If you do not know how to ignore the evaluative statements of stupid people, you yourself begin to behave stupidly.
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We are constantly being evaluated. They evaluate our appearance, our manners, our statements and our texts, our actions and our choices — and not all assessments make us happy, not all assessments we need. You need to be able to evaluate grades, paying attention to grades-hints from reasonable and competent people and skipping random, ill-considered grades of random people.
“Praise and slander were accepted with indifference,
And don’t argue with a fool» — Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin meant this situation.
Deafness to the assessments of others is the same mistake as complete submission to them. A person who completely ignores the assessments of others, either unable or unwilling to hear them, is completely autonomous, but at the same time isolated from society. The admiring look of a man pleases an attractive woman, and the disapproving look of the father makes the child think: “Did I do the right thing?” — Grades are necessary, joyful and useful.
Knowing how to evaluate yourself is important. Interest and attentiveness to how others perceive and evaluate us is a wonderful quality, an indispensable part of good breeding. But evaluative dependence (the term “evaluative dependence” was formulated by Vladimir Levy), a person’s dependence on positive or negative assessments of others, is a big nuisance. If a person loses his position as an author, trying to please everyone around him indiscriminately, his life loses its rational direction, and the person himself can easily be manipulated or turn into a neurotic.
Indeed, how to behave if the husband wants one thing from you, the mother wants another, and the child the third, and everyone evaluates you? Life in constant looking at others is an uncomfortable life.
However, evaluation dependence is sometimes necessary. For the educational process, a certain level of evaluative dependence of the child on parents and other elders is good. In the hands of a sensible educator, evaluative dependency can be used to shape the child’s attitudes, attitudes, and habits that are useful for life.
If you are an adult (be careful, not all people over the age of sixteen are adults!), You can already rely on your mind and set yourself grades yourself. Or do not put them at all, if in this situation you have other plans. For an adult and reasonable person, evaluative dependence is rather harmful, having a bad effect on health and depriving a person of independence. Instead of evaluative dependence, it is useful for an adult to develop attentiveness to the assessments of others in order to take them into account in a timely manner if necessary, influence them or ignore them when they are irrelevant.
How to reduce the estimated dependency?
There are two ways. The first is to actually reduce dependence on grades. The exercises “Non-standard act” and, in general, the topic Detuning from external control will help here. The second is to develop the ability to choose which assessments are worth responding to and which ones are not. See Developing Self-Confidence