I know how it is. We all want to be liked. We all want to be appreciated, respect, and “gotten.” We want others to see our brilliance and worth, our value as human beings. We want them to treat us with the sensitivity and tact and care that we actually feel. We want them to recognize that we are, as they are, vulnerable and feeling and alive. We want the spirit in them to acknowledge the spirit in us, the meaning behind Namaste.
After all, isn’t it generally easier for us to see ourselves in a positive light if other people do as well? For more of us, I’d bet the answer is yes.
Yet the last time I checked, you can’t always count on this happening. Sure, most people are decent enough, some are really nice. A few are absolutely amazing to us. Yet every so often, some bugger comes into our experience and does or says something, and all of a sudden we feel powerless, frustrated, or insignificant. It’s like we no longer feel in control of our experience. Suddenly, it’s as if someone else’s opinion or behavior calls all the shots.
What can be done about this?
There’s an excellent quote I read on the Facebook Abraham Hicks page I subscribe to:
Anytime that someone annoys you, you’ve just stayed too long.
You’ve let them dictate the vibration.
And the reason you’ve let them dictate your vibration is:
you haven’t practiced YOUR OWN ENOUGH!
Abraham Hicks
A little while ago, I was hanging out with some friends, and though I had a lot of fun for awhile, by the time I left, I started noticing that I did not feel good anymore. When I looked at it later, I realized that my own brain started beating me up about something one of my friends said. Instead of being at ease and enjoying myself, suddenly I was tense, even defensive. I walked home that day and thought about it.
At around this same time, I saw the Abraham Hicks quote above. “Aha!” I said to myself. “This is what happened!” I realized that I had simply stayed too long with my friends. I hadn’t asked myself when would be a good time for a graceful exit. Instead, I lingered… and then I suffered for it.
I think there is a strong instinct in us for when being around someone is enjoyable or not. Yet for many of us, that instinct has atrophied, or at least gone somewhat dormant, after years of conditioning to ignore our own feelings and instincts. I am learning to use mine again, I am happy to say 🙂 The end result is that I am becoming more sensitized on a moment-by-moment basis on how I am feeling in any situation.
As relates to how we feel about ourselves, I think the key is that we really gotta be completely selfish, and decide that what matters is that we are enjoying ourselves (!). If we check in with ourselves, I think we can tell when a situation or person is no longer enjoyable.
Abraham-Hicks encourages you to say to yourself, “Nothing is more important than that I feel good!” We do not need to abuse ourselves by staying in situations that don’t feel good. Yet sometimes it can take heaps of courage and self-examination to get clear on exactly how something is affecting us.
When people don’t see us, we do not need to let that bother us. I know, it’s not easy to change our habit of wanting approval. Yet why is someone else’s approval so important? Why is it so important that they “see” us, that they “get” us? Furthermore, is that likely to happen from them? Or are we just fooling ourselves, wasting our time expecting a miracle to occur that is not likely to, trying to get some blind person to gain vision?
If people do not see us, what is there to do about it besides just move on, spend time doing something we like, or hang out with others who do see us? Furthermore, it is amazing how much less we feel we need other people’s approval when we approve of ourselves, and when we know how to check in with ourselves and get ourselves in a blissful happy state 🙂
Maybe the belief that we needed other people to see us was just an illusion, after all.