You Are Not in Control of Other Peoples' Experiences
28 Jan 2022 · 23 min
In this episode of the Mindset Mentor, host Rob Dial explores the central idea that we cannot control how other people experience us. He explains that our self‑identity is largely built from our perception of how others see us, citing Charles Cooley’s “looking‑glass self” concept. Dial argues that others’ reactions are driven by their own internal histories, conditioning, and personal paradigms—not by our actions. He illustrates this with examples ranging from dating dynamics and conditioned anger to a dog that has been abused, showing how past experiences shape present responses. The episode then shifts to empowerment: drawing on Viktor Frankl’s “between stimulus and response there is a space” and Eleanor Roosevelt’s “no one can make you feel inferior without your consent,” Dial emphasizes that we have full agency over our own reactions. He encourages listeners to cultivate equanimity, take ownership of both actions and responses, and stop fearing others’ perceptions. The episode concludes with a call to share the podcast and a series of sponsor messages.
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Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor Podcast. I'm your host Rob. Dial and if you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so that you never miss another podcast episode. And if you're out there and you have not given us a rating in review, however you listen to us, please go to Apple Podcasts or go to itunes to give us a rating and review. The more people that give us positive ratings and reviews, the more that it spiced the algorithm and the more people that can find this podcast organically, which helps it grow. So if you've ever gotten any value from it, do me a favor, give us a quick rating review. It'll take you about 15 to 30 seconds. Today we're going to be talking about how you are not in control of other people's experiences in life. Today we're going to talk about other people's experiences and we're going to talk about the role that you play as another person in every single person experiences. And it's important to really dive into this because I see a lot of people that get held back by this because as a human we learn who we are based off of how we perceive other people treating us. And so we build an identity of ourselves based off of how we perceive other people perceiving us and acting around us. And we usually build ourselves up in our perception of ourselves, our identity, based off of other people. And it goes back to a quote that I'll give you. You've probably heard me say many times in this podcast by Charles Cooley, and the quote is, I'm not who I think. I'm sorry, I'm not who you think I am. I'm not who I think I am. I am who I think that you think that I am. So let me say that again, because it's kind of. I messed it up first off, and it's kind of complex. I'm not who you think I am. I'm not who I think I am. I am who I think that you think that I am. And so what it means is that we build our own identity off of what we perceive other people's perception of us to be. Which is kind of wild if you think about it. But when you realize that you become what other people around you think of you and how they react to you, and only when you can fully step out of that viewpoint and you can step out of building yourself based off of what other people do or say or react around you, can you build yourself into your true self. That's the thing that you have to realize, and that's when you can become who you wanna become. And I'm here to tell you something that maybe you've never heard before. Is that someone's reaction to you, whether that reaction is good or whether that reaction is bad has nothing to do with you. Someone's reaction to you literally has nothing to do with you. It has everything to do with what is happening internally inside of that person. Now, at this point, you might be like, what the hell's he talking about? I'm gonna dive into it. We're gonna go really deep today, and I'm gonna tell you about how other people's experiences, other people's reaction to you literally has nothing to do with you. And let me preface it by saying this. I don't mean that you can just go out and be an asshole to every single person and be like, oh, it's their fault. Oh, it's their fault. You know, they shouldn't have reacted to me that way. Yeah, I did punch them in the face, but, yeah, they shouldn't have reacted to me that way. Like, I'm not saying go out and do that. I'm saying be a good person and act out of a good place in every single thing that you do. But realize that if you're acting out of a good place and you're being true to yourself and you're not trying to harm other people, other people's reaction of you has literally nothing to do with you. You need to step into your fullest, truest version of yourself and not worry about other people's perceptions. And here's the reason why you're not in control of other people's experiences. And so many people will not do what they want to in life simply because they don't want to ruffle any feathers. They don't want to stir anything up. They don't want to change. They want to. They want to kind of stay invisible so that they don't ruffle any feathers around them or so that other people don't react to them in a negative or sometimes even positive way as well. And so many people don't do what they simply want to do because they just want to stay invisible and not have people react to them, good or bad. And a person's experience of you is completely dependent on how they view the world. You have to realize that every single person perceives the world differently. One of the things I always say is that we're all seeing the same thing, but we're all seeing something different. Like we're all seeing this external world, but we're all seeing something different based off of our perception of the world, which is countless upon countless upon countless of experiences in our lives. And I'll give you a couple of examples of what I mean. If you're a woman and you're into a man, let's say, for instance, you're into this guy and, you know, you go on a date and you're interested in him and he becomes very distant. You thought he was like. Thought he was interested in you, becomes very distant and doesn't call you back. It might not be that he's not interested in you. Now, I don't want to mess up any. Anybody's dating, but it might not be that he's not interested in you. It might be that he has. It has nothing to do with you. It might be that he's been cheated on multiple times in the past. He's had his heart broken because. And now he's resistant to get into another relationship simply because he doesn't wanna be hurt again. And he might not even consciously know this. And so what happens if you're in this situation? You're really into somebody and they're really into you, and then they start ghosting you. You can think to yourself, oh my God, what did I do wrong? There must be something wrong with me. But in reality, they start reacting to you based off of all of their countless experiences in their life. And so it might be a protection mechanism on their part to actually say, ah, red flag. You know, this person starts to like me. The last time somebody liked me, I ended up getting really, really hurt. And then they distance themselves and a lot of times they're not thinking this consciously. It just subconsciously tends to happen. And so you can look at that, and I can tell you that that person's experience has nothing to do with you. It has everything to do with the way that they perceive the world. Makes sense now. It has nothing to do with you. It has everything to do with the way that they perceive the world. Another example that you guys can, might relate to is someone who's a very angry person. There's some very angry people in this world. And no one is born angry. There's not just like an angry infant, you know, like some of them can be a little bit more angry than others, sure. But they're not just like pissed off at the world and pissed off at everything from the second they come out. Right. Do we have different levels of anger? Sure, of course, absolutely. But there's no just like angry shitty baby.
Right?
That's somebody who has been conditioned to be that way. Some people are just angry and they might have been raised by a very angry adult. And now that is how they react to the world. There's some sort of trigger, there's something that sets them off in some sort of way. And there, you could have the exact same thing happen to, to two people. And one person could be very calm and they will have, they will have no reaction to it. And the other person could be very angry and that exact same thing can make them blow up. That says to you that you're not in charge of that person's experience. They are in charge of their own experience. Whether they realize it or not, they are in charge of their experience. So if you're holding yourself back in life because you're worried about other people's experiences, it's freaking crazy because you can't control other people's experiences, right? So you could have two of the exact same people, exact same thing happen, and they can have completely different reactions. One of them could not really care. One of them could, One of them could be completely angry, like One of the things my fiance always tells me, she's like, it's literally impossible to offend you, right? Like, it's the reason why is I just don't take anything offensively. Cause I'm like, all right, cool. If someone hates me or someone talks crap about the podcast or they, you know, say that they hated one of the videos that I posted on Instagram or something like that, I'm like, all right, cool. No big deal. That's their perception. And they have the right to perceive that however they want to, but it doesn't change how I feel. But another person could be a really angry person. They could have the exact same thing said to them. And it might set them off on the hinges, like, set them off the hinges. And like, you know, you have to realize that it's like, it's not about what the person said, it's about their reaction to what happened. And so you have to be able to set yourself apart once again, be a good person once again, do everything that you can from like the act of love. But you can't think that you're in control of other people's experiences because people are 100% in control of their own experiences. And so if you're trying to, like, tiptoe and not, you know, tiptoe and stay invisible and not piss people off or not offend people or not get any haters or something like that, it's impossible to do that because your people's reaction to you has literally nothing to do with the way you're even acting in the world in the first place. So their paradigm of the world. When you look at a person, what you're really looking at is a person who is filtering the entire world through their paradigm, which is countless and countless and countless experiences of things that happen to them.
In this world.
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The dog's going to coil away or react in some sort of way. You weren't the one that originally hurt that dog. But what happened is this dog has been conditioned to understand that when a hand is raised, it means they're about to be hit. And so they will develop a certain response around that. But if you go to A dog that has never been abused, and you raise your hand, the response is going to be completely different. Why? Because they are literally filtering the world through their experiences. To the abused dog, a raised hand is a threat. To a dog who has never been abused, a raised hand means nothing. That's exactly how people are as well, which shows you that you are not in control of other people's experiences. So what's happening is the abused dog that coils away, it is a reaction to a stimulus that has caused them to be hurt before in the past. And we all, as humans, we are human beings, but we all have an animalistic part of us that reacts to different stimuluses based off of past experiences. And that's what you have to realize, once again, be a good person trying to piss people off. You know, do what you can to be as loving as you possibly can. But you have to realize that you are not in control of other people's experiences. You cannot control other people's experiences. And the sooner that you realize this and become free from worrying about other people's experiences, the sooner that you can live a life that's true to yourself. Now let me flip this. And this is where a lot of people are going to be like, oh, shit. Okay, let me flip this. If you're not in control of other people's experiences, then other people are not in control of your experience. So if you are blaming people for how you feel or how you react, no, that's not the way that it goes. The same way that somebody gets angry about something, that is their experience and that is their reaction has nothing to do with you. Well, if you get angry at somebody else, that is not their fault, that is your fault. Let me explain what I mean by this. And how you react is completely in your hands. And it might feel like sometimes you don't have any control over it, but you 100% do. And one of my favorite quotes around this is from Viktor Frankl. Viktor Frankl wrote an amazing book while he was in the Holocaust, or right after the Holocaust, called Man's Search for Meaning. He was a psychologist that went through Auschwitz and was in Nazi prison camps. And he talks about the meaning that people had in their life and how people who had meaning ended up living longer through these prison camps than some people who had no meaning. But one of the things that he says is between stimulus and response, there's a space. So between something happening and your response to it, there's a space. Now, that space might be a half of a second, but there's still a space, right? So between stimulus and sponsors, a space. And in that space is our power to choose our response. Let me say it again. Our power to choose our response. And in our response lies our growth and our freedom. So let me say the whole quote one more time so you can get it. Between stimulus and response, there's a space. And in that space is our power to choose our response. And in our response lies our growth and our freedom. So between something happening and you reacting to it, there's a little bit of a space. And if you can master that space to not react no matter what it is, you have then mastered yourself and you have mastered your life. You can't blame anybody else for how you react to them. If people can't blame you for how they react to you, then you can't blame other people for how you react to them. You always have a choice of how you decide. I'm using this word on purpose. You decide to respond based off of something, and it's not easy at first. It's not easy to change your response because it feels so habitual. It feels like it's patterned into you and it is patterned into you. But it doesn't mean that it has to be that way forever. This is the core of self development. This is a core of really what it is. And. And I always say, like, if you think the way I think of self development is this, something could happen to me 20 years ago before I got into personal development, and I could be. One thing could happen and I could be pissed off for like a month about that thing that happened, and I'd wake up every single morning be like, she shouldn't have done it to me. This, this, this. And I could, I could wake up and piss myself off again about something that happened four days earlier, right? And then I work on myself and I work on myself for a few years, and now something might happen and I'll be pissed off for a week, but I've shortened it by three weeks, right? That's a positive. And then you work on yourself for fears. You work on yourself for fears, you work on yourself for fears, and something happens to you. And then you're pissed off for a couple days and then something happens to you and you're pissed off for a day and then something happens to you and you're pissed off for an hour and something happens to you. You're pissed off for five minutes and then something happens to you. And there is no pissed off at that point in time. That decision and that Choice is now where you found self mastery, because that shows you that nothing externally outside of you can disturb the peace that is inside of you. Because your response to somebody else has nothing to do with them. And it goes back to the Eleanor Roosevelt quote that I love. It says, no one can make you feel inferior without your consent. No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. If somebody says something to you and it makes you feel less than, you have agreed to make that thing feel less than you, make you feel less, and you might not even realize it, but you have decided that I'm going to listen to what this person said and it's going to make me feel worse by myself, or I'm going to take this thing to heart and I'm going to feel like I'm less than, or I'm going to hear what they say and then I'm going to get sad that all of that is completely up to you because that is the space in between the stimulus and the response. No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. If you're trying your best in taking actions towards what you feel are the best and not trying to hurt others, then you're not responsible for their reactions. But most people are blindly walking their way through this life. And so if they do or say something to you that sets you off and is some sort of trigger, that has nothing to do with them. It has everything to do with your internal self development and your internal peace that you're trying to stay in. It's the idea of developing equanimity, which means that no matter what happens, you're always going to stay calm and peaceful and everything will be okay. That's what we're all working towards, isn't it? But really what this is all about is realizing two different things, okay? Number one, you're not in control of other people's experiences. And number two, other people are not in control of your experiences and how they react to you has nothing to do with you. Once again, be the best person you possibly can, but has nothing to do with you. Number two, no matter who it is that you meet, good, bad and different, all of that, your response to every single person and every single action, every single thing that they do is completely up to you and completely your choice. You have to take ownership for your own actions, but you also have to take ownership for all of your reactions as well, because you are not in control of other people's experiences. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode and you learned a lot. Please do me a favor and take a screenshot of it, take a picture of you listening to it, take a video of you talking about it, whatever it is, and post it on your Instagram stories and tag me in it. Robdial Jr R O B D I A L J R I love that every single day I see hundreds of you guys sharing it and I greatly, greatly appreciate you for that. And a lot of times I actually reshare them as well. So if you would do that, I would greatly appreciate it. Once again as Rob Dial Jr R O B D I A L J R and I'm going to leave you the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make someone else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day at vrbo,
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