Most of us would strongly resist someone telling us what we are allowed to do with our lives. And yet, without realizing it, we can give other people an extraordinary amount of influence over the choices we make.
Someone criticizes something we’re excited about, and suddenly we’re not quite so sure. Someone disapproves of a decision, and we begin second-guessing ourselves. Someone else seems more accomplished, attractive or confident, and we begin measuring ourselves against them. Or perhaps someone made a judgment about us twenty years ago—and we’re still behaving as though they were qualified to decide who we are.
That’s quite a paradox. We value our independence, yet sometimes we hand over pieces of it without even realizing we’ve done so.
When Other People’s Opinions Matter
Of course, the answer isn’t to stop caring what anyone else thinks. Other people’s opinions do matter.
Sometimes criticism is valuable. Sometimes another person sees something we’ve missed. Sometimes experience has given someone knowledge we don’t yet have. And sometimes someone else is simply right.
Real agency doesn’t mean automatically rejecting other people’s opinions any more than it means automatically accepting them. In fact, automatically rejecting someone’s advice simply because we don’t like being told what to do can give that person just as much influence over our decision as automatically doing what they suggest. Either way, they are still determining our response.
Real agency allows us to listen, consider what someone has said, decide whether there is something we need to learn—and then make our own choice.
Their opinion becomes information, not authority.
Given What Is True Now, What Do I Choose From Here?
Agency doesn’t mean control. We can’t control whether other people approve of us. We can’t guarantee that our decisions will work out. Sometimes circumstances change in ways we never anticipated, and sometimes life presents us with choices we never wanted to have to make. But even then, something often remains ours: Given what is true now, what do I choose from here?
That question doesn’t deny reality or pretend everything is possible. It simply asks us to recognize the part that still belongs to us. What matters to me? What can I learn from what happened? What choices are available to me now? What will I do next?
We may not have chosen the circumstances, but we can still participate in choosing what comes next.
“I Did” Is Not Necessarily “I Am”
Other people aren’t the only ones whose judgments can limit us. Sometimes the person whose opinion we most need to reconsider is ourselves.
- I’m not creative.
- I’m terrible with names.
- I’m shy.
- I’m no good with technology.
- I always procrastinate.
- I’m terrible with money.
- I’m just not the kind of person who could do that.
Perhaps there was once evidence supporting those conclusions. Maybe you struggled with something or behaved a certain way for years. That experience is real, but there is an important difference between “I did” and “I am.”
Perhaps you procrastinated. That doesn’t necessarily mean I am a procrastinator. Perhaps you once made poor financial decisions. That doesn’t necessarily mean I am bad with money. What we have done can become something we learn from without becoming an identity we are required to maintain.
Your past can teach you about who you have been. It doesn’t have the authority to decide who you become.
But You’ve Always Been…
Sometimes other people reinforce those old identities.
- “But you’ve always been the practical one.”
- “You’ve always taken care of everyone.”
- “You’ve never been interested in that.”
- “That’s just not you.”
And sometimes nobody else needs to say these things because we’ve become very good at saying them to ourselves.
But “you’ve always been” is a description of the past. It doesn’t have to be an instruction for the future. We are allowed to discover new interests, develop new abilities and change our opinions as we learn. We can decide that something which suited us ten years ago doesn’t suit us today. And we can outgrow conclusions we once made about ourselves.
That doesn’t mean we need to endlessly reinvent ourselves. There may be enormous amounts of who we are that we value and want to keep—our kindness, humor, curiosity, values, experience, relationships, skills and even some of those quirks that make us uniquely ourselves.
Keep what still fits. Strengthen what you value. Learn what you need to learn. And reconsider what no longer serves you.
What Is Taking Away Your Agency?
This is one of the reasons self-esteem has such a profound influence on our lives. When our underlying sense of worth is fragile, choices can become tangled up with things that have very little to do with the choice itself.
- Inadequacy can whisper: Don’t risk it.
- Invalidation can say: Their judgment matters more than yours.
- Anxiety can warn: Something might go wrong.
- Worry can insist: Keep thinking about everything that could happen.
- Old emotional pain can remind us: Remember what happened last time.
- And fear of rejection can ask: What if they don’t approve?
These responses may simply reflect things we’ve learned through experience. But we don’t necessarily have to continue allowing them to make our decisions for us.
Real agency says: Consider all of that—and then choose.
Reclaiming Your Inner Power
This is why Reclaiming Your Inner Power: Ultimate Self-Esteem was compiled as a collection rather than a single program. Its nine programs address different beliefs and emotional patterns that can quietly interfere with agency:
- Eradicating Inadequacy,
- Releasing Anxiety,
- Healing Emotional Pain,
- Healing from Invalidation,
- Healing the Past,
- Freedom from Worry,
- Echo-Tech: Have It All!,
- OZO: Inner Peace, and
- Power Imaging: Well-Being and Self-Esteem.
The goal isn’t to create some completely different version of you. Nor is it to pretend that other people’s opinions don’t matter, that the past didn’t happen, or that nothing will ever go wrong.
It is to strengthen the inner foundation from which you can listen, evaluate, learn—and choose. Perhaps that is what ultimate self-esteem really feels like: trusting yourself enough to participate fully in the decisions that shape your life.
You may also be interested in Rescripting the Child Within. This title complements Reclaiming Your Inner Power because some of the conclusions we carry into adulthood began when we were too young to evaluate whether they were accurate, fair—or identities we wanted to carry for the rest of our lives.
The goal isn’t to remain focused on who you were then. It is to give yourself greater freedom to decide who you want to be now.
→ Please Explore Reclaiming Your Inner Power
You Don’t Need Permission
We spend so much of our lives being shaped by what happened, what other people thought, what we once concluded about ourselves, and what we’ve always done.
Some of those influences have served us beautifully. Keep them. Some have taught us important lessons. Learn from them. And some may simply have outlived their usefulness.
You can listen to other people’s opinions without surrendering your own. You can learn from the past without allowing it to become your identity. You can change your mind, try something unfamiliar, keep what still serves you and reconsider what doesn’t. You don’t need anyone else’s permission to do that. And perhaps you don’t even need permission from the person you used to be.
You don’t need permission to become more fully the person you choose to be.
Perhaps that is what reclaiming your inner power really means.
Warmly
Ravinder Taylor
“I bought your self-esteem program some months ago. I didn’t feel any different at first but after a week people around me at work started responding much more positively towards me. I can honestly say that your products work.”
~ I. R.