New Year's Resolution

"What you think of me is none of my business."

Leslee said this to us kids in a letter after dad died. I thought it was ridiculous at the time (of course, I thought everything she said was ridiculous at the time), but I've been thinking about it a lot lately. Wayne Dyer didn't coin the phrse, but this is what he said to elaborate:

Going through life constantly perturbed about what others think of you is a very painful and anxious way to live. Dr Wayne Dyer says "Needing approval is tantamount to saying, your view of me is more important than my own opinion of myself."

I try so hard to do The Right Thing. It's THE guiding principle of my life. And it so often just doesn't work. People don't see this or they misinterpret it. And it is very painful for me. Very painful. Very very painful. But I MUST accept that I can't control how others "take" me. I need to let go. I need to LET GO.

I find myself observing people, especially the women I see at the kids' school and at meetings I attend. So many of them are so harsh, so opinionated, so intolerant, so uncompromising. I know this is how many people see me. But I see so many women acting like this. And I think, they don't care. Their families love them. They manage. They don't seem tortured by the perceptions of others.

This year I am going to concentrate on this. On being true to myself and STOP WORRYING about what others think.

Here is more on the quote, from Bishop M Christopher Wilson:

"You can live without the approval of others! You will never truly love what you do if your need for approval from others becomes more important than enjoying what you're doing. I preach because I love it! I write because I love it! Do what you do to be great in the eyes of God not people. This is when God can trust you with the desires of your heart."

I think of this Teddy Roosevelt quote all the time and it helps me when petty people are knocking me down, or trying to:

"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat."