Recently I was introduced to the quote “I’m not who I think I am. I not who you think I am. I am who I think you think I am.”
[Note: Unfortunately the source of this quote is not clear, or I would provide it. It is variously credited to Charles Horton Cooley, Thomas Cooley, and Dennis Cooley.]
The gist of the quote is that we often find ourselves trying to live up to an imagined standard that we think other people have for us.
This is a surefire recipe for self-sabotage! Either we will be trying to do what we want to do and trying to do what we think others want us to do. This has us taking action in multiple and often conflicting ways, which results in little to no progress. OR we take no action at all because we are caught between our own desires and the perceived desires of others.
In this week’s podcast I provide two ways to remedy this situation.
First, I have a simple process for uncovering and tapping for the specific expectations we think others have for us. Second, I have more general tap-along to help you get moving even when you can’t see the beliefs clearly.
As always, I have included a text version of the tapping script below the audio player that you can print out.
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I know that other people have impressions of me…They have beliefs about who I am…They have beliefs about what I am capable of…They have beliefs about how I act…And I also have an impression of what I think other people think about me…Based on who I am…Based on my experience…Based on her past interactions…I have written a story inside of my head about how they navigate the world…I’ve written a story inside of my head about what they think about me…It is possible that the story I have written about what they think about me has nothing to do with what they actually think about me…I’m in a situation where I respond to what I think they think…Because for me what I think they think is the reality I operate in…And my emotional response comes from this…The action I take is informed by it…This means my actions and emotions are impacted by a story written inside my head about what I’m guessing they think about me…It doesn’t matter if this is what is really going on…Because I am responding emotionally to the story that I have written…I give myself permission to let go of these stories…I give myself permission to know I don’t have to respond in this way…I give myself permission to define myself in my own terms…I give myself permission to choose who I am…Not what other people think I am…Not what I think other people think I am…But who I am…It is safe for me to be authentically me…It is safe for me to be my true self…It is safe for me to make choices and actions based on who I am…Knowing that it does not matter what I think others think about me…The reality is most people aren’t thinking of me at all…They are so wrapped up inside their own experience they are completely missing me…I am not crossing their mind…And since I’m not crossing their mind…It doesn’t matter what I think they think about me…All that matters is me being myself…It is safe for me to be myself.
The human experience can be full of complications and conflicts. My clients often say things like “I am of two minds” or “My head is telling me one thing but my heart is telling me something else.”
Music can be so powerful at setting our mood. 
Did you know that during adolescence the brain goes through more neurological changes that it does at any point in human development? That’s even more changes than during the notorious “terrible twos” and one of the reasons why interacting with teenagers can be so complicated.
A concept that I learned very early on in my training as a practitioner was: Our emotional response is dictated by how we describe the world, and not the way the world actually is.