What others say is irrelevant?

Random blogging #2 [English] [Español]

As long as you look for someone else to validate who you are by seeking their approval, you are setting yourself up for disaster. You have to be whole and complete in yourself. No one can give you that. You have to know who you are. What others say is irrelevant.

I think this quote sounds great and at the same time is total nonsense. We are designed to care for what other people think of us. That's the way our brains work, and all of us in some kind of degree care deeply about our reputation. We want others to like us whether we are conscious of it or not. You know who doesn't care?: delusional narcissistic personalities.

I think the only way to not care is to isolate yourself from other people, but the moment we are surrounded we do care. It’d be better to focus on caring more about what we think of ourselves. But otherwise it’s just going to increase our frustration: we not only feel bad about others don't liking us but we also feel bad for caring about it.

And most importantly we do care about others caring about us. Research says it feels worse to be ignored than to be bullied, so at the end it was always true: the opposite of love is not hatred but indifference.

Albanian Market from my city, around March, applied Prisma filter :)

.....

Creo que esta cita suena genial y al mismo tiempo carece de sentido. Estamos diseñados para que nos importe lo que la gente piensa de nosotros. Es el modo en el que funciona nuestro cerebro, y todos nosotros en mayor o menor medida nos preocupamos por nuestra reputación. Queremos gustar a los demás, seamos conscientes de ello o no. ¿Sabes a quién no les importa? A los narcisistas.

Creo que el único modo de que no te importe es aislarte del mundo; pero en el momento en el que estás rodeado de gente, te importa. Sería mejor concentrarnos en valorar más nuestra propia opinión, pues del otro modo solo incrementaremos nuestra frustración: no solo nos sentiremos mal porque no le gustamos a alguien, también nos sentiremos mal porque nos importa.

Y para acabar lo más importante: nos preocupa que otros se preocupen por nosotros. Estudios científicos dicen que es peor ser ignorado que sufrir bullying. Así que, al final, la verdad fue siempre esta: lo contrario del amor no es el odio sino la indiferencia.