When Other People's Opinions Become Authority

This article was extracted and adapted from the full InnerTalk InTouch newsletter, “You Don't Need Permission to Become Who You Choose to Be.”

Most of us would strongly resist someone telling us what we are allowed to do with our lives. Yet, without realizing it, we can give other people an extraordinary amount of influence over the choices we make.

Someone criticizes something we're excited about, and suddenly we're not quite so sure. Someone disapproves of a decision, and we begin second-guessing ourselves. Or perhaps someone made a judgment about us years ago—and we're still behaving as though they were qualified to decide who we are.

We value our independence. Yet sometimes we hand over pieces of it without even realizing we've done so.

Listening Without Surrendering Your Judgment

Of course, the answer isn't to stop caring what anyone else thinks.

Sometimes criticism is valuable. Sometimes another person sees something we've missed. Sometimes experience has given someone knowledge we don't yet have. And sometimes someone else is simply right.

Real agency doesn't mean automatically rejecting other people's opinions any more than it means automatically accepting them. In fact, automatically rejecting someone's advice simply because we don't like being told what to do can give that person just as much influence over our decision as automatically doing what they suggest. Either way, they are still determining our response.

Real agency allows us to listen, consider what someone has said, decide whether there is something we need to learn—and then make our own choice.

Their opinion becomes information, not authority.

When an Experience Becomes an Identity

Other people's judgments aren't the only ones that can limit us. Sometimes the person whose opinion we most need to reconsider is ourselves.

• I'm not creative.
• I'm terrible with money.
• I'm shy.
• I'm no good with technology.
• I always procrastinate.

Perhaps there was once evidence supporting those conclusions. Maybe we struggled with something. Maybe we tried and failed. Maybe we behaved a certain way for years. That experience is real. But there is an important difference between “I did” and “I am.”

 Perhaps you procrastinated. That doesn't necessarily mean I am a procrastinator. Perhaps you once made poor financial decisions. That doesn't necessarily mean I am bad with money.

What we have done can become something we learn from without becoming an identity we are required to maintain.

“But You've Always Been…”

Sometimes those identities are reinforced by people around us.

• “But you've always been the practical one.”
• “You've never been interested in that.”
• “You've always hated exercise.”
• “That's just not you.”

And sometimes nobody else needs to say these things because we've become very good at saying them to ourselves.

But “you've always been” is a description of the past. It doesn't have to be an instruction for the future.

We can discover new interests, develop new abilities and change our opinions as we learn. We can decide that something which suited us ten years ago doesn't suit us today.

That doesn't mean personal growth requires continually reinventing ourselves. There may be enormous amounts of who we are that we value and want to keep.

Keep what still fits. Strengthen what you value. Learn what you need to learn. And reconsider what no longer serves you.

Self-Esteem, Agency and Choice

This is one reason self-esteem can have such a profound influence on the choices we make. When our underlying sense of worth is fragile, decisions can become tangled up with old fears and beliefs.

• Inadequacy can whisper: Don't risk it.
• Invalidation can say: Their judgment matters more than yours.
• Anxiety can warn: Something might go wrong.
• Worry can insist: Keep thinking about everything that could happen.
• Old emotional pain can remind us: Remember what happened last time.

These reactions may simply reflect things we've learned through experience. But we don't necessarily have to continue allowing them to make our decisions for us.

Real agency means we can consider all of that—and still choose.

Why Reclaiming Your Inner Power Takes a Broader Approach

Reclaiming Your Inner Power: Ultimate Self-Esteem was compiled as a nine-program collection because self-esteem isn't influenced by just one belief or experience.

The collection includes Eradicating Inadequacy, Releasing Anxiety, Healing Emotional Pain, Healing from Invalidation, Healing the Past, Freedom from Worry, Echo-Tech: Have It All!, OZO: Inner Peace, and Power Imaging: Well-Being and Self-Esteem.

Each approaches self-esteem from a somewhat different direction, supporting the inner foundation from which we can listen, evaluate, learn and make our own choices.

The goal isn't to create a completely different version of you. Nor is it to pretend other people's opinions don't matter, the past didn't happen, or nothing will ever go wrong.

Perhaps ultimate self-esteem is something much more grounded: trusting yourself enough to participate fully in the decisions that shape your life.

Limited-Time Special Offer

For a limited time, the complete Reclaiming Your Inner Power: Ultimate Self-Esteem album, normally a $314.55 value, is available for:

• $99 — MP3 Download
• $119 — Physical CD Edition

You will also receive Rescripting the Child Within, an additional $34.95 value, FREE.

Rescripting the Child Within complements this collection because some of the conclusions we carry into adulthood began when we were too young to evaluate whether they were accurate, fair—or identities we wanted to carry for the rest of our lives.

This special offer expires Monday, August 24, 2026, at 11:59 PM Pacific Time.

[Explore Reclaiming Your Inner Power: Ultimate Self-Esteem]

There Is More to Agency

There is another side to agency that I explored in the complete newsletter.

What happens when circumstances really aren't under our control? What happens when a decision doesn't work out, someone rejects us, circumstances unexpectedly change, or life gives us choices we never wanted to make?

And how much authority should the person we used to be have over the person we are becoming?

Those questions take the idea of agency considerably further. [Read the complete article: “You Don't Need Permission to Become Who You Choose to Be” on InnerTalk.com.]

Ravinder Taylor 
Author of Mind Training: The Science of Self-Empowerment