6. The Most Important Person in the World
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Overview:
It is possible to let people love you or hate you, or anything in between. When you know who the most important person in the world is, you can let others sing your praises or not. (And that includes mom, dad, child, spouse, whoever). Learn about the one opinion that matters most.
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Hey creatives, I’m C. Jordan Blaquera, and welcome to the Whispering Worth to the World Podcast.
I’m a Master-Certified Life and Artist Coach who specializes in working with creatives. This is where I share what I would tell my younger self, if I could, what I’ve learned about the art of being human, about our inherent divine equality, and how it all relates to navigating our creative expression in the world.
THE MOST IMPORTANT PERSON IN THE WORLDI wanted my mother’s approval for a really long time. Like all the way up until she started losing her mind to Alzheimer’s when I was 50, and she came to live with me because she could no longer live on her own.
I had opened my home, disrupted my life, made my mom’s care the focus of my existence, researched her disease, endured sleep disruptions due to her Alzheimer’s behaviors, and I had dedicated myself to providing my mom with as high a quality of life as I could for her remaining years.
And just like a 10-year old girl, I wanted her to pat me on the head and say, “You’re doing such a good job, sweetie. What a good daughter you are. I’m so proud of you.” But of course, by that time, she didn’t even know she’d ever even had a daughter. She just knew that she felt safe when I was around.
One of the hallmarks of Alzheimer’s Disease is that it makes it difficult to empathize with and have compassion for other people. Those are complex cognitive functions and a person experiencing Alzheimer’s loses the parts of the brain that make empathy and compassion possible. So, she didn’t have compassion for me, for the daughter who was losing her mother right in front of her eyes, one memory at a time. She didn’t have compassion for me, her daughter, who felt broken-hearted, who was grieving the loss of her mother figure and the identity of being a daughter as I had known it.
It was devastatingly sad to be losing my mother as I had known her, right in front of my eyes, even as she was still living and breathing and healthy in so many other ways. There was no motherly love to ease my heartache, to understand my pain or to admire the caretaking I was doing for a person who could no longer care for herself, from bathing and personal hygiene to feeding herself.
How I wanted to hear the words, “You’re doing such a good job. I’m so proud of you.” Yes, I wanted a gold star for being a good daughter. Did I mention that I’m a grown woman? I think so. But still, I wanted that pat on the head.
I thought my mother was the most important woman in the world. The most important person in my world. She is the woman I most wanted to be like when I was a little girl. She is the person I most wanted to love me, to be proud of me, to think highly of me. If I was worthy in her eyes, then that would give me permission to believe that about myself.
When I was about 7, I can remember telling her, “When I grow up, I wanna be just like you. I want to grow up, get married, have a baby, and then get divorced just like you.” Emulating my mother’s path seemed like the best life my 7-year-old self could imagine. And if you are a mother, you might even think you should be the most important person in your child’s world, whether your children still live under your roof or not. Or as a parent, you might think that your daughter or son or child is the most important person in your world.
I think many of us imagine that being perceived as important in someone else’s eyes will provide the rock solid proof we think we need in order to finally believe that we are actually important. Especially when that someone is one or both of our parents or one or more of our children.
Conversely, we may think that being perceived as unimportant in someone else’s eyes is proof positive that we are definitely unimportant, less than or not enough. Especially if that someone is one or both of our parents, or one of our children, or a grandparent, or a spouse. Take your pick. There are probably the select one, two or the very, very few people that seem to matter most to you. And how you are perceived through those eyes may matter a lot to you.
For me, I felt extremely unimportant in my father’s eyes, and I definitely made that mean that I was, therefore, unimportant. In my teens, I buried the hurt and the pain under thinly veiled – very thinly veiled disdain and animosity toward my dad during the few occasions that he came around. And with regard to my mother whom I felt knew me best, as we had been two peas in a pod during my childhood, a single mom and her only daughter, I placed an extremely high value on her opinion of me.
I think that a lot of times we believe that being important to someone else is more important than being important to ourselves. At least, that’s what I believed for a very long time. But not anymore. Whatever someone else thinks of us has no bearing on the matter of whether we matter or not. No opinion, judgment, praise, damnation, validation, rejection or reward that we could ever get from another person no matter who that person is -- no praise or rejection, can take the place of our own opinion, judgment, praise or damnation of ourselves.
So, it is possible to let those people love you or hate you, or anything in between. To sing your praises or not mom, dad, child, spouse, whoever. Ultimately, I think it’s incredibly useful to spend some time figuring out what you think of you. Your opinion about you is the most important opinion in the world. Period.
If you “need” a pat on the head from someone else or a gold star or an atta-boy or an atta-girl, what’s probably more true is that you need that pat on the head from yourself. If you want them to be proud, try giving that pride to yourself, try creating a feeling of pride from the inside out. It’s possible you know. But it may require some intentional changes in the way you think about yourself.
The praise you want from them? Find a way to provide that praise to yourself. And if you can’t find that “pat on the head for yourself,” why should that person mom, dad, child, or anyone else give to you what you can’t find in yourself to give to yourself. You go first. Find a way to believe that about yourself first.
I’ve found that it doesn’t matter if someone else thinks highly of me if I don’t think highly of me. When I receive a compliment from someone, but I don’t believe that compliment about myself, I am like Teflon. Their kind, approving, validating words cannot stick. They slip right off of me like they are hitting a Teflon surface. Their positive opinion doesn’t make any impact, except to maybe cause me to argue inside my own head about how the person who is complimenting me is patently wrong about me.
So, when I find myself wanting someone else to think something positive about me, I like to remind myself to go first. I ask whether I can find it in myself to believe that positive thing about me. Can I find evidence that I do have that positive trait or behavior? I remind myself that asking someone else to give me what I won’t give myself is foolhardy and implicitly unworkable. I am asking them to do for me what I won’t do for me. Why should they be able to do what I am not willing to do for myself? And why am I choosing not to do it for myself?
If you find that it is truly hard to find your own praise and validation of yourself, and I understand if it is, because this was one of my own gauntlets, then it wouldn’t matter if you did get that pat on the head. Those words of praise or those compliments you so dearly desire would ultimately be unsatisfying because you wouldn’t believe them anyway. That praise would fall on your own internal deaf ears. For a moment, it might feel good but then your opinion would drown out that compliment with its opposing viewpoint.
No one else being proud of you, patting you on the head, or giving you a gold star can overcome your own self-concept. Someone else’s thoughts about you cannot overcome your own thoughts about you. We are misguided when we expect someone else’s opinion of us to overpower our own opinion of us. Because it can’t.
Here's an example from my own life. When my mother lived with me, I knew that the time may come when assisted living would be a better choice. Knowing that the expense of placing my mom in an assisted living facility was coming, I would worry about the money running out before my mom passed away, and I felt shameful because my priorities seemed profoundly effed up. I would ask myself: What kind of person thinks about money when it comes to their mother’s care?
And my answer in my own mind was: A monster. That’s the kind of person who thinks about money in this situation. At other times, I was annoyed by the responsibilities of caring for my mom, of having my sleep disrupted, of being tethered to my home because hiring a caretaker was expensive and sometimes challenging. I was annoyed by how inconvenient this job of caring for my mother was, the woman who raised me for goodness sake, a single mother who did her very best to provide a good upbringing for me. What kind of a daughter thinks like that? A bad daughter is what I would answer to myself. In my mind, I was truly a bad daughter.
At the time, I shared this with a close friend who was also caretaking her own aging parent. And when she heard that I thought I was a bad daughter, and a monster, she could hardly believe it. What she saw was me being the kind of daughter she wanted to be. She said she was so grateful that I was walking this path a few steps ahead of her because her mother was in independent living, but she saw the writing on the wall. Her mom would likely be living with her soon as well. So she was watching and learning from my example, and she was hoping to do as good a job as she thought I was doing.
And when she shared that with me, it was inconceivable to me that this is how she saw things, even though I knew she was telling me her truth. I wished I could see myself as she saw me. But her opinion, her concept of me could not overcome my own concept of myself. She was essentially giving me a gold star, right, for being the daughter that I was being. She knew it was difficult for me. She had compassion for my humanity. She knew that I lost my cool at times, that sometimes I was impatient and annoyed and raised my voice, and that I’d been worrying about the money running out. And she also saw how dedicated I was to my mom’s quality of life, to utilizing all of the local resources to give my mom engaging life experiences. And she saw that I was doing the best I could with the consciousness I had in any given moment.
But because I didn’t see it that way, because I saw my own glaring deficiencies, and all the ways I was falling short, her much higher regard for me could not compensate for nor overcome my own negative views of myself. And ultimately, because no one else can live my life for me or be in charge of my emotional experience, I know that my opinion of me is the most important opinion in my world, not my mom’s, not my dad’s, not my friend’s. And if I had children, not any of my children’s opinions either. Thus, there is no “him” or “her” or “they” whose opinion of me could be more important to me than my opinion of me. Whatever he, she or they could possibly think of me, it could never be more important or more valid or more influential than what I think of myself. There is no person whose thoughts about me matter more than my thoughts about me. And this is why I believe that I am the most important person in my world, and, I believe You are the most important person in your world.
My pat on my own head matters most. My pride in myself matters most. My opinion of me matters most. And I believe the same goes for you. No one else can be more responsible for your emotional well-being than you because that is an inside job. As adults, we have the responsibility of taking care of our own emotional lives.
So, what if you are the most important person in your world. What if your opinion of yourself is hands down the most important opinion that any human in the world could have about you. In my world, I believe that to be true for me.
And remembering and reinforcing this belief was so helpful when my mother not only no longer knew she was a mother but she could also not fathom the effort, dedication and caretaking that I, her daughter, was providing on her behalf. And yes, truth be told, I was providing all of that for my mom on my own behalf because that was who I wanted to be for my mother who was experiencing Alzheimer’s, whether she understood or appreciated that or not.
That phase of my life called on me to take this concept to the next level, to really generate my own pride, satisfaction, value, and positive belief in myself and in my actions. When my mother no longer had the capacity to understand what I, her daughter, was doing for her, when she could no longer empathize with my feelings, and/or “validate” my actions and choices with a “pat on the head” or a metaphorical gold star, it was up to me to do that for myself. No friend, life partner or relative could make me feel good about myself and my actions. But I could choose to do that for myself.
There were so many times I thought, “Oh, mom, if you could only see what a good job I’m doing taking care of you, you’d be so proud.” It was such a wistful, longing for her to see so she could say, “You’re doing so great, honey. I’m so proud of you.” And then and only then, it seemed I would have a right to feel proud of myself for the daughter I was being. But I knew the conundrum I was in.
My mother would never again be -- she wouldn’t even be able to be “proud of me” or to commend me for doing a good job or give me a “gold star” for being “such a good daughter.” So I could fall into a pit of despair, get resentful and depressed, and those feelings did show up, or I could feel like a victim of my circumstances. Or I could ultimately decide again at a deeper level to be the most important person in my own world, and then go to work on developing my own opinions about myself in relation to those circumstances.
I stopped out-sourcing how I felt about myself as a daughter to my impaired mother. Good idea, right? She no longer needed to be proud of me, and I knew she no longer had the capacity to do that anyway. So, I had some pretty good motivation to strengthen my opinion of myself. Alzheimer’s Disease bore some interesting gifts in my life, and this was one of them.
My mom no longer needed to be proud of me because I was proud of me. I gave myself credit for the work I was doing while grieving the loss of being a daughter in my mother’s eyes. I gave myself credit for doing the best I knew how in any given moment. Sometimes I was rested and centered, other times I was tired and overwhelmed. And in either case, I was doing the best that I could in that moment.
I took even more responsibility for what I thought about and how I felt about myself. I acknowledged that what I was facing was extremely challenging for me, and yet I was handling it. The future was very uncertain, and yet I kept putting one foot in front of the other. There was no way of knowing which decision in terms of my mom’s care would turn out to be the best, so I decided to be thoughtful, educated, and also to trust my intuition. And I decided in advance that I would be there for myself if my brain ever offered me the idea, “Hey, you made a mistake in the decision that you made back then.” I decided to be there for myself if my brain ever was going to be highly sub-spicious and kick that up into my consciousness.
I got grief counseling while my mom was still alive and I worked to allow my feelings that were sometimes very strong emotions like loss, vulnerability, shame, and grief to come up and through without judging myself for having them. This is what it was like to give myself a pat on the head, to give myself that gold star that I wanted so badly.
I also decided I was neither a bad daughter nor a good daughter. I was simply a daughter, doing the best she knew how to do in any given moment, given the consciousness I had at the time. That felt 100% true. I was just a daughter. Shifting to this perspective took the pressure off. It allowed me to release my brain’s ideas of how a daughter should be and to dissolve a lot of self-judgment.
My opinion of me improved. And I’ve decided that’s the opinion that really matters. Because I am the most important person in my world. Not my mother. Not my father. Not any other person. And I get to determine how I am going to feel about myself.
What if you decided to be the most important person in your world and then got down to doing the work of creating how you want to feel about yourself? That just might be worth your own internal gold star.
Be the most important person in your world.
Because you are.
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