It can be challenging to stay grounded when other people hook us. When they say and do things that seem to threaten the very core of who we know ourselves to be.
When this happens, I think it’s important to remember that other people are not the authorities on who we are and who we're not.
Perhaps in the past, we were forced to accept other people’s definitions of us. And perhaps we were punished for being who they mistakenly thought we were.
But as adults, we can practice listening to other people’s words without letting them hook us and define us. Because we know who we are now, and we know who we’re not. And we know we’re healing from past wounds, and we know we have nothing to be ashamed of, only everything to love and have compassion for.
We can stand grounded in ourselves, even in the presence of someone confidently misunderstanding us. And instead of defending ourselves, we can calmly choose to listen-to-understand and communicate-to-be-understood, or, if it’s not worth our energy, we can calmly excuse ourselves and continue on our way.
-JLK
