Day 1977: Other people’s opinions

Yesterday, in a therapy group, people discussed  and wrote down their thoughts and feelings about other people’s opinions.

What is your personal experience of other people’s opinions?  What makes other people’s opinions more difficult for you? What helps you deal with other people’s opinions?

In yesterday’s group, I shared a personal experience of other people’s opinions, which I’ve written about previously (here). At the end of a weekend-long retreat, decades ago, I participated in an exercise where everybody got to give and receive opinions about each other.  The people who were running the exercise offered this excellent opinion: When people give you their opinions about you, they are often talking about themselves.  However, if you hear similar opinions from different people, you need to take those opinions seriously.  At that retreat, I was surprised …

… to hear mostly positive and supportive opinions.

After group yesterday, I swapped opinions with author and friend Chris, who was my student at Boston University decades ago (and who has appeared in other blogs posts, here, here,  here, and here).

That’s Chris taking a photo of the street sign at Fenway Park that was recently changed from Yawkey Way back to its original name — Jersey Street — because of other people’s opinions.

I sang my first original song — “I Don’t Like You” —  for Chris, and his opinion matched other people’s opinions. When I told him I was going to debut that song at an Open Mic tomorrow night and also share that performance on YouTube, his opinion was very supportive.  I have very positive opinions of Chris and I’m sure other people share those opinions.

I’m wondering, here and now, about other people’s opinions of this post, including all my other photos from yesterday …

… and the music I’m choosing for today’s post.

On YouTube, other people’s opinions of Jake Shimabukuro playing the ukulele are similar to mine.

I look forward to other people’s opinions, below.

My opinion is that you should express gratitude to others whenever you can, like now!