My friend just told me about wonderful experience she had in a retreat – and she added that there are people who think this place is kind of weird, but she enjoyed it anyways.

People base their opinions on their assumptions rather than direct experiences. And then they believe what they think to be the truth

That made me think: most probably these other people have never been even near this place. They didn’t even have an opinion about this place . They made an ASSUMPTION about this place based on incomplete information, not personal experience. And THEN they formed an OPINION, based on their ASSUMPTION, based on hearsay.

And what happens next ist that they believe their OPINION has something to do with the actually happens. They believe in their opinion as if it was a fact, relating to the retreat – and you – through that fiction. They will judge you based on their wobbly construct and create a gap in the relationship, a division and form more prejudices.

And all of this goes unnoticed, unreflected and unquestioned

We could also call it in a state of unawareness. This is why other people’s opinion about you or really anything you do doesn’t matter.

It has nothing to do with you, with me or with anything.

It has nothing to do with you because they are not you, they don’t have your experiences, your feelings, your thoughts and your interests. All one can do is make assumptions and opinions based on their own fragmented information, experiences, feelings, values and world- views. So in some sense their opinion is interesting as a self-revelation, we can learn more about the other person but we should know, that it is not about us, but about them.

We can still care about other people opinions, but not as if they mattered

We can still want them to have a good opinion on us and we can still take them seriously – but in a discretionary way: yes, it is interesting, perhaps there is some new information or viewpoint to be adopted and learned from and no, it doesn’t matter.

It doesn’t matter means it has no material relevance.

It doesn’t change anything. We shouldn’t be guided by other peoples opinion they form about us, about a country, about a matter about anything. It is none of our business what other people think about us, what their opinion is about anything. We don’t even need to try to change it, as it doesn’t belong to us.

Let’s mind our own business, beware of our own “assumption based opinion imposed on other people” making. Rather, let’s form our own attitudes created out of our own personal direct experience and share openly when asked for it.

What truly matters is what you think about yourself

Your own honest opinion about yourself should matter to you. This is what should guide you, me, all of us. Because this opinion is based on our own direction experience of life as such. And our opinion about ourselves is be formed out of our authentic values, purpose and intentions. This is what should matter to us and guide us.