What’s outside of you: your first circle: the others

They're all around you.

The sidelong glances you catch on the subway. The acquaintances who might speak behind your back. A friend who adopts a sanctimonious tone, seated just slightly apart at a coffee table. Your parents, who secretly wished for a better life for you than they had. Your partner, who wishes you were more ambitious and better dressed. Your boss, who has the nerve to evaluate your performance at the end of the year.

They're everywhere, omnipresent.

Because of them, you lose your bearings and your self-confidence. Your mind swings like a pendulum.

This first circle of what is external to you are the "others".

Their judgment is a sentence, their way of life a standard with which you compare yourself.

These judgments, this self-imposed comparison with them, is a natural human tendency.

So,
what to do?

To put it simply and to remind you once again of a phrase you have heard a thousand times: Don't worry about other people.

Don't worry about what they think of you.
Don't worry about what they do better than you or what they haven't done as well as you.
Don't compare yourself with others and don't be jealous of them.
Don't worry about them and their judgement, just be part of the community in a spirit of selflessness..

When you worry about other people, you use up your energy unnecessarily and divert it from what should be your guiding principle ¹. You are wasting your time on something that has no purpose.

The others.

They haunt you because you try to please them. Because you try to find their approval in your actions. You subordinate your happiness to a kind word that tickles your self-esteem and satisfies your self-worth.

You need to know how to enjoy the other person: Rely on the people around you to provide you with all the richness of human exchange.

"How", is the important word here. It is all about finding the right expectations, the correct mindset. People can be a curse, but they’re also a blessing, shaping our experiences and pushing us to grow.

This is the dual nature human of interactions.

Relationship with others is perhaps the most valuable thing there is. Think about it: Is happiness to wander alone in a luxury villa on a paradise island in the middle of the Pacific, or to eat a piece of meat wedged between two pieces of bread and a cheap mayonnaise, but surrounded by your family and best friends? Personal fulfillment is rooted in social bonds; stoicism naturally recognizes this and therefore urges people to lead fulfilling social lives ¹ in order to provide for their own happiness.

Humans need connection with others.

But "Hell is (also) other people", as the philosopher Jean Paul Sartre put it.

Their expectations, judgments and biased views can put pressure on you. If you're constantly confronted with this, you feel permanently oppressed, even if you aren't necessarily aware of it. You're gradually drowning in this psychological hell.

You may not necessarily realize it, precisely because the others are two sides of the same coin. Shiny and radiant on one side, dull on the other.

Sartre denounces the cause, the Stoics propose a cure: Regard others as something external and, as such, free yourself emotionally from their grip.

Enjoy their company. Be a good friend. Go on vacation together and host diner parties; but never ever, in the spirit of the ancient stoics, put your happiness into their hands.

Your joy should be cultivated from within, independent of others' actions or approval.