Choose your agents
I think that we too often allow the wrong people to speak on our behalf.
When we hear or read something negative about ourselves, we sometimes mistakenly allow it to sink in. Just a little bit at first. But then, slowly, that negative perception gets sucked into the quicksand of our minds and hearts bit by bit until it becomes indistinguishable from who we really are. And before we know it, we become completely stuck in how we’re viewed by the world, unable to move in the direction of our goals.
I recently got lost on Wikipedia and read that in commercial law, the term Agency refers to a set of relationships that gives someone (an agent) the authority to act on someone else’s (the principal’s) behalf.When dealing with someone’s agent in the strict sense of the law, it is as if one is dealing with the principal. The agent is authorized to act on the principal’s behalf.
It is a powerful relationship.
Yet every single day we freely give that power away to the wrong people — people who don’t have our best interests at heart.
We cannot prevent others from speaking ill of us. But we can prevent them from speaking as if their words have the required Agency to represent who we are.
This does not mean that we should place ourselves beyond reproach, or not allow anyone to speak into our lives. We can all learn from each other, and we all have areas in our personal and work lives in which we need to improve. But it does mean that we need to learn the difference between edifying critique (which we should always welcome with open arms) and belittling character attacks (which we should shield ourselves from with all our might).
We can’t choose what people say about us. But we can choose our agents more carefully.
