from your own mind. When someone disapproves of you,
or is critical of you about something, ask of how you disapprove of that thing within yourself. If you are feeling defensive,
it means there is a wound to defend. What wound are you trying to defend? You will often hear that what somebody does,
or says, or thinks about you, is never about you it's only ever about them. I think this is a very good deflection strategy. But a deflection strategy is a defence strategy. And as far as I'm concerned, if we're completely dedicated to the path of enlightenment, or total awareness, defence is not what we're aiming for. So rather than saying that what people do or say to you is never about you, it's about them, let's say that it's actually about both of you. We want to understand both how it relates to us,
and how it relates to them. If we are able to take care of ourselves through the emotional discomfort we feel, we can open up wide enough to see if there is truth to what they're saying about us. And we can see if there are any useful aspects to their criticism. We can use it to gain self awareness. If you're interested in this concept,
watch my video on Youtube titled "Projection". The other thing you can do, however,
is to put yourself in the other person's shoes. Try to figure out what they're thinking, and feeling,
and doing, and saying, and wanting, and why they're doing those things,
or saying those things, or thinking those things. How is what they are thinkings,
saying or doing really about them. A good technique is to change
"Why did he/she do/say that to me?" to "Why did they do/say that to themselves?" Consider the person's insecurities. Could they feel threatened by you in someway? Is this how they treat all people? Perhaps they lack certain social skills and feel
that the only way they will be heard is by being rude or agressive,
or by bullying you to get their way. Perhaps they feel that by making you look bad,
they will seem good and thus win other people's favor. Imagine that in all people that there is an inner child
that is acting out, who is not mature to the point that they understand
the best ways to meet their needs. What is the inner child in this person in need of
and trying to get in this circumstance. Figure out their needs in this situation,
as well as their fear and hurt. If you figure those things out,
their actions will make sense and you will see that their actions weren't as much about you, or something that you did wrong, as you think. When someone is hating us, it's not about hate. It's always about hurt and pain. Hate is just the knee-jurk reaction
that we make on a vibrational level to get ourselves away from pain
and hurt that we are feeling. We don't want to use this as a cop-out
to not look at ourselves, or to not develop self awareness. What we want to do, is to use this as a way of understanding why people do the things that they do. As a way of facilitating compassion. 9. If you're the kind of person who is easily hurt
by what other people say or do, practice the art of letting the mud settle. When you walk into a lake that has a muddy bottom, and you disturb the mud, the water becomes unclear. What you have to do, is to get yourself into a space of complete and utter stilness, so the mud in the water will settle,
and the water will become clear again. Don't take immediate action if you've been hurt. You've got to cradle yourself
through the hurt before you react. You are prone to knee-jurk reactions
which will really hurt you even worse in the end. When you are less emotionally charged,
respond in order to gain clarification, and tell them how their words or actions
are making you feel. Seek to find a meeting of minds. If it becomes clear that a person can't respect you and insists on creating a situation over and over again that is meant to make you feel badly about yourself, personally atack you, devalue or belittle you,
or constantly attempt to debate you, this is abuse and you need to rethink the relationship. Regardless of whether this person is family or not. 10. Meet your needs. Get yourself in the habit of asking yourself: "What do i need right now?" especially when you've been wounded
by someone else. We tend to have this particular habit,
where when we get hurt by someone else, or rejected by them,
we respond by hurting ourself worse, rejecting ourself even more
and disapproving even more of ourself. We add salt to our own wounds. We immediately begin to deprive ourselves. We exacerbate our feelings,
because we then feel bad about two things: The original incident and the pain we are feeling about the incident. Those of us who feel bad when others express a less than favorable opinion of us, tend to feel bad about feeling bad about things. We need to do the things for ourselves
which make us feel relief on a physical, emotional and mental level. Perhaps we need to take a walk to feel more energized, or eat to feel more grounded, or write in our journal so that we can gain an organisation within our thoughts, or gain more clarity. This is like self validation in action. You're not going to heal your wounds
or learn how to validate yourself, and stop being negatively affected
by what other people think, with one technique or with a magic pill. Everything begins with the knowledge
that it is valid and okay to feel hurt because of what someone has said or done. We cannot consciously control what other people think, what they say and what they do. But we can absolutely aproach ourselves differently. We can treat ourselves well. We can decide to approach ourselves differently. With the task of taking care of ourselves
when we have been hurt by someone. And if we choose to approach this task
of approaching ourselves differently, then what we find is that the window is wide open
to self healing and to integration. And as soon as we pass through that particular window, the things that other people say and do
won't hurt us as badly. No matter what they say and do. Our reactivity level will go down. Then it's no longer going to be about caring
what other people will think. Because you will care. But the point is, what people say or do or think
won't make you spiral in a downward direction. Have a good week. <i>Music</i> Subtitles by the Amara.org community
I sincerely believe Teal Swan is a cult leader but strangely this video has helped me so I'm not going to blindly ignore it. That being said, I've read a ton of self-help and psychology books and I'm trying to figure out if this video is an amalgamation of books or one simple book I can refer to.
Anybody know?
This is kind of funny, considering how the vast majority of her blogs and "daily updates" are her droning on and on about how people see her and about how its so unfair. The non-plagiarized "works" are all about this. they are only about her own perceived victimhood at the hands of people who notice that she is full of crap and dare to ask questions. its pretty embarrassing how she focuses on that so much, when she has hundreds of thousands of loyal followers, she makes bank off them, she also has a house full of sycophant servants, and claims to have had several enlightenments (?) and that she speaks for "source perspective"...and yet, she is mostly focused on her "haters".