Can’t We Control?
Do you often receive and listen to other people’s opinions or decisions about your own life that you have just made?
In the past, I was one of those people who thought that criticism, opinions, and input from other people on what decision I would take was a good thing, which later brought and formed a good thing as well. I think very seriously about what input, opinion, or criticism I receive from other people. I often hear the expression that “criticism is constructive” or “other people’s opinions can enrich the point of view of your decision” so I always accept any comments I receive after I have decided on my own life.
I’ve been using this concept for a long time and across things and decisions, I’ve made in the past. Whether it’s small decisions to big decisions, I always accommodate what other people think about it. Sometimes my instincts doubt something and ask “is this really the way it is?” and usually my thoughts end up “okay, maybe it looks like this”.
Things like this go on for quite a while and affect all aspects of my life. The good thing is, that I can be trained to wisely listen to and process opinions, criticisms, messages, and input from other people. In addition, I have also been trained to listen to other people’s points of view on decisions that may be “one-way” that I have or will take. But on the other hand, it’s easy for me to feel insecure about my own decisions, even if they only concern my life, not someone else’s. The more accustomed I am to the frequent use of other people’s opinions as a reference for my decisions, the less confidence I have in myself.
I thought long and slowly about this and I found one thing: that I had to set a boundaries, for myself.
I studied the extent to which I would build those boundaries. I learned what I could do and what I didn’t need to do. Also, I had to learn how to not get too involved with other people’s opinions and criticisms deeply.
Opinions, comments, and criticism from other people are enough to be used as reference savings, not something significant for the decisions I make. What is substantial is me, what am I going to do, can I live it, can I accept all the consequences, can I solve it, in the future for the decisions I make.
Yeah, it looks like I have to do it like that. Easy isn’t it?
Sounds easy.
But in reality, it is not!
At first, I just confirmed the opinions/criticisms they conveyed to me — even if they conveyed them without me asking. I start to reassure myself when I decide by saying “okay, it’s still as far as I can go, I haven’t been able to do as he/they told me.” I thought that doing it myself would make things easier. It’s true, everything feels easy. But after that, I had to receive a response that I might not have noticed before.
“I told you, if you don’t follow what I suggest, you will surely fail.”
“Why are you ignoring my opinion? Is my opinion worthless? Even when I’ve experienced it? You will surely fail!”
“What I suggested to you was the best thing, yet you missed it!”
And many more responses appeared after I decided to convince and believe in myself.
I choose to stick with my choice and believe correctly that only I can control myself over what I can do for the journey of my life, including sorting out all the processes in it — which processes I need to work on or not. Through this way, I feel there is a change, one of which I feel there is a lightening if I live on my own choices that I fully control.
In this experience, I learned several lessons, such as learning and getting used to listening to other people’s opinions well, learning to understand and enriching points of view, and most importantly learning to understand more deeply what decisions I need to live.
If you ask again, can we control whatever response we receive?
Of course, we can!
