It’s Your Opinion That Matters

In my previous The Uniqueness That Is You post, I talked about how important it is to celebrate your uniqueness.

Closely related to celebrating your uniqueness is understanding that, ultimately, only your opinion matters. Much of the suffering we force upon ourselves stems from our irrational need to impress others, even when those others are complete strangers. I put it this way:

Your happiness is in direct inverse proportion to how much you care what other people think.

Think about it for a moment. The more you care what other people think of you, your actions, your accomplishments, your possessions, your home, your looks, your whatever, the less happy you’ll be. On the other hand, the less you care about what people think about you, the happier you’ll be. It seems so simple, but in this conformist society of ours it’s not easy to brush off other people’s opinions. But you need to work at it. The better you get at not caring what others think, the happier you’ll be.

In Ernie J. Zelinski’s excellent book, The Lazy Person’s Guide to Success: How to Get What You Want without Killing Yourself for It, he illustrates well the need to think for yourself when he says “The hardest way to achieve success is to have someone else define it for you.” Zelinksi’s observations are so true. Remember to be you. Think for yourself. Define yourself. Never forget that ultimately, only your opinion matters. Embrace your uniqueness.

Every human being is different. No two of us are alike. Each is totally unique. While this may appear to be self-evident, it’s surprising how often we act contrary to this fact. On the one hand you’ll hear folks talk about uniqueness, individuality and the distinctive nature of everyone’s personality and essence. Yet on the other hand many of those same folks work incessantly, consciously or unconsciously, to categorize, pigeonhole and label people in an effort to restrain their uniqueness.

At the core of all self-improvement work must be an acknowledgment that everyone is unique. A person’s innate nature, experiences, education and life situation all mix in a myriad of ways to produce an individual that is totally unique from anyone else. To not accept this truth is to begin all self-improvement work from a foundation of falsehood, which can only lead to less than optimal results.

When people decide to improve themselves, either in generalized ways or in a specific area of life, they turn to many forms of help. They might seek out counseling, coaching or therapy. They might read a book or take a class. Support groups might be appealing. They might try meditation or spiritual guidance.

All of these forms of help can be valuable, but often they come from a place of bias or are based on a rigid system of thought or practice. A therapeutic approach might be based on only one perspective of the human condition. A book may contain information and advice heavily entrenched in the opinion of the author. Support groups are notorious for promoting a group think mentality that doesn’t tolerate dissension well. Meditation and spiritual practices can be based on a narrow interpretation of the divine.

All of this often leads to us caring far too much what all of these folks think about us. Resist this tendency. Forces surround you that will continually try to make you conform. Religions, schools of thought, physical disciplines, spiritual practices, educational institutions, social constructs, family, friends, and even our own habits and internally imprinted patterns are just a few of the forces that will inevitably exert pressure on you to conform, to the detriment of your individuality. Resist these forces. It is only your own path to self-improvement, your own path to a better life, that is important. And your path won’t necessarily look like anyone else’s.