Whatever You Think of Me is None of My Business

I have been really good over the years of my life at self-censoring. It is all pretty old. And, one of the ways self-censoring has always shown up for me lives inside the idiom: Whatever others think of me needs my attention, so, I won’t ever be found ‘wrong’. My own self-applied limitations have been so deeply defined by ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ that BEING right/wrong is how I have perpetually defined myself over the course of my life. Don’t get me wrong; my once rigid perspectives about being right or wrong have lessened as I’ve gotten greater (both in age and wisdom!) However, I have yet to fully let go of my old propensity to refuse to hear those gremlin voices in my ear shouting, ‘Get it right, damn it!’

When I first walked into the program room of the WEL-Systems® Institute (WSI) in July of 2007, the first thing I saw was a poster on the wall, Evolution of Intention™, created by the founder of WSI, Louise LeBrun. I read through all of the assumptions required to evolve by intention, in order to feel which ones felt strong inside me and which ones felt weak. Here is the one that really jumped out at me: ‘Whatever you think of me is none of my business.’ Viscerally, it did not ring true for me. Now was my time to ride this assumption into my own stable of personal truth, no matter how long it was going to take. Well, that was 15 years ago and I have never been as relaxed at the stable door as I am now. And I know that I still have more to integrate.

Over my lifetime, I learned to dodge the fear of admonishment in any way, shape or form I could, as an intelligent means of holding back on myself, playing it safe. Did I know I was doing it? Back then, I would have defensively told you, ‘No’. Was I really unconscious about it OR was I scared of being found out? Likely, both were true. In either case, I would have found myself victimizing myself with my own lies. It’s like self-betrayal becomes its own art form. Are we even noticing what we are creating and how we are shaping our lives?

What if my ownership of the warty moments in my life could actually be the invitation to others to stop tolerating the intolerable in their own lives? We have been taught, through deeply unconscious family modelling, to NOT ever go there; that to own and acknowledge another perspective would, somehow, mean that we are wrong and/or have failed… again. Who wants that? Again, on top of again, is to be avoided at all costs. And the truth is, it IS costing us our lives.

Like most others on this human journey, I was seeking ‘home’, i.e. my internal sense of safety, from outside of me. Only, of course, it was not there. How could it be? I was looking to fit in and feel safe, be it family of origin, the jobs I worked at, the schools I attended, the businesses I created, or the people I served. Looking for salvation in all the wrong places, when its only true access is deep inside.

For the last 15 years, I have chosen to mind this thought: Whatever you think of me is none of my business. The reverse is also true: Whatever I think of you is none of your business.

Think about it. Let these two statements rumble deeply through your body’s nervous system. Can you feel the power of your own internal resistance provoked? While you’d love it to feel the equilibrium of these potential truths integrated deep inside, does it still sound like a big ‘Fuck You’ to the world, while you just really want to say, ‘Fuck off’ and go away? Defending and avoiding in action; killing two birds with one stone.

I mean, let yourself really feel the power in owning: ‘Whatever you think of me is none of my business.’
Does saying it come with ease? Will you choose to hold ‘Whatever you think of me is none of my business’ as a possibility, so that you allow yourself to own ’Whatever I think of you is none of your business?’ Are you willing to face into your own denied history of long-term, deep and repeated wounding, once and for all, such that you confidently come to own and celebrate your own mind?

We are shaping our worlds in each and every breath; we have the choice to engage our lives mindlessly OR mindfully. Until we get to that place of inner trust with ourselves, we’ll continue to set ourselves and others - as the aspects of our consciousness they are - up for more wounding and hurt, ‘cause we will not let ourselves feel our own moments of misery; we would rather deny feeling our own hurt in favour of not hurting another, in order to ‘protect’ them from feeling badly about themselves.

Question? Does anyone need my perceived ‘protection’? Is that not simply a projection of my own imagination, so I can ‘protect’ myself? There is no expansion in protecting. There is expansion in guiding your vision. First of all, you have to own that you want to expand and flourish, even if you have no idea what that will look like.

Intellectually, ‘Whatever you think of me is none of my business’ sounds so easy; Viscerally, however, I don’t think there is a person in the world who does not want to be liked and appreciated in some small way. However, there is a paradox running here. To really own the visceral edge of these truths is the invitation to own unique opinions that could and often will be censored, ridiculed and mocked. This happens even while engaging with the very people we care deeply about. It can’t not; they have their opinions, too. And, therein, lies the rub. Will we choose to live by our deepest and most inalienable, personal truths in the presence of those whom we deeply love, even though they will not, must not, could not, do not agree?

Will we choose to look into our own wounding and its unique drivers, so that we can integrate the energy and information carried in all the ‘fuck you’s’ and the ‘fuck off’s’ in our lives, so that we choose to simply move forward in full respect of all? When we have been so culturally conditioned to quickly assign fault and blame to our circumstances, it takes enormous courage to let go of what we do not know we do not know, which is continuing to structure the personal realities we say we can’t stand.

Whatever you think of me is none of my business. When we allow ourselves to be fully present to this in the absence of all resistance, one’s experience of living becomes so much  easier, so much richer. You’ll discover that there is no need to look over your shoulder to see if what is behind you is actually going to show up and bite you in the ass. It only will do so, if you invite it.

Thank you for reading.

Sheila

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