People Are Constantly Telling You about Themselves

People are constantly telling you about themselves. You just have to look and listen. People tell you how they see themselves by what they wear. Clothes may not make the man or woman, but they make a significant statement about how persons value themselves, how important they are in their own eyes—and how important they want to be in the eyes of others.

Everything a person says is ultimately self-reference. If someone should say to you, “I don’t like the way you did thus and so,” what is the first word out of their mouth? “I”—that is, what the other says is his or her perspective. The other is telling you far more about themselves than they are about you. The problem is, we tend to buy into those supposed truths others have determined about us; we may accept their viewpoints on things as insignificant as what looks good on us, to the far more significant issue of who we are good with, and who we are as persons. Even if we tell ourselves we are not accepting it, it still has a ripple effect on us.

Abusive persons want you to believe that they hold the corner on the truth-market, that their opinion of you is not just their opinion, but the objective truth written in the stars. As long as you believe that another’s negative view about you is true, guess what: it may as well be the truth, because you will live out of it as if it were the truth. In so doing you would turn an actual untruth into the seeming truth.

What if a person with power over you, a parent or abusive partner, says you are inadequate? If you believe it, and internalize it as objective truth, you will make the adjustments necessary to assure that it will become the truth. You will live under an “as if” cloud of your supposed inadequacy. Not believing in your potential abilities, you will not take the risks necessary to succeed; nor will you see your successes as successes. Rather, you will always be looking at what you nevertheless still failed to do, not the good you did do.

Much of your life is determined not by the truth as such, but by what you believe, the supposed “facts” you accept as truth. By their words and actions, significant others have throughout your entire life told you who they saw you to be, whether that constituted a positive or negative or mixed image. When you adopt the perspective of others as your personal truth, you will begin living out the “self-fulfilling prophesy.” That prophesy says we tend to become what others expect us to become. Make that what we expect ourselves to be and to become.

The hidden yet actual truth is, you are not who others tell you that you are. For the only thing others can tell you is who they are and their personal perspective about how they see you. And while there may be some truth in what they see and say about you—so you should always give them a thoughtful listen—theirs is not the final truth, the full truth. Only the Absolute knows the full and final truth of who you are and shall be. And that mysterious One isn’t talking, but silently waiting for you to become what it is in you to become. Then you may show others, not who they said you were, but who you truly are.