It’s the beginning of the week and in the coming days there’s near certainty you’ll have an interaction with somebody who doesn’t really like you.
Bummer, eh?
If only we could get everybody to properly understand us, surely they’d have no reason to dislike us? I mean, what’s wrong with these people? Why do they have to be so judgemental?!
🫢
Oh, wait, was that me being judgemental?
Oops.
I was working with a client recently, who was worried about what other people were going to think of them, at an upcoming event.
So we got into it, and quickly established two basic facts:
Fact #1
This cracks me up, because it’s so damned obvious, and yet we forget it—and consequently get very het up about it—all the time!
It’s beyond the laws of space, time and matter that you could actually be party to the experience someone else is having. They get theirs, you get yours.
- So if they’re angry with you – that anger is theirs. They’re the ones feeling it
- If they love you – that love is theirs. They’re the ones feeling it.
As one of my mentors says,
“What other people think, is between them and them.”
Good to know!
Fact #2
This is the corollary of Fact #1, really, and a direct implication of the inside-out nature of our experience (albeit a bit of a slippery and counter-intuitive one).
But if you stick Joe Bloggs in a room with 10 people, there’ll be 11 different versions of Joe in that room: one ‘reality’ being created from the conditioned mind of each of those present, and of course Joe’s own creation of himself. (Which isn’t strictly his, either.)
All of them different. None of them true (not even Joe’s)!
It’s enough to make your head spin.
😵💫
It might help to look at this diagram I stumbled across on the internet once:
Makes you think, doesn’t it?
🤔
Those who don’t like you
So where does this leave us with those people you’ll bump into this week, who don’t like you? Because Fact #1 and Fact #2 demonstrate that whatever they feel, it’s not really about you, it’s about them.
And if they’re the ones stuck with bad thought/feelings about you, wouldn’t that be cause for compassion?
I mean, god knows what’s accumulated in their Thought System 📦 as it’s been hoovering up experiences throughout their life, but whatever it is, it’s causing all sorts of consternation for them, when you show up, just being yourself.
I’d say that qualified for a bit of Syd's oft-repeated ‘love and understanding’, wouldn’t you?
After all, casting your mind back to the opening of this piece, it’s easy to see that judging others is just something that all minds do – yours, mine, everybody’s.
We all suffer when we take that thinking seriously… let’s bear that in mind!
❤️🩹
Giles
p.s. I had to look, and the etymology of the word ‘compassion’ is Latin: com (together) + pati (suffer). We’re all in this together!
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Giles P Croft