"Fear of what other people think should never dictate whether or not you do something." ~ L.K. Madigan

There are many things in life that we wish to do, see, have, or experience. Two things that limit what we can experience are our own imagination and courage to get out there and grab it.

Let’s focus upon the second of those: Courage. There can be all sorts of reasons why we lack courage to move forward: fear we will fail, fear we’re not good enough, fear we’re wasting our time, fear of what other people will think, and lots more. Fear, of course, is just an illusion created by the Ego/Shadow Self to keep us in a place of perceived safety and yet what it actually does is keep us in a place of stagnation and limitation.

Whether or not fear is an illusion, it can be incredibly crippling when it comes to taking actions to change our life for the better. And not least of these fears is fears that others will resent us when we achieve what we wanted. You can almost hear the phrases now that they will say:

“Who does he think he is to step above his station”
“I bet she wasn’t honest in getting all that”
“Whom did he have to crush to get where he is today”
“She’s not good at what she does, she’s just very lucky”
“How selfish is he not sharing what he has with me”
“Let’s see how long it is before she forgets us and just joins her ‘new friends’”

Do any of those sound familiar to things you’ve heard, or even things you’ve said yourself? There are two things I’d like to get you to think about from this: Mirroring and fearing judgment.

Often what we think about others, we actually think about ourselves and so we project our fears onto them and they become a mirror for our own thoughts and behaviour. The Ego would have us ignore that fact and so we do. We end up putting others down to make ourselves feel good. “He may have all that money” (Envy) “but he’s so tight and selfish with it” (self reflection and judgment). What we see in others we often refuse to see in ourselves and what we need to remember is that’s why we’re being shown it! It’s an opportunity to learn from it and change our behaviour and thoughts to something more helpful. As Gandhi said “Be the change you want to see”.

By judging others, we are really judging ourselves. “If I had that money I wouldn’t behave that way” – do you see the judgment here? It’s not just judging the other person about how we perceive them to be, it’s also judging ourselves on how good we perceive ourself to be. The thing with judgment is, no matter how “good” we judge ourselves to be, we will never be “good enough” as long as we keep comparing and judging.

Not only does judging others limit us, so too does the fear that they will judge us and so we hold ourselves back. Take that first comment above “who does he think he is to step above his station”. Ooof! Can you feel the negative slap that brings? Ever been there where you’ve feared doing something because you think people will think “you’re getting above yourself”?

Don’t you think that one of the most fantastic and wonderful things to see and experience is seeing someone completely transform their life from one of extreme fear and limitation into one of pure happiness, peace, and success? Rather than resenting them and judging them for it – see it, instead, as a motivator. “If he/she can do it, why the hell can’t I?!!”

The only thing stopping ourselves achieving in life is ourselves. Whether that be self belief, or faulty thinking about what we think other people will think. And, at the end of the day, does it really matter what other people think anyway? Wayne Dyer has a great quote “What other people think of me is none of my business”. Remind yourself of that next time you fear what other people will think of you.

Let go of judgments of others, and walk your talk with love and self confidence. Stop worrying about what other people think because, more often than not, they’re not thinking what you think they’re thinking anyway!

Bearing all that in mind. What’s the one thing (doesn’t matter how small) that you can do today, to move one step closer to creating the life that you really want?