I’m constantly amazed by how easily we love ourselves above all others, yet we put more stock in the opinions of others than in our own estimation of self…. How much credence we give to the opinions our peers have of us and how little to our very own!
—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 12.4
How quickly we can disregard our own feelings about something and adopt someone else’s. We think a shirt looks good at the store but will view it with shame and scorn if our spouse or a coworker makes an offhand remark. We can be immensely happy with our own lives—until we find out that someone we don’t even like has more. Or worse and more precariously, we don’t feel good about our accomplishments or talents until some third party validates them.
Like most Stoic exercises, this one attempts to teach us that although we control our own opinions, we don’t control what other people think—about us least of all. For this reason, putting ourselves at the mercy of those opinions and trying to gain the approval of others are a dangerous endeavor.
Don’t spend much time thinking about what other people think. Think about what you think. Think instead about the results, about the impact, about whether it is the right thing to do.
* Source: The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman