On judgment and the right thing to do
Days ago I was taking care of my daughter. She’s 2 years old and has recently started throwing tantrums consistently. It can be very irritating, but I do my best not to succumb to my irritation and to take the most effective action:
Ignore her.
Whenever she starts to throw a tantrum, I turn my back and walk away. After just a few seconds, she stops crying. And that’s exactly what I did last time, to great success.
But then it hit me that, had my daughter thrown that tantrum in public, people around would have expected me to do something else: take her on my arms and giver her some affection, talk tough and ask her to stop, perhaps even slap her to teach her a lesson.
But nobody would expect me to turn around, walk away and ignore her. If they saw me doing that, they would judge me, even though it’s an effective thing to do.
I then realized that this is how we people react to everything. We always expect others to take some specific actions that almost never are the most effective.
When Gary Vee gave up attending college and chose to work on his father’s business instead, do you think there was anyone tapping him on the back saying, “Yeah, man, you are doing the right thing.”? No. Nobody thought it was the right thing to do.
But it was.
That’s why being afraid of other people’s opinions is so dangerous: because judgment is stronger when we are doing the right thing. If you decide to start doing the right thing, you are guaranteed to have people think you’re a loser. GUARANTEED.
So the only way is to accept judgment not only as inevitable but as a confirmation that you are on the right track.