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The surest way to a life disaster is to care what other people think. Thinking about what "they" will say about you, what "they" will think about you is going to lead you to a quite decidedly unhappy life of discontent at best.
Talking with a close friend a few weeks ago I found out that he was not going to follow up on a seriously good venture because as he said "What would people think?"
I'll let you in on a secret that I discovered....
The only people who care what you are doing have nothing happening in their own lives.
The only people who care about what other people are doing are gossipers, not doers, not builders, not entrepreneurs, constructive people have too interesting lives of their own to care what you are doing in your private life.
Who cares what these do nothing people think? If they think bad things about you does it really affect you? Or do you live in fear of them?
Don't Live In Fear
If you do not fear, if you do not care what these other people think of you then they have no power over you and you can go about your life as you wish.
This is sort of similar to life itself, it could be classified as a subset really - these rules, presented here, can bring you greater happiness in your entire life.
Do not fear life, do not fear living.
The current mass media thrives on fear - terrorists, sharks, murders, natural disasters, what do you see on the TV news everynight? Fear mongering.
Leave it behind.
Don't Care What Other People Think
There will always be someone who belittles your plans or what you want to do, even what you are doing - that person is often (always) living in fear of failure themselves. they are scared that you might get ahead and then they won't:
a) Be able to control you (often the case with family) or
b) Make them feel bad because you succeeded and they are still haven't even tried - worse than a failure.
Keeping that in mind now why would you care what they think?
If I cared about what other people think I would never have taken the route to be a movie star, the number of people, close friends that ridiculed my ideas and plans and told me I was going to fail.Thousands of people fail at acting "What makes you think you are better than them?" as you can guess these are people I no longer keep in contact with, no hard feelings but we're on very different paths.
Make Fun Of What Other People Think
Last week I went clothes shopping (a long and tedious task of trying to find anything that 'fits' me) with a girlfriend as we left we ran into one of her friends going to the same area we invited her to join us.
So there I am monstering around a major shopping area scouting for clothes with these two girls shorter than 5 foot tall (not uncommon in Asia).
Then we entered a clothing shop and the shop assistant came over and made a rather rude joke about why I had two women. My good friend then explained to him the she was my wife and the other girl was my mistress, we used to have troubles but now we were all happy together. The shop assistant was stunned and it stopped his smart alec comments dead.
This goes equally for my gay friends, I judge people by who they are and not by what job they have or their sexual prefereance or any other superficial things. This often gets me labeled as gay when in Australia someone who had no life would see me having lunch with a gay friend. And do you know what? If that idiot wants to label me as gay because he saw me talking with a gay guy then congratulations, how a person thinks often shows a lot about that person, or sometimes their secret desires.
By confronting what other people think is right and wrong in a direct manner you often disarm them, they have no power to make you feel bad about what you are doing, or guilty that you might be doing someting 'wrong'.
OK, so now I am 'labelled' in Bangkok as liking 2 short women do I care what these people think? No. What do I do? Make fun with them and go about my life and forgetting it.
No matter what you do there is a segment of society that will disapprove anyway and then there are people who either overtly or secretly wish it was them.
Don't care what other people think.
Oh and my close friend who did not follow through with his opportunity? He met a girl who was significantly younger than him, she was pretty, from a good background, from a different country. He had the opportunity to start dating her but he would not because he was scared what other people would think about a middle aged man (39) dating a 25 year old Asian girl (Australian raised) - to the detriment of his own happiness.
Again to live a happy life DO NOT CARE WHAT OTHER PEOPLE THINK.
As one reader pointed out most people who would tell you how to live go about spouting rubbish from their mouths every 3 minutes with absolutely no thought, if you try to change your life to make them happy then that is rather foolish isn't it.
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