Do You Know Who I am ?

I bet you heard this question before, most likely from someone with a ‘perceived’ authority, someone who puts their role in society before their characther. If you remember, in the last article I talked about how you see yourself will often determine how you conduct yourself around other people. If you missed the first article check it out here.

This principle also works the other way around, as how you see a person in their role or position can determine your relationship with them and the way you behave around them. If you see a person as your superior, then you hold the person with respect and a certain amount of fear due to their level of perceived authority over you. Also, when you see a person as your ‘superior’, you automatically see yourself as ‘inferior’ and start to behave like so, without even knowing it.

Then what happens is that everytime you talk to a person of ‘perceived‘ authority and a question is put to you by him, you start questioning yourself, your worthiness. You start to doubt yourself, and the self talk starts again. You start focusing on the thoughts like: ‘He thinks I am wrong, he thinks I am a bad engineer, he thinks I am a bad person, therefore I must be a bad person; I am a bad person’...

What happens after that is that you behave in accordance with your thoughts, your answers get muddled up, you cannot even remember what you were going to say, you panick and you ‘react’ in a way you did not want to, which results in an outcome that you do not like, which then creates further thoughts like:’ I can’t even answer a simple question, I don’t know what I am talking about, I am a bad engineer, I am a bad person’... you see the vicious cycle carrying on and on and on...

What if there was another way? A way in which you wouldn’t have to react and end up with an outcome that you didn’t want, leading to further negative thoughts. How would you do that? Where would you even start?

From the beginning!, I hear you say... Indeed from the beginning.

So what led you to this ‘undesirable’ state? It was your emotions; why did you have those emotions in the first place?; because you focused on the negative thoughts that came to your head just by being asked a simple question. But why would a simple question trigger such thoughts leading to such emotions?...

YES, because you had ‘FEAR’ inside you due to the ‘superior’ position you put the other person in your head; and even more importantly due to the ‘inferior’ label you gave yourself just in this situation. What happens when you ‘fear’ something?, you immediately go into fight or flight mode and as a result you REACT irrationally.

So, what is the alternative? The alternative is to RESPOND rationally; seek for the truth, establish the facts; dissociate yourself from the situation. Just respond to the question, focus on the facts and the truth, not the feelings and emotions (more on this in the next article).

And the only way you are going to be able to do that is to STOP putting other people on pedestals and seeing them as ‘superior’. As soon as you can do that, you automatically see yourself on the same level as them. This removes the ‘inferior’ feelings and emotions (and therefore the thoughts these emotions trigger) from your head. It is then, and only then you can RESPOND rationally and answer the question without doubting yourself.

It is called the INSIDE OUT revolution, living from the INSIDE OUT, not from the OUTSIDE IN. Not letting the external factors that are not in your control affect your every thoughts, behaviours and every action. Imagine that!

So who are you from the inside out?

You will have to wait until next time to find out...