Opinions Are Highly Personal, and Ultimately Meaningless

Many of us go through life worrying about what other people’s opinion of us is. We want to be liked, to be loved, admired, popular, looked up to or all manner of similar emotions. The trouble is, what somebody else thinks of you actually has nothing to do with you at all!

An Example

As some of you know, my other blog is about Internet Marketing. Now in the IM world there is a man called John Chow who is somewhat ‘famous’ in this niche because his IM blog now rakes in over $30,000 a month and every month he publishes a post stating his earnings just like I do on my IM blog. Now John Chow is a guy who has attracted a large amount of attention due to his financial success and a lot of it is highly negative.

Now what I find interesting is this… setting aside those people who have met John Chow in the flesh, the rest of us know him only from his blog and online presence which means that anyone who reads his blog is exposed to exactly the same information about him, and yet opinions about him differ hugely. One of my recent posts managed to get into a discussion about him, and one of my commenters, Billy Loi had this to say about John:

John Chow for example is incredibly arrogant. Although I do have a lot of respect for him as a highly successful Wordpress blogger who have carved out a niche for himself, he just turns me off by his arrogance. I don’t mind people being arrogant if they show some respect for the little guy like me who is started out as a blogger.
His blogs are so negative about the little guy starting out as a blogger. I get incredibly depressed when I read his blogs.

He looks down on the little guy who is started out. Like for example, do not contact me until you have 100 thousand visitors a day on your blog!!
So even though John Chow has a lot of subscribers, they are all in the same league as him. Just imagine, if John were to invite people to a blogging convention, I would feel uncomfortable going there because I would feel like I don’t fit in.

I know that Billy is not alone in this sentiment and yet I don’t feel that way at all. I have never considered John to be somebody who brags or is arrogant in any way - he simply states his income and I do the same. If my income were to grow to the point where I earned that much and I continued to post my income statement every month, would that be seen as bragging by some people? My suspicion is yes. Why is that?

Because the opinion that you hold of somebody else, has very little to do with them and everything to do with yourself. Billy feels that John is arrogant but I have never got that sense from him. What I see is a family man who uses his financial success to make sure that he has a great time in life and gets to spend quality time with his family. Those are traits that I desire for myself and so when I read John’s blog I admire him and think, yeah I want that too.

My opinion of John has nothing to do with John, and everything to do with me! Because his lifestyle resonates with me, I see the good stuff, I pick out what I like and as a result my opinion of him is completely different to somebody else who feels that the lifestyle projected in the blog is a turn off. However John is who he is and he does what he does and nobody else’s opinion makes any difference to that - it doesn’t change anything.

Remember that neither myself or Billy have ever met John so the only way we have formed our own opinions of him is through his blog. We have both been exposed to exactly the same material and yet have gone on to form completely different opinions which are rooted in our own values, beliefs and ideals, and have very little to do with what we were actually reading!

Other People’s Opinions Of You Don’t Matter

Can you imagine the turmoil that John would be in if he listened to everybody else’s opinion of him? Being such a prominent figure in his niche means that he gets hundreds of comments to his blog and tons of emails too. Imagine if he read the comment that Billy left on my blog about him and thought to himself, “Hmm, I’m coming across as arrogant, I’ll have to try and change that in future posts”. Billy’s opinion of him may change as a result but then what would I think of him? Who knows but my opinion would probably change too.

What this boils down to is that old saying, you can’t please all of the people all of the time. It might be a cliche but it is so true! When you realise that what other people think of you comes from what they are feeling about themselves, what their own values and beliefs are, and let’s not forget - what kind of mood they are in at the time at which they encountered you, then you can see that trying to please others and get their approval is a completely futile waste of time and energy.

Have you ever had an experience where you have blown something ‘out of proportion’ or you overreacted to something and then when you looked at it again when you felt differently, the very same thing that you looked at before now seems different? Has the situation changed? No, YOU have! And this is how opinions are formed! Somebody could be having a really bad day and then encounter somebody who rubs them the wrong way and then forms a very low opinion of that person but the next day they feel better and the person whom they had the low opinion of now doesn’t seem so bad even though nothing has changed!

What other people think of you has everything to do with them, and what they are feeling and thinking and going through. They will see what they want to see and nothing you do, or say will make any difference. I have my own share of online ‘enemies’ too. Every now and then somebody will stop by my blog (the IM one) and tell me that I suck or something but it really is irrelevant because what they think of me really has nothing to do with me at all, and is just about what they are going through at the time.

So, stop worrying about what other people think of you - whatever it is, it’s their opinion and they are entitled to it, and nothing you do is going to change it anyway.

Stumble it!