The Prison of Other People's Opinions: Why We Believe the Lies Others Tell Us About Ourselves
Though you can’t handle your reaction to people’s negativity entirely, there are several hacks that can help ignore wrong opinions about you.
Despite individualism becoming more and more popular, people remain creatures that need to stay within the society, which also means stay dependent on other people’s assessment.
While some are more resistant to what their surrounding thinks about them, others often get caught into that trap and start believing everything said about them.
Still, after thoroughly analyzing the situation and defining where it derives from, psychologists across the world made a list of actions that can potentially help you become immune towards others’ toxic comments.
Why Are We Dependent on Other People’s Opinions?
According to experts, the need to be approved by others comes all the way back from ancient times when belonging to a certain social group meant higher chances of survival. Centuries later, our mind still functions in the same way and reacts to other people’s negative comments by suggesting that at some point you’ll be rejected by your own social group.
Another reason is that other people’s opinions are often considered the proof or disproof of your value; this is what we’re used to since childhood when adults’ words were indisputable just because they were adults' words.
Lastly, people tend to focus on the only negative remark, leaving behind tens or hundreds of good words said by other people.
How to Get independence From Others’ Opinions?
Even if you feel like you aren’t able to take others’ negativity easy, experts can reassure you this is what you can actually develop as a certain skill. The list of things to do in this case includes making your own list of your values and positive traits, using affirmations that are based on real facts about yourself, analyzing the source of criticism (that said, defining whether that person is competent enough to make remarks like this).
Apart from that, also consider taking some criticism as sort of advice for the future (yes, sometimes others’ opinions do help like this), defining your own boundaries and cutting off everyone who tries to cross them.
