Dealing with Ridicule
August 3rd 2017
According to Napoleon Hill’s research in his book Think and Grow Rich, people fear ridicule and criticism more than they fear death. You don’t have to be watching Game of Thrones to know that shame is one of the harshest punishments served by a group to an individual.
When making attempts to follow your inner voice, it is certain that you will be met with ridicule and resistance from others. In this video we explore this issue and how to overcome it.
This week we are talking about our inner voice and how to deal with ridicule and how to deal with resistance from other people when you’re trying to follow your inner voice, your intuition. It often does not make sense to other people what your inner voice is telling you. And so it takes courage to actually move in the direction that your inner voice is guiding you to go in because it’s often a… not an illogical place but a non-logical place. So it’s not irrational or illogical. It’s coming from a place that’s outside of logic and rationality.
It will make sense later. You will be able to connect the dots back later. At some future point you will look back and go ah, that makes perfect sense, that’s why I was guided to do that. But until that point where the penny drops and you realise this is why I was guided to this next step and then I was guided to this next step, and until you’ve gained some momentum and looked back at the path that’s unfolded for you, it takes a leap of faith and a real big boost of courage to actually follow the guidance of your inner voice, because each step when you’re looking down at a very micro level it doesn’t always make sense. It doesn’t always seem logical. It just might seem like too much of a risk or too much of a gamble. But when you macro out and have a bird’s eye view and you’ve got a path that’s unfolding, it’s like oh, this makes complete sense.
That kind of goes hand in hand with people that are searching for their… or trying to discover what work they’re meant to be doing, what their life purpose is, what’s work that not only lights them up but that they’re passionate about, that they’re interested in, that they want to pour all their energy into but also, it’s something that can sustain them in their life, financially and in regards to fulfilment as well.
If you follow the guidance of your inner voice it will just give you bread crumbs. It’ll just give you the next step and it takes your own inner conviction to just protect what your inner voice is saying and to follow it, and let your self be your own guide and judge, and everyone else’s opinions and ideas that go against your inner voice need to be put on the shelf. Your inner voice will never ask you to harm yourself or anyone else and that’s what you can take solace in. It will never ask you to do that. It will make sense… the guidance will make sense at some distant point in the future.
When it comes to ridicule and judgment, just know that that is part of the deal. You cannot avoid it. It will happen. It hurts more when it’s the people closest to you, and then it’s also a bit of a journey to kind of navigate through the thing that you create in your mind that is everyone’s judgment and opinion. And “everyone” has no face. “People”, “they”, have no face. It’s just this construct that you create in your mind about resistance to what you’re doing and who you are. And when you can navigate through that with conviction and also just relaxation… I’m doing it anyway… let’s see what happens… then you don’t kind of fall prey to going back and undoing what you’re being guided to do. So you will have the courage to move forward on its guidance. It is a voice like Rumi says that will never lead you astray. Go in the direction of your heart, the direction your heart is pulling you in. It will never lead you astray. And let that be your safety net, that it will never lead you astray. And let your trust lie in its hands and not in the minds and short-sighted opinions of other people.
What do we do with well wishes, well-meaning well wishes? There are plenty around and it’s a bit of practice to try and figure out who to listen to, what to listen to, when to listen to information and advice and guidance, and often we will seek other people’s guidance when we’re not in tune with what we feel about something, what we think about something. And in that case, when you’re in that situation, when you’re not tuned in to your inner voice and you’re not sure what it’s saying, then seek out the people who you trust have your best intentions at heart and who will not lead you astray. So that is who you seek guidance from. And hold on to them. Hold on to them.
The people that are just naysayers, that are knockers as we call them in Australia, that’ll just knock anything that you try and come up with that’s different from the status quo, it’s just part and parcel of it. People don’t realise how resistant they are to change, and what they’re doing by trying to block your progress and your creativity is they’re projecting their resistance to their own change and their own life. And sometimes it comes in the guise, the cloak of love and protection and we care about you, but at the end of the day we as people need to find a way to care and love about people and encourage them to just try it out, just have a go, which is another Australian-ism. Just have a go at it and just see where it leads. You don’t know unless you try. And to encourage with love and care and to be the safety net if things fall flat… you can come over and have a cup of tea at my place. So that kind of support is very different from this is not a good idea.
People have to take responsibility for their own actions and what they’re doing and they have to stand by their own actions and convictions. So even when you’re being guided by your own inner voice to take certain actions, those are your actions and you are responsible for them. And the inner voice will never guide you to harm yourself or other people as I’ve said before, and all action that arises with… from that guidance will be life-enhancing. It’ll be growth. It’ll be different. It’ll be into the unknown. It’ll be something perhaps you’ve never tried before… calling someone up you’ve never spoken to before, putting an ad in the paper, putting in your book for publishing, going on a date, traveling by yourself, traveling with a group of people. It could be anything out of your comfort zone, but rest assured that on the other side of it is growth and expansion.
When you don’t follow that inner voice you can trust that you will remain in the same place and move very slowly through life, very cautiously. So when you have your inner voice as your guiding light, as the mother ship that all the other ships follow as Gary Zukav explains it, you know that you’ll be in for an adventure, you’ll be in for intense personal growth. It is not easy. It’s not easy to do… to wait one year to do a course that you want to do right now because your inner voice said to wait. It’s not easy to do something right now that you actually want to wait on.
Your feelings about things are usually from fear or trepidation about the unknown and your inner voice just has no space for fear. It comes from love where you’ll always be guided with safety through adventure and curiosity. So that is so much more tasty and delicious than trying to fit in and listening to people who don’t want you to change and so they ridicule people. I mean who ridicules people? That’s ridiculous (did I really say that?). Why would you do that? That’s crazy. Don’t ridicule people.
If you encounter someone who’s ridiculing you or other people, that is not the company you want to hang out with. Find the people that you want to hang out with and listen to what they have to say and people that you trust and listen to what they have to say. So be very selective about the voices you let in and let your inner voice be the loudest voice that you hear. Let it be the loudest voice you hear and find a way to tune in to it.
The adventure far outweighs the short-term pain of ridicule. The achievement, the fulfilment, the self-expression, the growth far outweighs any kind of pain that you might feel from ridicule or not fitting in, because when you move into new waters there will be people there, there will be conversations that you’ll have, there’ll be experiences that you’ll have with other people and you’ll meet them out in new waters. And so be open to receiving people that get it, that get you and get what you’re doing. And if you haven’t got them yet then dive in. They’ll be there and just trust that they’ll be there waiting for you.
I think that’s how I handle it. That’s how I handle ridicule and naysayers. It’s been there my whole life. I’m sure it’s been with everyone their whole life. You’ll always going to get people that don’t get you and don’t understand what you do and what you’re trying to do. And it’s just up to me, it’s up to us individually to navigate through that and to find a way that works for us to navigate through that.
I have a handful of people that I trust dearly, and everyone else is in my life with their positive energy but there is just a handful of people that I trust with guidance, that I will receive guidance from. Very selective. Be selective about the people that you go to for guidance and support and care and nourishment for your dreams because they trust you… It might be a crazy plan but they trust you that you’ll get through it and you’ll find a way, you’ll be resourceful, and that’s who you want betting on your side. Sometimes you just need that one person and that’s it, and their voice far outweighs all the crazy trolling that’s out there from other people. That’s one way to shut it out. Just make sure that your inner voice is the loudest voice you hear, and when you have trouble hearing that voice then have people in your life who you know will never lead you astray and trust their voice until you can tune back in to your own.
So that’s it for this week. I love this topic of courage and following your inner voice. Oh my gosh, there’s been so many times where I’ve been so damn scared to follow my inner voice and I didn’t and then I regret it, so now I’m at the point when as crazy as it might be I will always listen to it and I will always follow it. As small as the guidance is, as big as the guidance is, I will always follow it. And it has taken me places that’s just far beyond my imagination that I ever thought I could go. And that’s what I wish for everyone to tune in to their inner voice and to live a life from there.
Sharanya
xx