Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life: How to Unlock Your Full Potential for Success and Achievement

THE OPINIONS OF OTHERS
The third major cause of negative emotions, according to Ous-
pensky, is 
inward considering
. This occurs when you become overly
concerned with the way people are treating you. If you perceive
that someone is not giving you the respect that you feel you de-
serve, you can feel insulted and angry, and want to strike back.
If people are rude or indifferent to you, you can experience their
behavior as an attack on your personality or character. This in-
terpretation of their attitude or behavior can make you angry 
or depressed.
Psychologists say that everything we do is to increase our self-
esteem and sense of personal value, or to protect it from being di-
minished by other people or circumstances. If your self-esteem is
not as high as it could be, you will be sensitive to the actions and re-
actions of other people toward you. You will take everything 
person-
ally
, exactly as if what they said or did was consciously and
deliberately directed at you. However, this is seldom the case.
The fact is that most people are preoccupied with themselves
and their own problems. As much as 99 percent of the time, people
are wrapped up in their own thoughts about themselves. They de-
vote the other 1 percent of emotional energy they have available to
everyone else in the world, including you. The person who cuts you
off in traffic is so involved with his own thoughts, he is not even
aware of your existence. It would be silly to become angry or upset
over his thoughtless action.