I’ve been running this Finance/budgeting website for over 15 years now and Financial Freedom is Huge, but what I’ve come to understand in the past 15 years is, Emotional Freedom is worth so much more.
If you learn nothing else from reading this site, I implore you to learn this fact: What Other People Think of You is NONE of Your Business.
Think about that for a moment, let it sink in, mull it over in your mind a bit, because it’s the gods’ honest truth. Here’s a confession, I used to obsess about the impression I made on people. Everything that I take the time to write about or share on my site, I actually care about. I research it before formulating and sharing an opinion and because of that, I [strike]am[/strike] WAS emotionally attached.
If someone posted something negative in response, it was an attack on me, I had done something wrong in their eyes and I felt like I needed to defend myself and my position, or better explain myself so they could see that I wasn’t the bad/horrible/useless person that they seemed to think I was.
Wow. Isn’t that a completely ridiculous way to Live your life? Always being concerned with what other people think of you?
You literally have NO controlover what a person thinks of you. You could be the most honest, most hard-working, loving, affectionate, caring person on earth and they might just have a hair across their ass that day and hate you. They might dislike you because you remind them of someone they used to know. Hell, they might just be a miserable human being and have nothing better to do than spread their negativity.
They might think you’re a bad person because you cursed once, or because you don’t attend their church, or because you used the wrong form of “Their/there/they’re” when commenting to them. . . but guess what, they’re completely entitled to their own opinions and while you may choose to listen to them, you certainly don’t have to allow them to control you or influence you in any way.
In fact, there will be those who, no matter what you do, will think negatively and never be satisfied. Years ago while working in a Restaurant, after a particularly frustrating night dealing with a customer who was hell-bent on being miserable, the old lady who owned the establishment sat me down and asked me if I knew what the 2% rule was.
I didn’t, I’d never heard of such a thing.
In business, the 2% rule basically states that no matter what you do, how you do it there will always be 2% who are ticked off, upset or otherwise miserable.
She said, “if we were a travel agency and gave away a free trip to Jamaica, there would still be 2% of people who were angry because they couldn’t get time off from work, or it conflicted with something else, or they didn’t want that destination.”
I remember laughing and at the tender age of 16, I just didn’t fully grasp what she was trying to tell me.
You can spend your life trying to teach people things they aren’t interested in learning, trying to explain your position when they have it set in their heads that they’re right no matter what, but the hard truth is, people are going to believe what they want and see you how they choose, and by god, that is their right.
So it is with love and respect that I reiterate to you, what others think of You is none of Your Business, and what others think of Me, is none of Mine.
Once you learn to detach from what other people think of you, you will have achieved Emotional Freedom- and honey, let me tell you, that’s MORE liberating than being debt free.
