PEOPLE WILL LIKE YOU AND PEOPLE WILL DISLIKE YOU
by Dr. Tanya Yerigan on 12/11/14
About a year ago I came across an excellent blog called Practical Tips for Productive Living by Marc and Angel Hack. This morning I was reading their most recent blog post “10 Tough Truths Happy People Aren’t Afraid to Face” and decided to share some thoughts with you.
One of the ten truths that really stood out for me was the “people will love you and people will dislike you”. This is what they had to say about it: “And most of the time, it will have nothing to do with you. How others treat you is their karma, how you respond is yours. Love them anyway. Be kind because it’s who you are, not because they have to earn it. The hardest people to love are often the ones who need it the most anyway.”
These are wise, wise words. For some, they are words that can take a lifetime to understand or integrate into one’s life or beliefs. For others, these words will never be understood or attained. The writing reminds me of what I wrote in relation to my experiences in living without my oldest son, Clint. When someone loses a loved one, you would think those around them are kind and loving. The truth is…many people are not. The truth is…when you lose someone you love, it can also bring out the worst in you. Without clarity of thought, these two runaway freight cars of undesirable behavior can lead to a train wreck of emotions.
When
you lose a child or anyone you love, you aren’t given a choice in their
fate. You are forced to live without
them. I hate that helpless feeling of being powerless, and I never want to
return to it. It’s from this hatred that
I’ve learned to take back control over myself and, more importantly, my
thoughts and perceptions. It's sad that it took the ultimate devastation to allow me to see with such clarity.
What do I see? What have I learned? I’ve learned to control the negativity
that wants so desperately to take over my brain and replace it with love,
kindness, and compassion. I’ve learned
to share love with those I love and those that love me, but I’ve also learned
to love those who seem to know no love.
I’ve learned to extend kindness to those who are easy to be kind to and
also those who are not. I’ve learned to
give compassion to those who are compassionate to me and, more importantly,
those who haven’t been compassionate.
Yes, these are all choices. It
isn’t our talents or abilities that will ultimately define who we are; it’ll be
the choices that we make.
I choose
happiness and a positive perception. You will never find real happiness when you are more concerned with what others think of you. Worse yet, you will never be truly happy when what "they" think matters more than what "you" think. Couple this with the fact that the opinions that cause us the most stress, are generally from acquaintances or strangers and not even those who love us. My brother and his wife have told me for years to concentrate on the opinions of those who genuinely matter. I've heard the message but never understood why I couldn't take what they've said to heart. I recently figured it out. I realized that the problem is that everyone "genuinely" matters to me. What I've had to discover is that they don't matter MORE than those who love me...including myself.
What's this all mean? It is simple. I
no longer find myself concerned with whether people like or dislike me. I am more concerned with being a good person
and being comfortable in knowing who I am.
Much like Marc and Angel state in their blog post, whether or not
someone likes you “Most of the time it will have nothing to do with you”.
In short, be a good person and concern yourself with whether or not one person likes you. That person is YOU. Odds are high that if you like yourself, those that matter will too!
To read the other 9 of the “10 Tough Truths Happy People Aren’t Afraid to Face”,
http://www.marcandangel.com/2014/12/10/10-tough-truths-happy-people-arent-afraid-to-face/#more-799
