Letting Go...

All too often, I'm so easily influenced by what other people think of me. I hate being judged. I want to be seen as a great person to my peers, friends, family, boyfriend, but most of all, to complete strangers. First impressions are so important, after all. You never know what chance meeting could be the key to your entire future.

A long time ago, I used to record my progress at ITG through taking videos of the songs I played and posting them online. I did this until someone showed me a video of a girl (someone I didn't even know) playing ITG and was mocking my play style. It hurt to see a complete stranger making fun of me. So I took all the videos down. A few months ago, I made the decision to start taking videos of my progress again (but I try to keep out of the videos as much as possible). I do post the videos on You Tube so that others can watch or whatever. A step in the right direction, I suppose.

I also used to preoccupy myself with keeping tabs on this one girl (another person I don't know) to make sure she wasn't saying anything terrible about me or my family. Knowing damn well she always would say terrible things with no actual facts to back them up, I would read on and I would get so upset. It wasn't until recently that I stopped doing this. Why? Because "ignorance is bliss." Lo and behold, since I started ignoring said person, I've felt a lot better. It was one of the firsts steps I had made in letting go.

I did some soul searching, as often I do when my insides are at some sort of dissonance. I thought critically and rationally. I thought about the quote I had posted and reposted and will repost again now because it's so true (to those who read my blog on a regular basis, I'm sorry if you're sick of this quote... but for me, it's a mantra):

"I can find only three kinds of business in the universe: mine, yours, and God's," says the self-work teacher Byron Katie in her book, Loving What Is, which deserves to be high on the reading list of anyone who is in a close relationship with an addict. "For me," Katie writes, "the word God means reality. Anything that's out of my control, your control, and everyone else's control-- I call that God's business.
"Much of our stress comes from mentally living out of our own business. When I think, "You need to get a job, I want you to be happy, you should be on time, you need to take better care of yourself," I am in your business... I realized that every time in my like that I had felt hurt or lonely, I had been in someone else's business.
"If you are living your life and I am mentally living your life, who is here living mine? We're both over there. Being mentally in your business keeps me from being present in my own. I am separate from myself, wondering why my life doesn't work."

-From the book, "In The Realm of Hungry Ghosts" by Gabor Mate

Let those people preoccupy themselves with other peoples' lives. That's their problem. They're feeding off of their own insecurities to make themselves feel better. What matters to me is me. My business, my goals, my aspirations, my journey, my passions... me. Not what others think of me... because what they think or say about me is pseudo-truth. No one knows me like I do. 

Judgement is in human nature. It's prominent in religion. There's probably close to 7 billion people on this planet and I don't know how many different Gods and Goddesses, but... I'll kill myself with stress and worry if I'm constantly monitoring everyone else. So... having said that, I let go of what others think and feel about me. In the big scheme of things, it's unimportant in my little piece of reality.