The Dilemma That Is Caring About What Other People Think Of You.

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I believe the idea of caring about what other people may think of us is one that can be a tough nut to crack. It's something that is constantly talked about among people. As with nearly every other aspect of life, it is one of those things in life that has a degree of variance. You have some people that claim not to care what other people think of them under any circumstances, and you have those people that care only when it comes to the opinions of certain individuals. Adding to that, you also have people that claim to not care what people think of them, yet it is all for show because they know deep down within themselves that they actually do care. Again, this is one of those things that has so many different ways of being viewed. It is for that reason that I consider it to be a dilemma for so many people in this world. Whether we like to acknowledge it or not, the thoughts and opinions of other people always have a degree of influence in this life. When a politician decides to run for a position in government, their ideas are shaped by the opinions of the voters. When a person goes for a certain position in a company, making a good impression on whomever is interviewing that person matters. It matters because the impression that person makes will often determine whether or not the interviewer will hire that person, which is a form of having to care what someone else thinks. People are always going to be judging others at some level or another, which is why the thoughts and opinions of others is something that we will never be able to completely escape. I indeed believe that it is important to care about the opinions of others. However, I do believe that it all comes down to perspective and prioritization. Since I have deemed this topic of caring about what others think as being a dilemma, I believe I should give my own personal perspective on when I feel it okay to care or not care about what other people may think of us.

What's up once again everyone in internet land? It is I, Brad H. back once again to bring you all another installment of 'Brad H.'s Perspective'! For those that may not be a first time reader on here, this is an hub that I use to give my perspective on various topics that I think about and encounter in my life. Through the process of me giving my perspective, I try to paint a canvas of words that will hopefully serve as motivation and inspiration to others. Whether you are a first time visitor or a long time reader, I appreciate everybody that is tuning in. Wow, we are officially in the month of December! I can't speak for anyone else, but it is hard for me to believe that this year has flown by this fast. For me personally, it feels as if only 5 or 6 months have passed since January was here. I'd like to know something for those of you that would care to chime in. Am I the only one that feels like life tends to speed up the older that you get? I think that I may have asked that question before on here in the past, but I really would like for some of you that are 30 plus to respond if you'd like. I know that December is a special month for so many people that celebrate the Christmas holidays. This is the time of the year where we hang up Christmas trees, and exchange gifts with one another. However, and I've said this before several times, be mindful of those that are grieving during this season. I'm sure by now that most of you already know that quite a few deaths happen around this time of the year. This time of the years is supposed to be happy and joyous, but that just isn't the case for everyone. So I just want to challenge everyone to spend time with or call people you know that have lost a loved one around this time of year. It's coming up on a year when one of my great uncles passed away, and I can say without a doubt that going forward Christmases likely won't be the same for me. I just wanted to get that out there, but I hope everyone is having a happy holiday season so far. Alright, it is not time to get into this week's topic on the dilemma of caring about what other people think of you.

So before I go more into this week's topic, I'm going to go ahead and give the regular disclaimer that I normally give on these installments. We all have different viewpoints and outlooks on how we see life. Besides the obvious of physically looking different from one another, these viewpoints and outlooks are the things that make us all unique in our own way. Since we're all different in our way of thinking, I don't expect everyone to agree with what I'm going to be covering. The idea here isn't to focus on what may be considered to be right or wrong, but rather to hopefully use this content as a way to help inspire thought that can be used in bettering ourselves. Whatever information that I give isn't meant to only do one thing. I just hope that whatever takeaway people are able to come away from with this is something positive and inspirational. As for how I arrived at wanting to address the dilemma of caring about what others think of you as a topic of interest, I can solely attribute this to a discussion that I recently had this weekend with a few of my family members. The discussion itself wasn't about this specific topic, but rather about something somewhat related. A couple of days after thinking about what was being discussed, I walked away thinking about how difficult of the issue of caring what other people may think of us can be. Now again as I alluded to earlier, this topic is probably one that won't apply to many of you. Some of you genuinely may not care at all about what other people think, and that is totally fine. However, the biggest reason why I see this topic as a dilemma stems from the fact that depending on what type of situation that you're in, there are certain situations and circumstances where you may or may not have to care about what others may think. I think what I'm going to try and do with this one is point out some of those circumstances where it does and doesn't benefit us to care what others think. Again, what I'm going to be covering is my own personal perspective. I hope that I'm able to express this in a manner in which most of you will be able to understand. With all of that being said, lets go ahead and get into this.

I believe that when it comes to what other people think of you us, we have to be able to put it into the proper context. Generally speaking, giving thought to what someone else thinks of you stems from the desire to be accepted. It is in our nature as humans to want to be loved and accepted for being the individuals that we truly are. Because of this way of thinking, it is normal to care about what other people think of you in some capacity. For example, most of us care what our family thinks of us in some capacity. You may not care what they may think when it comes to some of your actions, but you likely care what they think when it comes to them accepting you for who you are. We've all seen or personally have been involved in situations where someone was at odds with a family member due to a choice of how a person decides to live their life. If you think about it for a sec, there wouldn't be any need for two people to be at odds if people didn't care to an extent what other people thought. Again, the majority of this comes down to wanting to be accepted, and I personally think there isn't nothing wrong with wanting to be accepted by the people that should matter the most in our lives. Who are the people that should matter? Of course your family and close friends, but also the people that have helped you in some capacity throughout your life. The opinions of these people matter because they have in some form or another taken an interest in wanting to see you become a healthy functioning person in society. Think of a person or people that invest their money into starting a business. These individuals hire people to carry out their plans right? Because they have an investment in the business, their opinions on how it should run matters. I know that is a different comparison, but I think that most of you get where I'm coming from with that. Now I'm in no way saying that you should ever bend to the people that you care about will. I'm just saying that due to them having invested in you, you should be willing to value what they think of you.

One of the many things that I've noticed as I've gotten older when it relates to what people think is that we as people often care more about what the wrong people think of us. When I say this, I'm referring to the way that so many of us care about what people that have never contributed anything to our lives think. So who are the people that we're talking about in saying this? Basically, any and everyone that has never been a part of your life in some way or another, which means that it refers to a large portion of this world. If we're being pretty honest here, most of us go out of our way to impress people because we care about how we will be perceived. I mentioned in the previous paragraph that this comes down to wanting to be accepted, and this also applies to when it comes to people in general. It is like most people have a desire to want to be accepted by everyone, when everyone isn't going to be accepting of your regardless of what kind of person you are. For example, think about how prevalent social media is in today's society. This is something that I've already discussed on here before, but most people that spend mindless amount of time posting on social media are likely seeking acceptance from others. Now I'm not trying to say that social media is a bad thing, but just like with anything else in this world, it can be overdone. I'm also not trying to imply that the person on your social media don't matter. I do realize that many of the people on our social media accounts are family and friends. However, we also know that we have people that are "acquaintances" on there as well. If you take a moment and ask yourself what has anyone on social media done for you, you will probably not be able to say much beside liking a few photos and posts. Likes don't do anything for us but feed our egos, so why should we care about what people on these platforms think? I used social media as an example, but this applies to the outside world also.

So what is the main point that I'm aiming to get across in this installment? Simply said, we should always be mindful of what people think of us, but this should only apply to the people that matter in your life. Any person that has fed you, clothed you, and helped you in some capacity in your life thoughts should matter more than someone that you don't know or barely know. This world we live in has become overly consumed with people seeking acceptance from all the wrong people. This epidemic that I would call it is driving so many people mad to the point where they're sad and depressed whenever someone doesn't like or accept them. From my perspective, this is not a healthy way to live. I always say that you don't have to be liked or loved by all people, you just have to be loved by the RIGHT people. The right people are those that will be there for you through thick and thin. They will motivate and inspire you to be the best person that you can be. Those are the people whom you should be mindful of what their opinion of you is. When it comes to everyone else, you have to evaluate and discern how what they may think or you or not benefits your life. I'm not saying that you should go through this life with a chip on your shoulder not caring what people think. That is the way much of our society thinks now, which is why I believe so many people have inflated and over-sized egos. There is always an opportunity to encounter people that will genuinely care about you in this life. We just have to be able to know the difference. So with all of that being said, I believe that you should care what people think of you in regards to the people that you care about. You should always be mindful of what others think of you as well, however, if and when what the outside world thinks of you comes to your detriment, then it is likely time that you stop caring about what those people think. It is okay to care what people think, it just needs to be in the proper context.

Alright everyone, I think that about sums up what I wanted to talk about in this installment of 'Brad H.'s Perspective'! A big thank you once again to those of you that came by. As always, I hope that there was some meaning and understanding that could be taken away from this. If anyone has anything they'd like to contribute in regards to this or any of the other topics that I cover, please feel free to do so in the comment section. If you'd like to connect with or follow me on Twitter, you can do so at the Twitter handle of @BradrickH. It is time for me to depart for now. There's a boxing match coming on in a bit that I'm going to watch, so I'll check back in with you all on the next go round. Till then, take care everyone, and have a safe and happy weekend. Peace!

©2018 Bradrick H. All Rights Reserved.

What Other People Think About You and Your Life Is Their Business, Not Yours!

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Many of the thoughts and inspirations that I draw upon come from some of the motivational speakers that I enjoy listening to. One of my favorite motivational speakers to listen to is a man named Les Brown. Some of you may be familiar with him already. I haven't been up on Mr. Brown's work all that long, only for maybe a year or so. However, during the short span of time that I've become familiar with him, I've made an attempt to listen to as many of his speeches as I can. One of my favorite Les Brown speeches is his speech titled 'It's Possible'. Although I found the entire speech to be both informative and inspiring, there was something that Mr. Brown spoke during that speech that I thought would be a good title for this post. What's good folks? It's ya boy Brad H. back at you again with another edition of 'Brad H's. Perspective'.

I'm not going to go into many of the details of Les Brown's speech because to be honest, an entire book could probably be written about the particular speech that I'm referring to. However, what I plan on doing is using the quote from Les Brown that I'm going to use as the basis in this blog post, and relating it to how so many of us live our lives. Most of us may try to deny it, but the honest truth is that too many of us care about what other people think of us and our lives. We often hear people saying that they don't care what others think of them, but many of the people that constantly say this are the main ones making the hardest efforts to impress other people. Don't believe me? How many people do you know that go out of their way to purchase things that they probably don't really need, but their primary motivation for buying these things is that they're hoping to impress someone. Oh yea, we can't forget about the people that go way out of their way in attempts to make other people jealous.

It's amazing how we as people sometime do things for all the wrong reasons. Think about it for a second; a person buying something to show off and floss to a group of people that doesn't even like them. Is there even much logic in that? Whatever happened to just being yourself, and doing things because doing it made you happy? Why are people so hellbent on fitting in and trying to impress others? I believe that we as people in general want to feel like we're accepted by others. As I mentioned in a previous post, being the individual that you really are can sometimes be a lonely road to travel down, and not everyone that you encounter is going to like you, nor are they always going to understand you. In fact, regardless as to how good or bad of a person that you believe that you are, people are always going to have an opinion about you and your lifestyle, and in many cases, their opinions aren't going to be good ones. Guess what though; what other people think of you and your life is their business, not yours.

You may wonder to yourself; why do I say it's their business and not yours? Well like they say, your life is called your life because it's yours to live. No one can live for you, nor are they responsible for your happiness. The way that you decide to live your life, and what you want to do with your life is all on you. Therefore, how or what others perceive of you and your your life isn't any concern of yours, that's all on them. Our only concern should be doing the things that make ourselves happy. We have to continue to remind ourselves that true happiness is living life on your own terms, rather than constantly caring about what others think of you.

Now of course, there are some instances where someone else's opinion of you may hold some weight. When I think of caring about what others think, I mainly think of family members and close friends. In most cases, these are the people that we truly know care about us, so we tend to value their opinions. There's a big difference between worrying about what people whom have never done anything to help, uplift, or support you in any way think about you, compared to those who have proven themselves. One of the biggest issues we face is that many of us put too much stock into caring about those who shouldn't matter, and not enough on the ones that do. I think that pretty much about wraps it up for this 'Brad H's. Perspective' post.

The key point that I want to drive home is that we shouldn't be overly concerned about what people think in regards to our lives. My thinking on this especially applies to the people that only have negative opinions and thoughts of you, but have never provided any ideas or support to help take your life to the next level. In fact, it's probably better to remove those kind of people out of your life completely. As with my other posts, I want to say that everything that I've written about only applies to myself. Just view it as advice that you can use however you see fit. Whether you decide to use it or not, I appreciate those of you that take out the time to stop by. I'll see you in the next post. Peace!