Staying True to Your Path When Others Keep Trying to Pull You Off It

In a perfect world, we would just be able to do what makes us happy, without others putting in their unnecessary two cents. It would truly be to each his own. We would all just focus on own happiness, and making our little corner of existence as awesome as possible. The need to judge, criticize or try to impose our will onto others would be absent.

But, alas, that really isn’t how it goes much of the time, and pushback from others, and caring a bit too much about what other people think, is probably one of the biggest barriers to living as we truly please. I would rank this problem right up there with fear.

We all have a unique filter based on our culture, religious upbringing, parents, schooling, various other outside influences, and our own personal life experience. And as such, we have formed some very strong opinions on what is right and wrong, appropriate and inappropriate, what we should want and what we are supposed to do.

And, given the chance, most will happily express those opinions the moment an opportunity arises. Considering the predominant beliefs that most of us hold, and the less than ideal experiences borne of those beliefs, the average person is probably going to be a bit more pessimistic in his assessment regarding what is possible in life. They are more likely to be narrow-minded than open-minded.

Much of the time, people mean well when they are crapping all over your dreams, or trying to discourage you from being who you really want to be. They think they are helping protect you from disappointment, criticism and other problems. They aren’t trying to be assholes. Essentially, they are projecting their own fears onto you.

Then there are the times when people are convinced there is only one way to live..their way, and you are just flat out wrong, no two ways about it.

And lastly, there are those whose intentions are a bit more malicious. They want to keep you down and unhappy because it will make them feel better about being down and unhappy. These people are just in a ton of pain, an as messed up as this is, do your best to work up some empathy for them.

No matter the motivation behind people’s criticisms and judgments, we all know the end result is the same—the doubt and fear get kicked up big time, we feel deflated and like no one is supporting us. We start to question if we are doing the right thing, or if it would just be easier to give up and follow a path that stirs up less conflict and controversy.

As someone who has made some unconventional choices that weren’t always received well, or subjected me to questioning that I felt was a bit intrusive or inappropriate, I have some first hand experience with this common problem, a problem that can easily derail us, if we don’t find a way to get a grip on it.

So, for your reading pleasure, here are some of my insights on staying true to yourself when everyone around you seems to trying to mess it up for you. Though we all know that no one can ever stand in our way right? Right…

Own it Baby…

One of the most liberating and transformational, yet infuriating, nuggets of wisdom is we must always take responsibility for how we feel, that no one can ever make us feel a certain way. Life-changing but can be frustrating as hell sometimes to implement.

It can take awhile to really let this truth seep in. On a logical level, it is very easy to place blame on others for how we feel. After all, they said or did something shitty, and that made us feel badly, so therefore, they caused the unpleasant feelings that we are now experiencing. Their fault, not mine. I was doing just fine until they opened their big, dumb mouths.

Um..no, this really isn’t how it works. But, because we are human and not masters of our emotions, and all Buddha-like, we probably won’t apply this wisdom full bore each time an opportunity presents itself. We are very used to living reactively, and our moods will be influenced by others sometimes. People will say things and it will piss us off or whatever. I am no stranger to this course of events, but I’ve improved leaps and bounds.

But, while we may not succeed with fully owning our emotions each and every time, we still have to consider this truth, and be honest with ourselves about why certain things people say or do bother us. We have to be willing to acknowledge they are not the cause of the discord, but rather, they simply triggered something within.

When we take ownership, we will be able to gain tremendously helpful insights into our feelings, belief system, fears and all that other good stuff. We can then work on clearing and shifting what needs to be cleared and shifted. It makes it easier to stay true to ourselves, and what we want, because it provides clarity on what needs to be done internally and externally, in the form of choices, habits and behaviors.

Taking ownership can be a bit uncomfortable for a couple of reasons, First, examining all the inner crap is not that fun. We don’t like to admit our insecurities and fears—it is easier to place the blame on others. Secondly, full ownership takes a lot of excuses off the table as to why we aren’t doing what needs to be done to get to where we want to be. We get really good at making excuses to avoid discomfort, even those of us who really, truly want something.

Distinguishing between Truly Hurting Other People and Upsetting Them

One of the things I have always found most interesting about this whole ‘following your own path’ is the idea the people doing this are the selfish ones. But, in reality, it is the other people who are truly being selfish in the negative sense we typically mean when we use this word. They are getting all bent out of shape for doing what you want for no other reason than this interferes with what they want...looney tunes I tell you.

It is important to make the distinction between truly hurting others—which I imagine anyone reading a blog like this is not engaging in—and merely upsetting them because doing what you want means they are not getting something they want.

Yeah, it sucks when you think other people don’t support you, or feel hurt by your decisions. Ideally, everyone would support your choices unanimously and be truly happy for you, or at the very least, keep their traps shut if they are not on board.

But, you are not responsible for other people’s feelings. I don’t mean that in a callous way, and to just go around hurting people because it’s not your problem how they respond. That probably wouldn’t feel good to most people, and they wouldn’t want to do that But I digress…

It is simply an important truth that people need to realize, a truth that can dramatically change our lives for the better.

Nobody wins when one person sacrifices their own happiness for that of someone else’s It is a lose-lose situation because there are issues the other person has that will go unaddressed if we give into their ‘demands’. Whatever is being triggered by you doing whatever it is you are doing, needs to be explored and worked through. And that can’t happen if we just do what someone else wants us to do so they can avoid whatever it is being stirred up.

When we hold ourselves back with the idea that other people need us to do certain things for them, lest they will fall apart, we are not only diminishing ourselves, but diminishing them as well by not seeing them for the powerful beings they are.

I know sometimes we may think it would be easier to just do what other people want us to do..we would avoid all sorts of unpleasantness by not stirring the pot, and having everyone be pleased with us.

We think maybe we’ll feel better knowing we are making other people happy…it certainly feels good to make others feel good. But, this is not the time to be charitable. Making others feel good should never involve us feeling badly.

While giving up on what you want to do now may eliminate various sorts of conflicts and discomforts, living a life you don’t want, and suppressing who you really are, will just create a whole new set, and they will be much worse to deal with. Trust me on that one.

Sometimes You Will Care What People Think..The Key is Proceeding Anyway

You shouldn’t care what people think….simple as that. But, not always easy to implement. Most of us aren’t 1,000 percent confident in our choices, and the path we have chosen, no matter how right it feels to us. We haven’t totally eradicated all our insecurities. Because we can’t tell the future, there may always be a bit of doubt about whether things will turn out like we hope them to, and people can say all sorts of things that trigger all of that. .

From time to time, people are going to get into our heads. You may not totally be able to release on what people think about you and what you are doing with your life. It’s okay. It doesn’t mean you are a failure or weak.

The lack of complete confidence doesn’t mean you have made some mistake. Wondering from time to time if other people’s points are valid doesn’t automatically mean you are wrong and they must be right. There really is no such thing when it comes to how we live our lives. There are just preferences. Our reality is subjective, and whatever we believe will be true for us.

Know that whatever people are saying and doing has absolutely nothing to do with you. It is all about them, no matter how personal it can seem sometimes. They are projecting their own fears. They may be more than a little bit jealous.

Your choices and belief system are challenging theirs, and that is super-uncomfortable, especially if said choices and belief system may have led them to do things they really didn’t want to do, but thought they were supposed to. Instead of examining all that, they have to find fault with you so they can soothe themselves.

There are lots of nuggets of wisdom we know to be true, but we may not always apply them in practice. This is one of them. The key is keeping to our path anyway, and working through whatever pops up.

One of the keys to me creating the life I did for myself, was learning to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. When you can master that, all the things that may stop you from doing what you really want to do won’t be able to any longer because you will not shrink away for fear of the ‘ick’ that will surface. You will accept its presence and learn to sit with it.

As time goes on, you do your inner work, own your stuff and all that, you will gain more confidence. You will start to care less about what people think. When they do express their opinions, it will bother you less. Your energy will shift, and you will actually experience these encounters less frequently because you will be less of a match for these types of experiences. Remember everything is just a mirror of what is happening within, and the better we feel about what we are doing, the less insecurity, doubt and fear there is within to be mirrored back to us in the form of criticism and judgment from others. 

Remember…just get more comfortable with being uncomfortable, and you’re good to go.

In Closing…

I get how hard it is when we are doing things and other people just don’t seem to get it, or can’t mind their own damn business. It is a lot easier to go about this whole ‘living as we please’ thing when we aren’t being questioned, judged or criticized.

But, since we aren’t fully clear, and have our own mix of ‘stuff’ that gets in the way, we will probably be a match for all sorts of experiences where we are being challenged by others. It does get better though, trust me.

Remember no one knows you better than you know yourself, and if you know what you are doing is right for you, and are being true to your values, that is all that matters. Everyone else will have to learn to just deal with it.

Your Turn…

What did you think of this post? Are you experiencing pushback from other people? How are you doing with it? Would you give any other tips to make it easier?