Shake the Dust Off! - Letting Go of External Validation

Sometimes, it feels as though we live our lives as if we are in an audition. We have been taught since we've been very young, the approval from other people is one of the most valuable commodities there is. If we can go out of our way to audition, put our best face forward, we might get some of that golden approval.

We get so used to that habit of giving people what we think they want in order to get the approval that we desire, that we don't realize how manipulative we are being. We don't see it as being manipulative because we're just trying to get our needs met. We've been taught from a very young age that having everybody else like us and approve of us is the most important thing.

And so then, our ego mind is very active getting that approval for us. It's extremely important to recognize that chasing after that approval is one of the many ways that the ego sets us up for failure, to seek things that we can't truly find. And that if we do find it, it's only a momentary fix and we have to go out and get another hit.

The approval that we seek from other people never brings us what we think it will. And instead of recognizing that it's going after the approval of other people that's the problem, we think that we didn't get enough approval, or the right kind of approval. And so we up the volume of our auditioning process, where we put out even more of what we think people need from us and want from us.

Our careers are wrapped up in that. If I get more people that like me, perhaps I'll make more money. Our relationships to our friends are like that.

If I get enough approval, they'll like me enough to not abandon me. In romantic relationships, it's especially apparent. It's very common when you're out dating to put an impression out that you think that they want so that they'll approve of you.

The truth is that if that works and they are interested in you, eventually they're going to find out who you really are anyway. If what you put out isn't authentic to who you truly are, but you're just trying to audition for them, they're going to resent that and they're going to reject you anyway. So it's better to just put out what you really are from the beginning and get it over with.

They're either going to love you or they're not going to love you for who you are. But then you don't have to deal with the collapse of your illusion later, because it will collapse. And a lot of us believe our own BS.

A lot of us believe the nonsense that we put out there about ourselves because we've been doing it so long. We have these stories about ourselves that we bought into that aren't true. And that's when it becomes impossible to navigate in the world because we don't even know who we are anymore.

We've been so perpetually in this state of auditioning that we never get the role. We never get to work. We never actually perform.

We just audition. I get people all the time saying, you know, I can show you how to become more famous on YouTube. I'm not interested.

Usually what they want me to do is put out there what more viewers want to see. You need more content about this. You need more content about that.

And they don't understand I'm not on YouTube to be famous. That's not my point. My point is just to put out what I put out and the people that benefit from it, benefit from it.

I learned that long, long before I ever started any of this. When I was quite young, I learned the wisdom of not putting out a false persona of myself in order to get people to like me. People find out who I am anyway, and then they're disappointed because it wasn't the person that I pretended to be.

So it's much better for me to just be myself and the people that like me, like me and the other people move on. It's okay if you're not everyone's cup of tea. It's normal if not everybody clamors for you.

There's a line in the New Testament that if people reject what you're saying, shake the dust off of your feet and leave. Shake the dust off of your feet and leave. I'm going to shake the dust off my feet and we're done.

I'm not here to try to force you to like me or listen to me or agree with me. If I'm not your thing, I'm moving on. It's a great attitude to have in professional life, in the dating world, in any aspect of your life.

You automatically draw to you the people that are right for you. And if that happens to be a small group of people, that doesn't mean that there's something wrong with you. It means that that's your tribe, that's your crowd, and that's great.

You don't need to be everybody's thing. One of the problems with our addiction to fame in this culture is that we really believe that more is better. We have this skewed idea that more is better.

Large crowds are better than small groups. Anyone who achieves the fame that they think they desire very frequently regret it. They don't want to be out there for everybody.

Once you achieve the fame, what you realize is that you still aren't everyone's cup of tea. It's just that you hear about it all the time, how they don't like you. And that can be very painful to be experiencing a life of notoriety where so many people have something negative to say about you.

The trick isn't to change yourself in order for more people to like you. The trick is to shake the dust off your feet and move on. There's another wonderful line in that book, and that's, don't cast your pearls before swine.

I think the more modern version of that is don't feed caviar to a pig. Poor pigs and swine, they get the shaft in all of these sayings. You can't force people to understand you.

You can't force people to like you. And if your self-esteem plummets because somebody doesn't like you or because somebody doesn't get you or understand you, then what you've done is you've cast your pearls before swine. You've wasted your own essence trying to get other people to give you the reaction and the response that you so desperately think you need.

And why do you so desperately think you need it? You were taught that you do. You were taught you need everybody to like you. This whole lie that we grow up with in our culture that we need people to like us is a burden that we carry on our shoulders.

I personally would rather not know what people think of me. Sometimes what happens is you get in with a group of people and somebody starts to gossip and say, oh, so-and-so was talking about you the other day. If somebody says that to me, I usually want to say, I don't want to know what they said.

I could not care less what they said. Leave me out of it. If you guys want to talk about what they said about me, you go ahead.

Leave me out of it. I don't need to know that's information that's a burden on me. I honestly don't care.

Jane Fonda talks about that. People say, how can you put up with all of the things that people say about you? She said, I don't listen to it. I don't read any of it.

I don't care. It's the only way you can survive where you're in that much of a spotlight is to not listen to it. Be immune to it.

On a microcosmic level, we need to do that. We need to not care what people are saying about us or what they think about us or what they feel about us. The title of that Terry Cole Whitaker book is, What You Think of Me is None of My Business.

You don't even need to read the book because the title tells you everything you need to know. What other people think of me is none of my business and I'm not interested. The only reason to be interested is you want to know, well, what do I need to do to change myself? What do I need to do to fix myself? Now, it's very different if one of your beloved has a problem with you, like if my partner had a problem with me, family member had a problem with me, a really good friend had a problem with me.

Of course, I want to know what it is. I want to know because if I transgressed them or exhibited behavior that hurt them in some way, of course, I want to know what that is so that I can make it right or so that I could at least let them know, I understand why you're upset, but I don't feel bad about that and this is why. So that's different.

I'm not talking about being immune to what effect you have on your loved ones. I'm just talking about in general, the need to audition for people's approval. The more we can recognize that and change it, turn that around and move back into understanding that we don't need global acceptance.

People get so addicted to posting things online and seeing how many likes they get, seeing how many comments they get, and that's the barometer that many people use as to their own self-worth, whether they realize it or not, saying what they think online and then seeing how many people can agree with them. And that's a dangerous place to be in. And the reason I say it's dangerous is because your own self-esteem becomes so fragile and so easily malleable and you no longer are happy with who you are because you're a child of the infinite expressing your truth.

You believe that you cannot be happy because you believe your happiness is dependent on other people's approval, on other people's opinion, and it's so backwards. People are shriveling up before our very eyes. They've forgotten who they are.

They've forgotten what they stand for. They've forgotten why they're here and why you're here is not to be approved by a lot of people. It's to forge meaningful relationships with those who have been put on our path.

And those meaningful relationships with those people do more for the planet than you trying to get a bunch of likes or you trying to audition for other people out there that don't really make any difference in your life to approve of you and to not dislike you. It's really sad, isn't it, how much time we waste trying to get people to like us since it's so socially acceptable to audition for other people's acceptance, to change our points of view just so that people will agree with us and like us, just to avoid perhaps a confrontation. And it's so normalized that for us to do that, we don't even see what we're doing.

We don't even recognize how we're literally selling our souls to the highest bidder because maybe they'll give me the approval that I want. Maybe they'll agree with me. Maybe they will accept me.

Maybe I will get the part. I will get the role. I will get cast as a person who is liked or accepted.

But at what cost? They're not accepting you. They're accepting some version of you that doesn't exist. And I'll let you in on a secret.

They're not accepting you at all. Everybody knows everything on a psychic level. Everybody knows everything, whether they know it intellectually or not.

Everybody knows the truth about everything. Nobody is snowed. Nobody can be lied to.

There is a point at which the human mind understands the truth because everything is ultimately telepathic. Even though their personality may accept your false self and give you the approval you think you want, they still don't ultimately believe that's who you are. And so they're manipulating you too.

Why would you care that a person approves of you? Shake the dust off your feet and move on. Do not cast pearls before swine. Do not feed the caviar to that pig.

It's important to remind ourselves of this daily, sometimes moment to moment. I don't owe you a version of myself that you are demanding. I don't need to audition for your approval.

If you disapprove of me or you don't give me the approval that my ego is screaming for, it doesn't affect me. It doesn't make a difference in my life. It's a little scary when you first say that, isn't it? I want everybody to like me.

It's so empowering to be in the presence of somebody who disagrees with you. It's so empowering to be in the presence of somebody that maybe even has disdain for you or contempt for you and not try to change their mind. Now, I'm not saying that you should hang out with those people all the time, but if you find yourself in a situation like that, it's a wonderful opportunity for you to grow and say, I don't need to change.

I don't need to force their approval. I do not need to prostitute myself for them. It's so liberating.

It's so freeing. And usually what I've noticed happens when I'm in the presence of somebody like that, who especially is being kind of rude or mean, and I think in those terms that I don't need their approval. I don't need them to like me.

Usually what happens in my experience is those people move away because they can't stand being in that position. It's a powerful process to shake the dust off your feet and move on. You don't need to keep giving to people in order to somehow get them to like you or get them to approve of you.

It's important to cut those ties. When you cut those ties, it's not that you are cutting people out of your life in order to have enemies or any of that. What you're cutting out of your life is the neurotic behavior.

And if you no longer participate, they'll have to go and find somebody else that will do that with them. It's not up to you to heal them. They can go find somebody else to play those games with.

But if you stop playing, they're going to not be interested in you anymore. They'll move on. So when you shake the dust off of your feet and you stop casting pearls before those swine, those swine are going to find somebody else to play with.

And then you can get back to what you're supposed to be doing. And that's being yourself with the people who love you and the people who appreciate you. And you can appreciate those people and you can do great work together and no longer wasting your time, wasting your energy on trying to audition for a role that you were never meant to play.

Stop auditioning. You've already got the part. You're the star in your movie here.

You're the star and you forgot that and you started auditioning for roles that are completely out of your type. You'll never be able to play those roles. You get cast in those roles and you're going to do a horrible job because they're not right for you.

You don't need those roles. You already are the star player. Start acting like the star in your own movie that you already are.

Think about that for a minute. If my life is a movie, I'm the star. I'm the main player.

How well am I studying my role? How well am I being authentic with this role? And how am I giving to the other players in this movie so that they can do their part too? Most of us don't. Most of us say, oh, I don't want to be the star in my own movie. I want to audition for them because I'm afraid they're not going to approve of me.

And so we turn our backs on everything that's important in this whole movie that's going on. Everything has to be put on hold. The whole crew, the whole cast, the whole budget, everything has to be put on hold so that we can audition for some part that is nothing to do with us.

Just because our ego says, oh, they can't disapprove of you. Oh, you need them to like you, right? It's so silly once we realize what we're doing. It's so much easier to stop doing it once we realize we're doing it, but that's the ego's game.

Let's take some time to assess this week and see how much we are embracing our role, embracing our truth, and how much time we are wasting on trying to get people to either approve of us or not disapprove of us. Spending time trying to get approval from people and over things that don't matter, that are wasting your time. You have a very short period of linear time in this life, in this world.

Unfortunately, that's the kind of world we live in, in the third dimension. It has a beginning, and then it has a middle, and then it has an end. You are eternal.

You are an eternal soul. But why waste all this wonderful time that you've been given here? Why waste it? When you are done with this life and you're reassessing this life before you can move on to the next, are you going to say, oh, I really sucked the juice out of this life. I really did everything I came here to do.

I was so involved. Or was it I got a lot of likes on my posts? I got a lot of people to like a version of me that doesn't exist. I spent a lot of time not getting people to be mad at me, to not criticize me.

The clock is ticking here, and the amount of time that we waste on other people's opinions and living our lives through other people's eyes is shocking once we recognize it. And we stop it as soon as we recognize it. And we realize, if I'm not your cup of tea, bless you, I'm shaking the dust off my feet and I'm moving on.

I'm not wasting one more moment on this encounter. I'm not wasting one more pearl on this swine. Thank you so much for spending some time with me.

I so appreciate you. Until next time, blessed be.