Opinions - How they affect us.
On the importance of having a ready reckoner of our innate goodness & taking nothing personally
Happy Sunday!
And welcome to today's edition of 'Conscious living with Purnima'. In today's post I talk about the importance of having a ready reckoner of our inner goodness & the power of not taking anything personally. Hope you relate and are inspired to apply the ideas into your life.
I came across this story in Jack Kornfield, a meditation teacher's newsletter last week. Jack uses this story to illustrate how being reminded of our dignity & value can become a ground for our true wisdom and compassion to arise. The story goes:
"A math teacher in Indiana once had a class filled with raucous and difficult students, as every teacher has had at some time in their career. On one of those particularly trying days right before vacation, she realized that no one was going to be learning much math, so she stopped the class and wrote on the board the names of the thirty-one students and asked everyone to copy them onto a sheet of paper. Then, after they had all copied them down, she gave them fifteen minutes to write next to each student’s name something that they admired about that person. She then collected the pages and dismissed the class. Some months later when the class was again having a hard time paying attention, she stopped the class and said, “I have something to pass out to you.” She had cut the pages apart and pasted under each student’s name the admiring comments that their classmates had written.
Several years after that, she received a call from the mother of one of her favorite students. After graduating high school, he had enlisted in the army and was killed in the Middle East. His mother asked if his favorite teacher would come to the funeral. At the end of the ceremony when they stood around the gravesite to honor his life, his mother walked up to the teacher and said, “My son had very few things with him when they found his body, but this was in his pocket.” She took out the piece of paper that had the list of thirty-one good things written about him by his classmates. It had obviously been folded and unfolded many times. Then the young woman standing next to the teacher, who had been a student in the same class, said; “Oh, yes, I carry mine too. I look at it when things get hard,” and pulled hers out of her wallet. And another young man nearby said, “I made mine part of my wedding vows.”
A beautiful story to illustrate how powerful it can be to remember our goodness. We may not always have other people remind us of our virtues, but we can do that for ourselves.
Simple exercise for you to do now or later:
Pick up your journal or a piece of paper and write down all of the goodness you recognize in yourself. This is your ready reckoner to come in handy in moments of self-doubt.
We come across different kinds of people in our life. Some recognize our light & appreciate it, some are intimidated by it, and some don't even see it. We tend to dim our light depending on the company we keep. It's important to be aware of this. And know when we need a reminder of who we are.
Not taking anything personally
Don Miguel Ruiz in his book 'The four agreements' calls this out as the 2nd agreement to ingrain into one's life.
When you observe and think deeply you will come to realize that what other people think or say about you is a projection of their own opinions, ideas & prejudices that they create based on what they choose to see in you. Oftentimes it has nothing to do with you. Still, many of us get influenced by other people's narrow perceptions.
When someone judges you or passes an opinion about you look at it as an opportunity to have a glimpse into the content of their own minds instead of internalizing what they are saying & forgetting who you are. Who you are is in that piece of paper you just wrote.
A lot of what a person says or thinks about you will tell you about them - what they value, their world view, & conditioning. Being aware of this can help you stay detached and not take anything personally.
As a new week starts tomorrow pay attention to the impact other people's opinions have on you. Challenge yourself to refrain from defending or proving yourself and stay rooted to the truth of who you are. Also, when you disapprove someone ask yourself why you do that? Is it because of your inability to accept differences or is there some other reason? Examining your own attitude can help you know yourself better.
The story was a good reference!