How You See Yourself Will Always Be More Important Than How Others See You

How you see yourself, how you talk to yourself, how you handle your defeats is more important than how others see you or what they think of you. It’s a lesson I keep learning the hard way, the more you look on the outside for validation, the less you achieve, the less you accomplish, the less you do because what others think of you, their words, and their judgments can truly paralyze you.

Here’s a fact that’s never going to change, there will always be someone who doesn’t believe in you, there will always be someone who judges you, there will always be someone who doesn’t think you’re good enough for whatever you’re doing, there will always be someone who doesn’t think you are worthy of their time and attention and there will always be someone who criticizes everything you do. These people exist in our lives, they can be in our family or our friends, in our circle or our work and you can never run away from them but the good news is you don’t have to.

You don’t have to listen to their half-hearted advice or their unsolicited opinions. You don’t have to filter who you are or give up on your dreams because they all agree that you won’t be able to make it. You don’t have to see yourself through their eyes. You don’t have to let them dictate whether or not you deserve love. You don’t have to lend them your ears when they want to put you down and you don’t have to engage in their debates.

Here’s another fact, at the other end of the spectrum, there will be people who believe in you, who encourage you to go for your dreams, to take on more challenges, to step out of your comfort zone. There will be people who see you as more than enough and overqualified. There will be people who brag about you and how proud they are of you or how lucky they are to know you. Like a pendulum, you’ll always swing between these two ends which is why you should never really get attached to any of them because how you see yourself will always be more important than how others see you.

Because if others see you as bad and you are confident in your abilities, it won’t stop them from judging you anyway and if others see you as good and you’re full of doubts about yourself, then they won’t do you any good either. There will always be battles you can’t win and sometimes these people may be right about you but if you spend your life trying to prove everyone wrong then you’ll never truly live. What’s more important is not allowing these people to get to you or stop you from living the life you want even if it means losing a few battles and people along the way.