When I’m sane, I don’t try to get people to like me, feel good about me, feel better about their lives, feel good about themselves - or feel bad about anything either.
Trying to influence another person’s feelings is manipulation, which focuses my attention and energy where it doesn’t belong (and can only do me harm): on someone else’s business.
Unnecessary, unkind and ultimately futile.
My work is to understand my own feelings, to land on an orientation to life that is both true for me and centered in love and openness and then express it - or not - with love and openness.
Feelings will be communicated back to me. What I receive will be data about the feelings of others, not proof of them, and how I process that data will determine my experience of other people’s feelings. It’s all done from my side.
My job is to work with what comes back to me from a place of love and openness. To Listen. Reflect. Remember what I control and what I don’t. Remember what I can know and what I can’t know.
It’s not for me to “correct” what comes back. Again: that’s manipulation and not my business. Just take it in, continue to work with my own understanding of the world and modify it if necessary to keep it squarely centered in love and openness. And then keep working.
Love will lead everything to the right place. I ask for what I want, with love and openness and surrender to what is. The universe is kind and is always giving me everything I need to live in total peace.
No matter how anyone feels about it.