You will be amazed at how scared all of us are of other people.
Regular people just like us. Yet they inspire terror in us, make us want to run, take cover, disappear into oblivion, anything but face them.
You will also be amazed at how much what you are going to read here will ring true. To a larger or lesser extent depending on how strongly you believe you are right.
All of us, you & me, are feverishly attached to things that don’t belong to us.
Yet we defend them with our honor. These are our beliefs. Those gatekeepers of our mind- childhood influencers force feed us their beliefs. We lap them up. We believe to find meaning. We believe to belong. Our beliefs help us cling to our lineage, our ancestry & our institutions.
Most of our beliefs are only illusions. But we see only the illusions clearly, never seeing life as it actually is.
Our mind uses its beliefs to survive people.
Our mind is not able to understand others so it makes a mental model of them.
A shrunk down version of reality. And then we believe that our mental model is real. We fail to see other people as they are. We see others as we are, through our mental models of life that we form as children. We see most people in black or white. They are either angels sent to guide us or demons sent to destroy us.
When we don’t live in the real world but in our mind we birth our inner voice. And everything someone says or does becomes about us.
This is how angels become demons
When we hear the voice we think it is ‘me’ when it is actually an illusion at best & an obstacle at worst.
The voice tells us two things that cause maximum damage with people:
1. We are not enough. So we need validation from the world to become enough. This thought makes us needy. We feel we don’t deserve others’ kindness.
2. People are dangerous & they will hurt us. So while we appreciate those who treat us well we let fester the feeling that they are kind for a reason.
We are caught in the loop of low self-esteem & fear of others’ intentions. We don’t draw boundaries in a kind compassionate way. We let them invade our private spaces. But we feel sore every time a violation occurs. Now doesn’t that just reinforce our belief that people are dangerous?
We shut up then blow up
Our anger festers until one otherwise fine day we cannot hold it in any longer. We retaliate. Our retaliation is typically an overreaction of rage. Any surprises that the target of our retaliation is surprised & hurt? They cannot understand our reaction. In their world their action was not so big a deal.
This is how we lose friends. We are unable to trust anyone. We cannot be trusted in turn once our pattern of ‘shut up & blow up’ is revealed for the world to see.
Unlike what Dale Carnegie’s ‘How To Win Friends & Influence People’ says we cannot just be ‘nice’ to people all the time.
We have to work on our inner demons to see other people as they are.
You have a weapon
Now you know that no one else sees reality as it is either. Everyone is suffering in their heads with illusions & delusions. If a person is mean, angry, vengeful, unethical or evil it means they are suffering more in their head than others.
We can treat them with compassion for the suffering they are going through. They think their distortions of reality keep them safe when they actually just keep them from appreciating the world they live in.
A simple tool you can use to handle tough people is to take deep breathes. When you breathe slow & deep you relax & connect to your peace & wisdom. Your voice slows down.
The Indians call this distortion of reality, the dream like state of our existence, ‘Maya’.
For most of us life is not a dream but a waking nightmare we need to step out of, to find to peace & joy.
If you like what I write & want more, check out my newsletter. I write about values, motivation, mental health & the human condition of existing in our imperfect selves.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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