- Welcome to a Thoughtful Thursday video.
Or a fireside chat, if you will.
The topic today is something that's been coming up a lot
just around me (laughs).
What a weird way to say what I was trying to say.
It's just like been popping up a lot.
A lot of people in my life
that have been talking to directly
have been bringing this thing up.
And I've even heard it like just randomly,
like on a podcast or whatever.
And that's taking too much responsibility
for other people's emotions.
And it's kind of a tricky subject,
especially I think for infj's because it's like,
"Well, shouldn't we be looking out
"for other people's emotions?
"Shouldn't we feel responsible for them?"
It's a little bit difficult to get over that.
First before we get into that,
this weekend, just in a couple of days,
October 24th and 25th, 2020, I am going to be hosting
with my buddy Dan Johnson, who is a life design expert
in NF Connect LIVE.
It's alive virtual event,
a series of workshops meant to connect you
with the life that you want.
So the workshop subjects
are connecting with your ideal partner,
connecting with your vision for your life,
connecting with your strengths and how to use them.
Connecting with your message
and how you can deliver it to the world
and connecting with your value.
A lot of in-depth stuff,
I talk about a lot of things on YouTube,
but never really go into it for an hour or so.
I never have the opportunity to kind of interact and say,
"Okay, let's do some workshop type stuff,
"write down some stuff.
"Let's go through it."
Go to infj.me/event for more information
and to reserve your space.
I hope to see you there, it's gonna be a great time.
infj.me/event.
Let's get into the subject matter of the video.
This has been a theme I've talked about a lot,
like taking responsibility for other people's emotions.
But the reason it kept coming up
is because I heard people talking about,
"I'm always trying to guess what other people are feeling
"or are going to feel,"
or thinking, but usually it's feeling,
"and I don't like it.
"It just seems like life is so difficult
"because I'm tryna bend over backwards around everyone.
"So they don't have like a bad emotional reaction."
It just feels like a lot of extra energy
and a lot of stress spent trying to anticipate
how other people are gonna feel based on what we do usually.
Like our actions are being dictated in a way
by everyone else's emotions.
And that is ultimately what we're doing,
it's taking responsibility for other people's emotions.
Taking responsibility for their reactions to what we do.
Now of course, anything (laughs),
I always think about the extremes what I'm saying is,
yeah, so don't burn down someone's house
because then yeah, you should probably think
about how they're gonna feel,
they're not gonna be very happy.
But a lot of times
it's just like we wanna do stuff in our lives and we don't.
And it's not, it's not hurtful, it's not bad,
it's not malicious.
It's good intentions,
it's us living the life we want to live,
but we know that it could make other people mad,
could make them jealous of us, could make them sad.
Maybe we just need to make decisions sometimes
that other people don't want us to make
and that will make them upset.
And I think a lot of times
we're twisting ourselves into a pretzel,
thinking about all these possible emotional reactions
and be like, "Okay, well so and so is gonna do this
"if I do this, so maybe I shouldn't do it.
"Or maybe I should package it in this other way
"and do it in this kind of long roundabout way
"to make sure that they're happy."
And it's good to make sure that people feel respected,
it's good to look out for other people,
but it gets damaging when you can't just be yourself.
And I think a lot of infj's has have this issue
where they're stifling their true self,
because they are looking out for other people's emotions,
taking responsibility for it at their own expense.
But the, and I think the irony is a lot of infj's,
and a lot of people in general who do this kind of thing
might even think they're not good at it.
'Cause it's like all these times,
you're trying to figure out people's emotions,
and then there's the one time
where you don't know what you don't know.
You didn't know you should be looking out
for how this person's gonna react.
And they say, "Wow, you're so thoughtless.
"You never (laughs),
"you never think about other people's emotions,
"you're so selfish."
And then it's like, "Yeah, I'm selfish, I'm terrible,
"I never think about other people's emotions.
"I am so all about myself."
When it's like the other 90% of the time
that wasn't the case,
and you were anticipating
all these things that never happened.
That's the other side of it.
Is that we're like, "Oh man, if I do this thing,
"this person's gonna be so mad.
"Ah man, I'm gonna, I'm so anxious."
Or maybe it's not even like their reaction to what we do,
it's just like assuming what they think
or assuming what their intent is.
And we make ourselves super anxious going into a situation
'cause we're like, "Oh man, this person probably hates me
"and they probably are thinking
"about this thing that I did."
And it turns out they didn't.
It turns out (laughs),
it turns out everything was better than expected.
And there was just all this wasted energy,
a lot of those times than the other times where we're like,
"Oh man, I missed that one thing.
"I missed that one person's possible reaction.
"I should've seen that.
"Now I need to double down
"and be extra (laughs) responsible for how everyone feels.
"Gosh, darn it!"
And while this is a Thoughtful Thursday video,
let's stop momentarily and see
if YouTube would like to show a commercial.
Thanks for sitting through that.
Those of you who don't have premium, I appreciate that.
'Cause it seems callous like talking about this whole thing,
to be honest with you makes me feel a little weird.
If anyone in my life watches this,
family, friends, et cetera,
I feel like they're gonna be like
either like, "You don't actually care,"
or like, they just feel weird
I'm doing it right now, what the freak!
(laughing)
Oh my Gosh!
See, I didn't plan that.
That was like a real thing that happened on camera.
This is real YouTube right here on Thoughtful Thursday.
It's also weird to talk about
because it makes me feel like I'm being callous.
You've gotta be brutal and just be like,
"I'm doing my own thing.
"F you guys, I don't care how you feel,"
it's not what I'm saying.
'Cause there's a balance with everything.
But if you see a pattern in your life
of, "I tend to do stuff, not the way I wanna do it
"or don't do the things that I wanna do
"because I'm just worried about other people's reactions,"
that's not so great.
This sounds overly simplistic
and it might even sound foolhardy.
But it's like, what if we went about as an experiment,
not trying to anticipate or guess, that's the big thing.
Guessing and intuitives love to guess.
They have no factual evidence, but they're just like,
"I'm guessing this person is like this,
"and they're thinking this they're feeling this."
What if we didn't do that?
That we took everything at face value.
And if someone doesn't say, "I'm upset,"
then we just gonna be like, "They're fine.
"It's their responsibility to communicate with me
"how they feel.
"And if ultimately they are upset, that's not my fault."
Their reaction is not your responsibility.
That's what I'm getting at.
This is an experiment I might try.
What if I just take things at face value?
What if I let other people be responsible
for their own emotions within reason (laughs),
but don't sacrifice the path that I want to follow
for someone else,
and not even really for someone else,
but kind of like my perception
of what they may or may not like or not like?
But let me know what you think of the comments.
Thanks for watching, until next time.
Oh and tomorrow, funny video.
Funny Friday's tomorrow.
What? 16 personalities video coming at you tomorrow.
I'll see you there.
Stay cool and attractive.