Can people really hurt your feelings? No, they cannot. If you doubt this, study the lives of those imprisoned, beaten, or tortured. Search out and read Viktor Frankl’s powerful book “Man’s Search for Meaning.”
In Nazi concentration camps, despite unbelievable treatment, many people including Frankl, retained their precious self-respect. Surely we can live by the axiom: “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me.”
Here’s a sample of Frankl’s insight: “In the concentration camp every circumstance conspires to make the prisoner lose his hold. All the familiar goals in life are snatched away. What alone remains is ’the last of human freedoms’—the ability to ‘choose’ one’s attitude in a given set of circumstances.”
In a free society, others have the right and freedom to speak their mind, but we don’t have to accept their opinion. Feedback from others is useful, but be careful of its source.
If you’ve been involved in an event reported by the press, you know the importance of evaluating the source of information. Despite reporters’ attempts at objectivity, they have a point of view.
I worked in several newsrooms and found most newscasters sincere in their efforts to be objective, but they had strong personal feelings, and this background showed up in their work.
Avoid the Blame Game
Avoid the blame game. An attendee at one of my seminars blamed her lack of enthusiasm on her father who had been dead for over 10 years. There is no doubt he influenced her, but, since he is unable to reconsider his actions, don’t you think it is time she took over her own life?
Does this blame-game contention sound familiar? “It’s not my fault. He/she made me so mad that I just couldn’t concentrate. I was so stressed out that I got this terrific headache and couldn’t think clearly.”
Claiming this kind of helplessness is an easier position to take than fully accepting personal responsibility. Some workers even negotiate stress days, taking time off from the pressures of their jobs.
Rest and relaxation make sense, but allowing people to label workload as the cause of their anxiety deflects them from fully accepting personal responsibility. Workload does not cause stress. (This is an important distinction.)
Inner Child, Inner ‘villain’
Freedom to take risk and suffer the consequences of our behaviour is the cornerstone of a free society. Unfortunately there are those who advocate feeling good about themselves—even if it means giving up their freedom to succeed and/or fail.
Some even go so far as to blame imaginary villains for clearly self-inflicted problems. Their favourite villain is their inner child.
Dr. Albert Ellis says it best: “The only person with an inner child is a pregnant woman!”
No one but you can hurt your feelings; therefore the wounded child is a masochist! I like the inner child concept as a metaphor but not as an excuse for inappropriate behaviour.
During the VE-Day anniversary commemoration, one veteran said: “Years ago we didn’t know we had an inner child and if we did, we'd send it to bed without supper.”
Some people get upset at this kind of talk, but I contend that we are not helpless victims of the past. Today’s behaviour is the result of today’s decisions, even if we are strongly influenced by the past.
Fifty years ago, in “Escape From Freedom,” Erich Fromm wrote: “After centuries of struggles, man succeeded in building an undreamed-of wealth of material goods; he built democratic societies in parts of the world, and recently was victorious in defending himself against new totalitarian schemes, yet ... modern man still is anxious and tempted to surrender his freedom to dictators of all kinds, or to lose it by transforming himself into a small cog in the machine, well fed, and well clothed, yet not free.”
Action Tip
When you slip into the blame game, remind yourself of your power to choose. Take full responsibility for your actions.
Above all, don’t blame yourself for things over which you have no control. You are not responsible for other people’s feelings or reactions—just your own behaviour.
However, contending that we are not responsible for other people’s feelings doesn’t give us the right to ignore the impact our behaviour has on others.
Confucius said: “The best people foster the good in others, not the bad. The worst people foster the bad in others, not the good.”
Treating each person as if our actions make them feel bad or good is fine, as long as we avoid the arrogant position that we are actually responsible for their feelings. This may seem like a minor distinction, but it keeps us from inadvertently treating others with disrespect.
Dave Mather is a Performance Improvement Specialist at Dale Carnegie Business Group in Toronto.
His columns can be read at ept.ms/dave-mather
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