Who’s in control of your life? Who’s pulling your strings?
For the majority of us, it’s other people – society, colleagues,friends, family or our religious community. We learned this way of operating when we were very young, of course. We were brainwashed. We discovered that feeling important and feeling accepted was a nice experience and so we learned to do everything we could to make other people like us. We didn’t want to be singled out by the crowd for being different because this wasn’t such a nice feeling. We learned this way of being so well that, as adults, we continue – mostly through mutual peer pressure – to keep each other in check. Like sheep without any need for a sheepdog, we keep each other in line.
“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.” - Oscar Wilde
It works both ways. First, we are afraid of disapproval. Am I dressed right? Will people laugh at my accent? Will I look stupid? Will I make a mistake? When we feel that others think badly of us, it makes us feel bad and so we try to avoid this.
Second, we all want to feel important and so we crave the positive attention of others. This is one of our basic needs, according to Dale Carnegie, author of the multi-million best seller, How to Win Friends and Influence People. And so when people stroke our ego and tell us how wonderful we are, it makes us feel good. We crave this good feeling like a drug – we are addicted to it and seek it out wherever we can.
We are so desperate for the approval of others that we live unhappy and limited lives, denying huge swathes of ourselves and failing to do the things we really want to do because we’re worried about what other people will think. Just as drug addicts and alcoholics live impoverished lives to keep getting their fix, so we impoverish our own existence to get our own constant fix of approval.
The drug is so addictive that most people will not give it up – they will keep looking for approval because the hit is so intense. But, just as with any drug, there is a price to pay. The price of the approval drug is freedom – the freedom to be ourselves. Do you want your drug or do you want to be free? You cannot have both. If you want to pull your own strings, you need to stop giving away your power – you need to genuinely stop caring what other people think about you.
The truth is that it’s all an illusion anyway – you cannot control what other people think. People have their own agenda, they come with their own baggage and, in the end, they’re more interested in themselves than in you; in fact, they’re thinking about themselves‘morning, noon and after dinner,’ as Carnegie wrote.
If we try to live by the opinions of others, we will build our life on sinking sand. Everyone has a different way of thinking, and people change their opinions all the time. The person who tries to please everyone will only end up getting exhausted and probably pleasing no one in the process.
So how can we take back control? If we are truly ready to give up the drug of approval and importance (which most people are not), I think there’s only one way – make a conscious decision to stop caring what other people think.
This doesn’t mean that you should start to treat people badly, step on them or use them.
?Why would it? I read somewhere recently that the world would be terrible if nobody cared what other people thought of them. But why so? We all know what’s right and wrong. I have written before about guiding your life by means of a set of values – not values imposed from the outside by others, but innate values which come from within. If we are driven by these values and not by the changing opinions and value systems of others, we will live a more authentic,effective, purposeful and happy life. We will be actualized and successful.
Only one question remains – do you really want to be free?
誰在控制你的生活？誰在影響你？
對于我們大多數(shù)人來說，答案是其他人—社會、同事、朋友、家人或者我們的宗教團體。當然我們很小的時候就已經(jīng)學會了這一運行方式。我們被這種方式洗腦了。我們發(fā)現(xiàn)感覺自己很重要、被別人接受會讓自己很開心，所以我們就學著做那些會讓其他人喜歡我們的事情。我們不想與眾不同，因為與眾不同的感覺并不好。我們把這種做事方式學的很好，即使我們長大成成人后依舊保持著相互制約——通常是通過相互施壓。我們彼此一致，就像無需牧羊犬看守的羊群。
“大多數(shù)人都并非自己。他們的思想充斥著別人的意見，他們的生活通篇都是模仿，他們的激情僅僅只是引用而已。”——王爾德
這是雙向的。首先，我們害怕別人不贊同我們。我這樣穿對嗎？別人會不會嘲笑我？我看上去是不是很蠢？我會不會犯錯？當我們覺得別人對我們的感覺很差時就會很沮喪，因此我們會盡量的避免這種情況。
其次，我們都想讓自己看上去很重要，所以我們渴望別人的關(guān)注。據(jù)暢銷書《如何贏得朋友并影響他人》的作者DaleCarnegie說，這是我們的基本需求。所以當別人贊許我們說我們看上去很棒時，我們會感覺良好。我們就像對藥上癮一樣的渴望這種良好感覺，我們沉迷于這種感覺，并在任何地方尋找它。
我們?nèi)绱丝释麆e人的贊同，以至于我們的生活不快樂且處處受限，因為擔心別人的想法所以備受束縛，想做的事情也不能做。就像吸毒者和酗酒者一樣為了維持他們的癖好而變得生活貧困，我們在不斷的自我修正中也讓自己的存在價值變得越來越小。
毒品很容易上癮，大多數(shù)人很難戒掉—因為被贊同的感覺如此美妙所以人們會不斷地追尋。但是正如吸毒一樣，這是需要代價的。這種名叫贊許的藥物所需要付出的代價就是自由——做我們自己的自由。你是想要藥品還是想要自由？魚與熊掌不可兼得。如果你想做你自己你就要停止釋放你的能量——你需要真正的停止在乎別人的看法。
事實上不管怎樣這都是一種幻覺——你不能控制別人的想法。每個人都有自己的行程，他們帶著自己的行李來，最后他們關(guān)注自己要遠遠多于關(guān)注你；事實上，他們滿腦子想的都是自己的—就像卡內(nèi)基說的—“早上、中午和晚上”。
如果我們試圖依靠別人的看法生活，那我們就是將自己的生活建立在了一堆沙子上。每個人的思維方式各不相同，而想法也在隨時改變。如果有誰想取悅所有人那么只會變得筋疲力盡，并且可能一個人都取悅不了。
那么我們怎樣收回控制權(quán)？如果我們真的準備放棄這個叫贊許和名望的毒藥了（大多數(shù)人不會放棄），我想只有一種辦法可行——下定決心不再在乎別人的看法。
這并不意味著從此以后你要對他人不好、踐踏或者利用他人。
為什么呢？最近我看到一種說法稱如果每個人都不再在意別人的看法時這個世界將變得很恐怖。但是為什么會這樣呢？我們都知道什么是對什么是錯。我以前已經(jīng)寫過要用一套價值觀來指引你的生活——一種發(fā)自你內(nèi)心的而不是從他人強加給你的價值觀。如果我們按照這種價值觀而不是按照來自于別人的隨時在改變的價值觀生活，那么我們將會活得更加真實、更加實在、更加有目的、更加快樂。我們將更富于行動，更容易成功。
只有一個問題—你真的想自由嗎？
沒看完。。。， 不過倒值得深思啊
