Filtered thoughts
Taking opinion from people is a wise thing to do. After you decide something and plan for it, the next stage is to seek opinion from others to ensure that you are on the right track. Seeking opinion helps you to perform a kind of reality check. While some opinions may be appreciative and supportive, others can be bitterly true that you may not want to accept. Some part of later could be creative or constructive criticism however it may also include a part that may discourage you, disturb you or may even not have any relevance to you. This is true especially because human beings cannot be perfect. While the experience for a single person may be valid for one, however it may lose its relevance for other people.
This brings us to what I call filtered thoughts which helps us to filter the opinion that we receive from people so as to incorporate relevant opinions and advices into our thoughts while leaving irrelevant opinions and advice.
I have realised that it is important for people to do this because we are all affected by our environment, culture, society, and people. This affect multiplies two-fold when we are are significantly dependent on opinion of other people and are affected by them.
My view however, does not state either avoiding or ignoring the opinion of others but rather stresses on filtering these opinions so as to avoid the ones that may disrupt the mental state.
Now what is important here is to know how this process can be implemented into our lives. The first step in this process is to identify different opinions taken from people and then classify these opinions into supportive, creative criticism and disruptive opinions. The supportive opinions may be accepted readily, however our main aim is to distinguish opinions from creative criticism. To begin this process we should identify opinions that we think are a part of creative or constructive criticism and we should note them somewhere so as to act upon them. The opinions left would be those that disturb you and make you uncomfortable, further adding to your confusion in classifying these opinions. To resolve this confusion, we need to ask ourselves certain questions like if the opinions include a bitter truth that we don’t want to accept. Being honest to yourself is the key here. Next, we should identify the possible difference that exist between opinion giver and opinion taker. We should identify the difference in terms of experience, culture, or any other factor that may seem relevant. These opinions should then be matched with these differences and the opinions with significant differences should be ignored and forgotten. This therefore would help us in refining our thoughts and being consious of what we take in which in turn would help us in improving focus.