James Simrell Mixed Martial Arts

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What Do You Care What Other People Think?

What do you care what other people think?

We like to believe that we don't care what others think about us, but we do. We care a lot what other people think. So does everyone else we know… except for sociopaths. We are hardwired to care what other people think. Our antennae are biologically attuned to the outside world, especially other members of our tribe.

Caring about what other people think is not a problem. The problem is how much we care. When we care too much, our perceptions go out of balance and become deeply skewed. If we are not well rooted in who we are, we become overly concerned about other people's judgments and inordinately influenced by their perceptions. When this happens over time we can habitually smother our core. We train ourselves to ignore or override that faint voice inside, our voice. This can happen at such an early age and with such force that we forget how to access our inner self. But we can remember; we can find our way home again. We can retrain ourselves to listen to that faint voice.

We can think of this as two different "frames of reference", in other words, two different perspectives from which we experience who we are.

 

External Frame of Reference: "Honey, can I use the Balls tonight?"

The first frame of reference we call an "external frame of reference". This is also known as the "social mirror" or the "reflected sense of self". As men, we often find ourselves emotionally enmeshed with our partners, yet befuddled as how to navigate those entanglements. This confusion arises from an imbalance in our frames of reference.

Our external frame of reference is one of the reasons we humans bond so strongly into tribes. We are designed to bond with others. Our external frame of reference generates doubts about our behavior and ourselves. Those doubts keep us linked to each other and in so doing, keep the "tribe" intact. This is one reason why teenagers are so blatantly concerned with the perceptions of their peers; their insecurity keeps their "tribe" intact. In addition, our ability to see ourselves through the eyes of others is also what allows us to be compassionate and empathic. We can imagine what things are like from their perspective and so we can "put ourselves in their shoes".

While our external frame of reference tries to perceive us through other people's eyes, it often perceives us through our fantasy and fears of what we imagine other people may think of us. In our external frame of reference we create an incessant inner voice that keeps asking, "How am I doing? How am I doing? How am I doing?" It constantly seeks reassurance from the outside world that we are OK.

From the time we are children, we are trained to seek most of our validation from the outside world, when ideally most of that validation would come from within; we would be self-validating. This self-validation is our true nature and birthright. But what we do instead is to default to an external frame of reference; we rely on others to validate us.

For example, in relationship we may need our partner to reflect us in a flattering way in order for us to feel good about ourselves. We may need her to tell us how wonderful we are and to admire our strength. There is nothing wrong with feeling wonderful, strong, and admired; but if we can only generate these feelings from outside ourselves, we are hobbled. If we can only receive nourishment from our partner then we cannot drink from our own well. This obsessive need for validation cuts us off from the rooting we might own have in our lives; from the nutrition we might receive from our own soil. Our soil can only supply us with this nutrition if we live in our integrity and our behavior is aligned with our deepest values. Without integrity and conscious values we have no soil in which to root our lives.

If our partner genuinely cares about us, our constant need for validation can also deny her the opportunity to express herself in a genuine way. Let's face it; she is not going to continually admire us, especially after she gets to know us. If we always need her admiration, there will always be subtle pressure in the relationship for her to reflect back to us a carnival image, this idealized version of ourselves. This pressure may prevent her from speaking her full truth, and we will need to know her full truth if we are going to effectively navigate our relationship.

Sometimes, her less-than-flattering view of us is accurate. Then we are faced with the dilemma of self-honesty, self-delusion, or finding another partner.

Other times she is just upset at us because we are not reflecting back her idealized self-image, or her "movie" of what the relationship is "supposed" to look like. If her self-image is at stake, she will often blame us for her own unpleasant reflection. Sometimes she may realize that her values are different than ours and be disappointed. Or we may not live up to her expectations of what she wants in her life or her partner.

In any event, if our partner is not acting in a way that triggers those warm fuzzy feelings and we cannot generate them in ourselves from a place of deep humility and self-acceptance, then we may try to manipulate the situation in order to generate that behavior in her. Or we may withdraw or rail against her; hanging on to our resentment as if it was a life vest. Her less-than-perfect view of us may throw us into a panic. If she sees us as flawed then we might also see ourselves as flawed and then we might be forced to confront painful and unflattering truths about ourselves.

There are two ways that we can generate those warm fuzzy feelings on our own. One way is through the often long and painful process of self-honesty, which leads to self-acceptance and eventually to self-love. This process generates our own deepest values and the recognition of who we are.

The second way to generate those warm fuzzy feelings is to cover these unpleasant realizations with distractions or addictions. This, while occasionally comforting, is not nearly as gratifying in the long run.

If we feel powerless to define the context of our own lives, our masculinity, and the inner richness of our terrain, then we often will default to manipulating others to try to control their behavior. But deep down inside we always know that we are manipulating. When we try to manipulate others we simply climb onto a hamster wheel; it is a dead end…futile and ironic. Ultimately the only thing in this world we can ever really control is our own behavior, not the behavior of others. And our nutrition must come from within; we must uncover the source of our own nourishment. Instead of manipulating others we must take a chance, stumble into the darkness, and try to find our way home.

 

Internal Frame of Reference: Coming Home to Ourselves

When you are content to be simply yourself and don't compare or compete, everybody will respect you. - - Lao Tzu

The other side of this phenomenon is our internal frame of reference. This internal frame of reference is rooted in the core of who we are independent of what others think of us. It is what we think of ourselves. Our internal frame of reference is rooted in our deepest values. We may not know what our deepest values are, but we can all access our core to some degree, even if only to connect with a small sliver of ourselves. But even with just this fingernail grip on our center, with tenacity and persistence, we can find our way home. We can think of this internal frame of reference as a muscle that we had long forgotten, therefore seldom used. Once we know it's there, we can strengthen it, and that strength will build on itself.

But in order for us to access this internal frame of reference, we must push through the numbness that we have created in our chests as boys and young men. We have to overcome the fear of discovering who we are. In order to integrate and return home through the fog of our lives, we have to know what we are feeling.

Boys don't cry… is that true? No, it's not true. Actually boys do cry… and for very good reasons. We need no justification to shed tears, to feel our own bodies. Could anything be more obvious? We cry because we have feelings that move us. To cry is to embrace our humanity, to sink our fingers deep into our own soil. The only boys who don't cry are those who are strangers to themselves, those whose parched roots have long ago been ripped out of their Earth. The boys who don't cry have a hell of a long journey ahead of them if they ever want to find their way home again.

Essentially, we have two choices: We can compartmentalize or we can integrate. We can fracture ourselves into pieces and stuff our bloody shards into cold metal drawers or we can finally and fully have the courage to embrace who we are. We can find the courage to wrap ourselves around our humanity, our rich humanity that always pushes through, beyond the pounding of our insane guilt hammers and the crippling shredding of our shame. We can send these foolish cartoons of perfection back where they came from. Our perfection, the real perfection of our humanity, comes from using our flaws as signposts, using our pain as a Geiger counter, allowing the best of our humanness to arise without denying the worst. We can reclaim the fertile and fecund ground of being from which we emerge. We can reclaim the rich darkness of our feminine nature while still illuminating our manhood.

Without an emotional connection to our core, we cannot root properly in ourselves, nor can we show our sons how to do it. Our rooting is visceral. We feel it in our bodies and it is as unmistakable as an orgasm. But it is personal and difficult to describe to someone who has not experienced it. Once this rooting happens, once we come home to ourselves, we find balance between our frames of reference and it changes our lives forever.

 

Finding Balance between the Frames of Reference

Both of these internal and external frames of reference are crucial for our survival. But they must be in balance to maintain health. Just as our bodies must maintain balance in our blood chemistry in order to be healthy, so must our psyches maintain balance in our frames of reference. When they are out of balance our minds can become toxic.

To achieve balance we must create a commitment to balance. But what does that balance look like? In classical martial arts training there is a posture known as a "cat stance" in which 60% of the weight is on the rear leg, and 40% of the weight is on the front. This may embody the ideal balance of internal (rear) and external (front) frames of reference for us as men. If we are 100% "rear weighted", i.e., if we are only rooted in our experience and incapable of a compassionate external frame of reference, then we are a narcissist or a sociopath… otherwise known as a "selfish asshole". Someone with a completely internal frame of reference sees the world only in terms of what they can get from it… what's in it for them. We all know people like that.

On the other hand if we are "front weighted", if we see the world mostly from an external frame of reference, we cannot shift back quickly enough if we need to "defend" ourselves with our hands or our front leg. If we are front weighted we are not rooted in ourselves, we are overly run by how we believe other people perceive us. In other words, we become doormats. And we also know people like that.

A 60/40 ratio of internal to external frame of reference allows us to stay rooted in ourselves with our "rear leg", while still able to feel empathic or defend with our "front leg". To feel our rear leg powerfully root into the earth is to connect with our own emotional body, to anchor our core masculinity, but also to fully anchor in Mother Earth. When we root we return to a place that is profound, visceral, and unmistakable. This internal validation is what we call "coming home". We acknowledge our most subtle sensations and emotions. When we root in ourselves for the first time, we change irrevocably, as do our relationships with others. We begin to see the possibility that we might somehow transcend our scripting, including the very powerful scripts that we have adopted from women.

 

From "How to Worship the Goddess and Keep Your Balls: A Man's Guide to Sacred Sex" by David Bruce Leonard. Available here -http://tinyurl.com/WorshipGoddessAmazon

About the Author

David Bruce Leonard is a deep ecologist, body-worker, Qigong practitioner, acupuncturist, martial artist, and plant lover. He has studied medicine with teachers in Asia, North and South America, and Hawai'i.

David believes that our health and the meaning of our lives are inseparable from our interactions with the natural world.

He has worked in a bank, on an oceanographic whale research vessel, and has been seen in public attempting to dance Argentine tango.

David is available for workshops and consultations in the creation of men's groups and support circles. Private coaching sessions for men or couples are available. He can be reached via his website http://www.DavidBruceLeonard.com.

 

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