Your disappointment, shame, guilt, or helplessness about your behavior is not who you are. That’s how you judge yourself. You are bigger than this judgment.

When the other people’s judgment on us becomes how we judge ourselves and when that becomes our standards to evaluate ourselves, we are running into the danger to feel disappointment, anger, guilt, and shame about ourselves and these feelings often leads to helplessness and hopelessness.

1. To be able to see the truth about other people, you have to be able to face the truth about yourself.
2. Alcohol, party, drugs, etc. are just our ways to avoid seeing others and ourselves.
3. To face the truth about other people, you have to be willing to face the hurt and anger in you.
4. Anger comes after hurt even though anger is easier to express. Underlying every angry moment is a hurtful moment we suffered.
5. Anger is powerful, and that’s why it is easier to express. The ability to face the hurt that underlying the anger is the true power within you that no one will ever be able to take away.

To see the truth about other people, we have to be able to face the truth about ourselves. When we are able to face what we don’t want to see in the other people, we are also able to face the part of ourselves where we want to deny.

This exercise might elicit different feelings that “feels like” hard to tolerate. If it brings up a lot of emotions that are hard to endure, talk to a friend or seek professional help. You might be on the verge to reconcile a tough memory or traumatic event. Don’t bury it away. On the other side of the fear is your courageous inner strength that is waiting for you to dig out.

There is no right or wrong for the way you want people to see you. However, it is when maintaining these images becomes the criteria for your decision making about your behaviors and to the point that controls your life that we lose the sight of our true self.