Who’s in control of your life? Who’s pulling your strings?
For the majority of us, it’s other people – society, colleagues,friends, family or our religious community. We learned this way of operating when we were very young, of course. We were brainwashed. We discovered that feeling important and feeling accepted was a nice experience and so we learned to do everything we could to make other people like us. We didn’t want to be singled out by the crowd for being different because this wasn’t such a nice feeling. We learned this way of being so well that, as adults, we continue – mostly through mutual peer pressure – to keep each other in check. Like sheep without any need for a sheepdog, we keep each other in line.
“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.” - Oscar Wilde
It works both ways. First, we are afraid of disapproval. Am I dressed right? Will people laugh at my accent? Will I look stupid? Will I make a mistake? When we feel that others think badly of us, it makes us feel bad and so we try to avoid this.
Second, we all want to feel important and so we crave the positive attention of others. This is one of our basic needs, according to Dale Carnegie, author of the multi-million best seller, How to Win Friends and Influence People. And so when people stroke our ego and tell us how wonderful we are, it makes us feel good. We crave this good feeling like a drug – we are addicted to it and seek it out wherever we can.
We are so desperate for the approval of others that we live unhappy and limited lives, denying huge swathes of ourselves and failing to do the things we really want to do because we’re worried about what other people will think. Just as drug addicts and alcoholics live impoverished lives to keep getting their fix, so we impoverish our own existence to get our own constant fix of approval.
The drug is so addictive that most people will not give it up – they will keep looking for approval because the hit is so intense. But, just as with any drug, there is a price to pay. The price of the approval drug is freedom – the freedom to be ourselves. Do you want your drug or do you want to be free? You cannot have both. If you want to pull your own strings, you need to stop giving away your power – you need to genuinely stop caring what other people think about you.
The truth is that it’s all an illusion anyway – you cannot control what other people think. People have their own agenda, they come with their own baggage and, in the end, they’re more interested in themselves than in you; in fact, they’re thinking about themselves‘morning, noon and after dinner,’ as Carnegie wrote.
If we try to live by the opinions of others, we will build our life on sinking sand. Everyone has a different way of thinking, and people change their opinions all the time. The person who tries to please everyone will only end up getting exhausted and probably pleasing no one in the process.
So how can we take back control? If we are truly ready to give up the drug of approval and importance (which most people are not), I think there’s only one way – make a conscious decision to stop caring what other people think.
This doesn’t mean that you should start to treat people badly, step on them or use them. Why would it? I read somewhere recently that the world would be terrible if nobody cared what other people thought of them. But why so? We all know what’s right and wrong. I have written before about guiding your life by means of a set of values – not values imposed from the outside by others, but innate values which come from within. If we are driven by these values and not by the changing opinions and value systems of others, we will live a more authentic,effective, purposeful and happy life. We will be actualized and successful.
Only one question remains – do you really want to be free?
谁在控制你的生活？谁在影响你？
对于我们大多数人来说，答案是其他人—社会、同事、朋友、家人或者我们的宗教团体。当然我们很小的时候就已经学会了这一运行方式。我们被这种方式洗脑了。我们发现感觉自己很重要、被别人接受会让自己很开心，所以我们就学着做那些会让其他人喜欢我们的事情。我们不想与众不同，因为与众不同的感觉并不好。我们把这种做事方式学的很好，即使我们长大成成人后依旧保持着相互制约——通常是通过相互施压。我们彼此一致，就像无需牧羊犬看守的羊群。
“大多数人都并非自己。他们的思想充斥着别人的意见，他们的生活通篇都是模仿，他们的激情仅仅只是引用而已。”——王尔德
这是双向的。首先，我们害怕别人不赞同我们。我这样穿对吗？别人会不会嘲笑我？我看上去是不是很蠢？我会不会犯错？当我们觉得别人对我们的感觉很差时就会很沮丧，因此我们会尽量的避免这种情况。
其次，我们都想让自己看上去很重要，所以我们渴望别人的关注。据畅销书《如何赢得朋友并影响他人》的作者DaleCarnegie说，这是我们的基本需求。所以当别人赞许我们说我们看上去很棒时，我们会感觉良好。我们就像对药上瘾一样的渴望这种良好感觉，我们沉迷于这种感觉，并在任何地方寻找它。
我们如此渴望别人的赞同，以至于我们的生活不快乐且处处受限，因为担心别人的想法所以备受束缚，想做的事情也不能做。就像吸毒者和酗酒者一样为了维持他们的癖好而变得生活贫困，我们在不断的自我修正中也让自己的存在价值变得越来越小。
毒品很容易上瘾，大多数人很难戒掉—因为被赞同的感觉如此美妙所以人们会不断地追寻。但是正如吸毒一样，这是需要代价的。这种名叫赞许的药物所需要付出的代价就是自由——做我们自己的自由。你是想要药品还是想要自由？鱼与熊掌不可兼得。如果你想做你自己你就要停止释放你的能量——你需要真正的停止在乎别人的看法。
事实上不管怎样这都是一种幻觉——你不能控制别人的想法。每个人都有自己的行程，他们带着自己的行李来，最后他们关注自己要远远多于关注你；事实上，他们满脑子想的都是自己的—就像卡内基说的—“早上、中午和晚上”。
如果我们试图依靠别人的看法生活，那我们就是将自己的生活建立在了一堆沙子上。每个人的思维方式各不相同，而想法也在随时改变。如果有谁想取悦所有人那么只会变得筋疲力尽，并且可能一个人都取悦不了。
那么我们怎样收回控制权？如果我们真的准备放弃这个叫赞许和名望的毒药了（大多数人不会放弃），我想只有一种办法可行——下定决心不再在乎别人的看法。
这并不意味着从此以后你要对他人不好、践踏或者利用他人。为什么呢？最近我看到一种说法称如果每个人都不再在意别人的看法时这个世界将变得很恐怖。但是为什么会这样呢？我们都知道什么是对什么是错。我以前已经写过要用一套价值观来指引你的生活——一种发自你内心的而不是从他人强加给你的价值观。如果我们按照这种价值观而不是按照来自于别人的随时在改变的价值观生活，那么我们将会活得更加真实、更加实在、更加有目的、更加快乐。我们将更富于行动，更容易成功。
只有一个问题—你真的想自由吗？ |
