Mental and Emotional Side Effects of the New Energies

I find that I don't care about a lot of things that I used to.  They just don't interest me.

• Books that I used to enjoy
• Crowds
• Cultural standards of beauty
• Money
• Possessions
• Status (what degrees you have and where you got them, jobs etc.)

You could take all of my money, possessions, awards & degrees and stack them in a pile and what you would have is just a pile of stuff.  None of it means anything.  None of it made me happy.  None of it made me feel better about myself (or if so, only temporarily).  None of it relieved any of my misery in any way.  I found out that so long as I was looking to the world to validate me, it was a losing proposition.  Even if I got validation, it was fleeting.  Much as we would like to, we just can't control what other people think, say or do.  So all of that stuff can be boiled down to one thing that I just don't care about anymore:

What other people think.

I refuse to allow other people to define me.  They don't get to tell me what to do or who I am.  I care about people, I just don't allow what they think, say or do to influence what I think, say or do.  I am a free agent.  I do what pleases me and in doing what pleases me I become a happier, more grounded person who, as it turns out, is more pleasing to others.

Back when I thought it was important what people thought of me, I did stuff that I didn't want to do in order to please someone else.  Then I resented them for "making" me do what I didn't really want to do.  I was not being my authentic self and I was filled with anger, resentment and malice.  And then other people responded (consciously or unconsciously---people know what you think, you aren't hiding anything) to my anger and resentment and things got worse.  And the thing I feared most, that they wouldn't like or approve of me, is what I experienced.  Hell, I didn't like or approve of me.  And therein lay the problem.

I read something in Veronica Torres' book Warrior's Tale that helped me enormously.  It goes something like this: There are about 8 billion people in the world.  Of those 8 billion, at least half won't agree with you.  They won't resonate with you, they won't think like you and they won't like you.  So what.  So when I encounter someone who is nasty to me or wants to argue with me or rubs me the wrong way, I just say to myself, "There goes one of the 4 billion."  You see, it has nothing to do with me.  It's just how it is.  We can't all be the same.  What would be the point of that?  I let them be who they are, trying not to judge, and go on my merry way.