Opinions of others

Hi!! I decided to share something else that I wrote sometime ago, this time it is about the opinions of other people.

“The best way to avoid falling prey to the opinions of others is to realize that other people’s opinions are just that- opinions. Regardless of how great or terrible they think you are, that's only their opinion. Your true self worth comes from within.”- the tribe.

This is something that I only understood a few months ago. That other people’s opinions are just opinions. And they don’t matter. just because someone said something it doesn’t make that true. If someone says that my dress is ugly doesn't make it ugly. It's only their opinion that it is ugly.

When we first got the assignment, to write a ted talk, I thought for a long time about things that I wanted to improve about myself. But for some reason, nothing would come to me! I spent a long time thinking. Nothing comes to me. I go over fifteen ideas. Writing and re-writing. Nothing.

Its Sunday. Still nothing. I sit and stare at the computer until my eyes water. I try to think. Suddenly, something crossed my head. I realized why I could not think of anything. It was because I was scared about what people would say about me if I said too much. I was scared of their opinions about me. So in the end that's what I decide to write about. Because one of my flaws is caring too much about what other people think about me. Not being able to find my power, and being too self conscious about myself.

What is an opinion anyway? It is a view or judgment formed about something, not necessarily based on fact or knowledge. An opinion is not a fact. And it is hard not to care about what other people say about you! When someone says something about me, I immediately can not focus on anything else. The whole day I will keep thinking about what that person said about me and how I can change that. And even though other people’s views are important, they aren't even so important that you start obsessing over them, which is what I tend to do.

So I decided to keep track of every time I said something when someone said something I did not like. This way I can keep growing and remember everyday as I grow more. I will try and understand why people said this about me, and if I think that what they said is true, then I will change that about myself. Sometimes just listening to why a person said that can make you feel better and maybe even build a bond between you and that person. If I keep going on with this, soon I won’t be upset when someone has a bad opinion about me, and I can become a much better person. On the inside and the outside.

I have been trying not to care when other people tell me what they think about me. In the past few days when someone tells me their opinion about me I try to take it in without thinking too much about it and then trying to change myself. Last week, someone told me that they did not like me. Now, I would have felt really bad and gone home and cried and then try to change myself to please that person. But now, I would just not care. Because not everyone in the world has to like me! If someone doesn’t like me then it's a loss for them. I wouldn’t even be affected by it.

And through this, I realized is that your opinion, is not my reality. And it never will be.