brilliant article...thanks for posting....made a lot of sense. Some guys at my work the other day we're talking about another worker who's quiet, while I was in the room, and they weren't being very nice, mocking his "morose" nature....but it seemed to hit me hard....and it's probably because they were disapproving of things that I personally identified with, even though they weren't directly disapproving of me.
I think the article is right....I like to think that I'm independent and don't care what others think, but if I'm honest, when other people disapprove of me I know it'll probably make me feel bad.
I was a bit disappointed with the solution the article gave though....the idea of not thinking of yourself as a person?! maybe I misunderstood, but I don't like the idea of detaching myself or denying any part of who I am. I have parts of me that I'm really proud of....I wouldn't want to repress them.
For me I think maybe the solution can be found in rationalizing the source of the dissaproval...i.e. who is dissapproving of you and how valid do you think their statement really is? Because if some silly little 5 year old mocked the shape of my ears for some reason, it wouldn't bother me because I'd know that he hasn't learnt not to judge books by their covers yet. But if Ghandi, or John Lennon or maybe just someone I look up to, like a parent or teacher, if they were to dissapprove of me, it would hit me harder because I'd value their opinion that much more....erm, but then I wouldn't want to make myself feel better after being dissaproved by a person by looking for ways to discredit and lower the value of their opinion. That seems mean and wrong. I guess, somehow, we'd need to become our own measuring stick, and know ourselves fully....then, if someone dissapproves of us, we can say," yea, you're right, I already knew that and I'm working on it at my own pace....thanks for pointing it out though!"
erm...I'm not sure though.....I need to think some more about this one!
