Mothers NEVER knew best!

We‘re all guilty of waking up virtually everyday and immersing ourselves in a state of constant concern about how other people think about us.

Many of us will blindly accept the status quo for what it is simply because everyone else around us does a very similar thing. I’ve encountered so many people who sacrifice their greatest needs and the things that they want most from life in order to keep other people happy and in attempt of simply ‘keeping the peace’.

By living like this, eventually our actions, appearances, and lives become molded by how we think other people will perceive us. We conform to other people’s standards in order to be accepted, to fit in, to get our promotions and to keep in other people’s ‘good books’.

There was a girl I once knew who had been raised inside of the Christianity Religion, and although she would spend hours each week singing songs about living free and about living in abundance, the outcomes of her life didn’t reflect the values that she claimed to live by.

Living a life that follows the ideal notions of what other people think is not just a highly destructive way to live, but it is a fear driven that makes you live like a spineless spectator who follows other people at the cost of seeing your own life’s dreams come to fruition.

As Katy Perry sang about in a song in her latest album ‘Prism’; ‘If you don’t stand for something you will fall for anything’, and how true this is. By living in the fear of what other people think about you, you can very easily become someone who hasn’t got the confidence to stand for anything you believe in.

Let TODAY be the last day you live a life dictated by what other people think and come to the realization of truth that no one else even cares what you do with your life (as long as you conform to how they merely think you should be).

Although you may or may not have spent years of your life concerning yourself about how other people might be judging you, however the truth of the matter is that most of the people you know will be sharing exactly the same fears and pretty much will be thinking exactly the same thoughts.

There wont be too many people in the midst of our technologically and scientifically advance society who be willing to build into his or her schedule, time to think more than a brief second about us. You’ll be able to recognize this as true if you were to take a moment to consider when you invest time into getting your own thought life straightened out, as individuals, we’re all too consumed in thinking about our own thoughts, our own feelings, and our own shortcomings — not the general wellbeing of others!

Pulled from an online Psychological forum, I read that each day the average human being has around about 50,000 thoughts. Some researchers put that number at 70,000 thoughts per day, but either way (although I’m not sure how this could ever be accurately counted), we have a lot of thoughts, as do other people — generally about ourselves whilst worrying if we’re being ‘good enough’!

Is it any wonder with this amount of inner traffic we lose touch with ourselves and very often with others?

It is a sad but simple truth that the average person filters their world through the beliefs they have about who they actually are. This means that unless you’ve done something that directly affects another person or their life, they’ll be highly unlikely to invest any time into even thinking about you at all.

Living just outside Edinburgh, I’ve always enjoyed going into the city to watch the street performers on the Royal Mile as they perform their various acts in the attempt to generate themselves an income. They don’t care what I think about them!

But the more interesting thing I’d generally observe is the other people in the crowd who are also watching. Rather than watching the actual street performers, most of the spectators will be looking around to see how other people are reacting to the performance.

If other people start laughing, they start laugh, if other people aren’t impressed and walk away, they will be likely to walk away also. If however there were no one watching the street performer at all, they would also be likely to pay no or little interest.

Even when freely given the greatest opportunity to judge another person, people will still generally concern themselves about how the surrounding others may perceive them.

If you’d be able to recognize that this is how the human mind works, it can a big step towards the freedom that comes from NOT being a Conformist anymore!

You can’t please everyone and it’s impossible to live up to the expectations that other people place on you.

Even if you’re showing up in your life as honestly as you’re able to, being as authentic as you’re able to be and being as true to who you know yourself to be as you can be, you’re going to upset someone in someway anyway. Criticism and counter opinions are part of dynamic expression and creativity.

If you’re not generating some resistance in your life, there’s a pretty good chance that you’re probably not fully stepping out and simply being yourself. For every seven people applauding at the street performers, one person will always hiss-boo, one will be indifferent, and one will be less than sane. So just be yourself anyway and expect that others are never fully going to see things in the unique way that you do.

You ‘ll never please everyone. You’ll never even please some people all of the time. You won’t please one person all of the time and if you’re totally honest, you don’t even please yourself all of the time!

There will always be people (despite our best attempts to conform to their ways) that will judge us. Whether you’re at the gym, at work, taking the train, or even online playing Minewarfare on the Xbox. Even now it‘s happening. You will never be able to stop people from judging you, but you have always had the power and capacity to stop it from affecting you.

Think about the worst-case scenario of what might happen as a result of when someone is judging either you, or what you’re doing.

The outcomes can only be one of the following:

· Absolutely nothing in your life will change.

· Something in your life will change.

· Absolutely everything about your life will change.

If you’ll remember what I mentioned Earlier, No one in their right mind would step out of their busy lives to confront you, or even react for that matter for the reason that I stated before, no one actually cares!

What will happen is that these people who you may think have the capacity to judge you negatively, will wind up respecting you MORE for being true to your values and claiming your ground.

Although people might disagree with you, when you live by your standards they WILL respect you!

Practice just being yourself and standing up for what you believe in if you aren’t already doing so, as there’s always going to be someone who see’s things differently and who disagrees with you. Although you might find security through the acceptance that comes from conforming to other people’s standards, you’ll never feel the freedom that you long for as a result of jut simply being true to yourself.

“You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something in life.” Winston Churchill

I’ve learnt that it’s better to be loved by a few people you care about, than to be liked by everyone. These people might be family members, friends, a spouse or anyone who accepts you for who you are — the kind of people who will be there for you during your greatest life challenges. Focus on these people. They’re the only people that matter.

‘Mother always knows best!’ We’ve all heard it before. Sometimes it’s said in that high-pitched, annoying tone, and other times it’ll be said in that low, “I’m disappointed in you,” tone. Either way we’ve all heard it; and either way we all hated hearing it.

I’ve heard this more times throughout my life than I could even remember. I get it — I honestly do, that a mother’s natural instinct is to love and protect her children. But, there comes a point in time when even the greatest of mothers have to loosen up the reigns and let their kids go out and make some mistakes. If we make mistakes, we learn from them, and if we don’t make mistakes — this makes us perfect (which is going to be highly unlikely).

If you never did anything your mother wouldn’t have approved of, how would you ever have learned? I’ve learned (what some people may say) ‘one or two’ life lessons throughout my 35 years of existence, and I can absolutely guarantee you that not one of them came from my making the “right” choice. Each lesson was the result of a particular challenge or difficulty I managed to get through.

So, moral of the story is this: ‘Mother DOESN’T always know best!’– Don’t listen to mother’s advice all of the time as she’d only tell you what SHE would do if she were in your shoes — not necessarily what you SHOULD do. Don’t be afraid to get yourself out there and make some mistakes, because that’s the only guaranteed way that you’ll ever truly learn about life.

Note: No offence was intended towards mothers here & I Still Luv ya Mum xxx

You reap what you sow! Worrying too much about what other people think can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, because the way we think will determine how we feel and the way that we feel will determine how we act, respond and behave around other people.

People-pleasers and those who are overly accommodating to others (In Army terminology we’d call these people Brown Noses), will often believe they’re actions will stop them from being judged by others when in fact the opposite is almost always true. Most people don’t like pushovers and are turned off by it.

The irony in this is that the behavior we use in an attempt to please others, can actually result in a completely opposing outcome. If how we think affects our behaviors, then how we behave affects those that we attract.

“You reap what you sow” means that there is an effect for everything people do or say, and that the effort a person puts into something will be rewarded appropriately for they’re actions or behaviors. People use this phrase as a reminder to be kind and to work hard. Seeing manipulative people succeed sometimes makes people who share this general belief to have emotional or social crises.

The general idea behind “you reap what you sow” is that our every action will have a consequence. The effects of a someone’s behaviors are not always apparent right away, however in the same way that a farmer has to wait a while for his crop to be ready for harvest, consequences will always follow our actions — whether good or bad! Nevertheless, they show up eventually.

This means that if ere to recognize some areas in your life where you might be a bit of a push-over, then there’s a pretty good chance that you’ll attract others into your life who might have similar tendencies. You reap what you sow! — OH, and incidentally, if you’ve spent the greatest part of your life surrounded by your immediate family members, you may be a lot more like them than what you may even realize!

Although there’s full Sociological textbooks written about this kind of stuff, it’s been said that we’re the average of the five people we interact with the most.

So if we only attract and associate with the same people that share our character flaws and weaknesses, we can grow to find ourselves completely ‘Stuck in a Rut!’

When we stop growing as human beings because there’s no one to challenge us to be better, it can be very common to start thinking that this is the norm and we choose to remain in a place of comfort and stagnicity.

“If you are not growing you are dying!” Tony Robbins

In nature everything is either growing or dying and this phrase is now commonly used in relation to personal, spiritual and educational growth. Although this quote is attributed to a number of people, including Tony Robbins, I leave you to do your own research on who said it first.

Humans by nature are keen to learn, most of the time. Although our knowledge does not shrink back if we do not advance, we can forget what has been learned (if you don’t use it you lose it, another well known saying). In similarity to a Gym buff with bulging biceps, if he stops working out and drinking his protein shakes, his muscles will decrease in size.

The above quote might seem like one that doesn’t warrant much discussion or contemplation however if you could just bracket your skepticism for a moment and think about the following:

Think about a plant. More specifically, think about a fruit you enjoy such as an apple. When the apple is still on the tree, it’s still growing but once it’s picked, it starts to die although this isn’t always apparent.

When you see an apple at your local market, you don’t think of it as a dying thing.

In fact, as it obviously looks ‘ripe’, you might even be likely to believe that it’s in some sort of ideal stage of it’s life. This isn’t true though; it was always in its best possible stage until the moment it got picked.

And as a person you are no different. Things might look great on your surface with nice cars, big houses, high salaries, etc. but dying on the inside in the same way as the apple which feels good enough when it gets ‘Picked’.

Only those unhappy, unfulfilled, and unsatisfied with life would need to find their validation through the acceptance from others, which 9 times out of 10 requires conformity.

Asch’s Conformity Experiment (1951)

In 1951, a Psychologist prominent is Gestalt & Social psychology named Solomon Asch conducted an experiment on conformity, which is still looked up to today. It aimed to see how often people conformed to social pressure when given a question with an obvious answer.

A participant was put into a room full of confederates of Asch (People the participant thought were also participants when actually they were in on the experiment from the very beginning).

They were all shown 2 images, one with a single line on it and the other with 3 lines on it labeled “A”, “B” & “C”. The correct answer was obviously “C”, but when asked to say their answer out loud, all the confederates said “A”, an obviously wrong answer. The actual participant was to answer out loud last, and this was where it got interesting.

Would the participant conform to social pressure to appear correct and answer “A”? Or stick to their guns and answer “C”?

It was actually found that 75% of participants conformed and answered wrongly at least once, where 25% of participants did not conform even once. On average, about a third of participants conformed on the majority of trials.

In the ancient days of the Caveman, conformity may have had survival value when interacting with other cavemen, where by acting as the group did, the ‘outsider’ caveman might have found reward in protection, food or even companionship. It is seen even in today’s world that we generally get along better with people similar to ourselves, conformity can give this illusion that we are more like others as we do as they do and reap the benefits.

However, if our conformity comes at the cost of sticking to our guns, being true to who know ourselves to be and at our own degree of moving forward in life, I’d stand alone on any given day of the week!

The outcomes of your life as we’ve mentioned are a direct result of the actions you take and how you interact with others. The comfort zone of conformity is where round about 95% of the world’s population lives and if you’re still reading, you’re one of a small minority that is looking to embrace change and take some practical steps towards moving forward and making progress in life.

Closing story:

There was once a lovely old lady called Margaret who lived in a run down fishing village on an island off the coast of northern Scotland.

Margaret had a bird, which was her absolute pride and joy. She would buy him treats and toys for his cage including little mirrors he could see himself in so he wouldn’t feel alone. For nine months of the year, Margaret’s bird was a very happy bird, hopping from perch to perch, always well fed and watered and always entertained. What happened in the other three months? For the three months of summer, Margaret would place the cage on a table near the kitchen window where the bird would see all the birds outside going about their business.

Although these three months should have been the happiest, they were actually the lowest, because he looked outside the window and compared himself to all these other birds who were free, who were flying about and having so much fun.

One day Margaret went shopping after she’d fed the bird and placed him next to the window, which was wide open. As she shut the door on the way out, a gust of wind blew through the house and the cage door fell open.

This was the bird’s chance. He hopped from the perch to the edge of the cage and was moments from freedom.

As he sat there and looked outside, seeing the other birds having so much fun, he thought to himself that this could be his chance to be free! But then he thought about Margaret. What would happen if he couldn’t get food or water? What would happen if some bigger birds tried to eat him? What would happen if he didn’t meet and make friends with any other birds? But then he thought about what would happen if he did meet other birds and he did have enough to offer them relationally. He sat at the doorway of his cage procrastinating and double minded for hours until early evening.

Early evening came and Margaret returned from her trip to the shops to her horror, finding the cage door open and her bird sitting there, looking out towards freedom.

So she hurried across, promptly picked up the birdcage and abruptly shut the door, then put the cage back on its ledge and covered it with a cloth, whereupon the bird fell asleep for the night …

… And the story ends there.

Margaret’s bird valued security more than freedom.

We do this in life too, don’t we? We may not be experiencing the outcomes in life that we’d really want and we’re not living the life that we could be living, and we’re perhaps not in that ideal relationship with the ideal network of friends, but sometimes we’re our own worst enemies.

If we continue to do the same things, go to the same places and think the same thoughts, how can we ever possibly be realistic in hoping for anything different?

Think about this; are you like Margaret’s bird? You may well feel secure, but are you free?

Do you have the kind of relationships you’d really love to have in life or do you just conform?

Kain