Don’t Let Their Words Define You | How To Not Let Other People's Opinions Get The Best Of You

Good morning everybody. You are currently listening to a Tall Girls podcast hosted by a tall girl named India. I hope everyone who is tuning in today is doing super fantastic. Before I get into this episode, I do want to say, make sure you're following me on my socials at a Tall Girls podcast, on Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest, so that you could stay up to date on all of the latest podcast episodes and catch a glimpse of my every day life. Also, feel free to leave me review and let me know how tall you are. I'm genuinely curious. Everything is going to be linked in the description. All right, guys, we are officially in peak stress mode of midterm season. I personally believe it cannot get any worse than this. Okay, let me stop, because I did say that last time, and it did get worse than what it was currently at that time. Now, if you're over on my Instagram, you would know that at some point in time, I was nine chapters behind in marketing. Yeah, I'm taking a digital marketing class and I have a mid time for that course. And about a week and two days before I started studying for that exam, so I was on the phone with my friend at the time, and I thought that I was on track. I thought I was doing well. I typed up my notes and stuff like that for the past few days, and I was like, Yeah, I'm going to be prepared for this exam. I was on the phone with my friend and I found out that I was five chapters behind. I looked at the syllabus and realized that I somehow did not read five chapters for this course, and I was like, how did that even happen? I have all my stuff done in my notion. I look at my notion literally seven times, at least seven times a day. How did I somehow fall five chapters behind in this class? So at that point I was like, Okay, I gotta get off the phone with this person because I really really need to concentrate, only for twenty minutes later for me to find out that I was actually nine chapters behind. Yeah, nine chapters. That is actually pretty gross. So I only skipped two classes to catch up. But hey, academic weapon right all over? TikTok? What was this last year? It was going viral at that point that if you're skipping class to study for another class, you're immediately an academic weapon, and that was quite literally me from eight am all the way to six pm. I was struggling to catch up with those nine chapters. But I'm all caught up, so I'm not mad about that. I'm tired, though, very very tired, but I'm all caught up, and that's all that matters moving on from midterms, because I quite literally do not want to think about that. Today we are talking about other people's opinions and letting that affect you. This is actually partially kind of inspired the last episode on how to respond to negative comments about your height, not necessarily the episode itself. So what I do is I post some of the clips of the podcast over on Reels and Shorts and so on, and see the comment section, the comment section being inspiring a lot of stuff, So the commons section for those reels and shorts are actually inspiring today's episode. So one of the videos that I posted over on Reels and Shorts, etc. Is it was talking about how people think that talking about your experiences as a tall woman is not a serious thing. All of the things you've experienced, all of the things you've faced, all of the feelings that you've felt, it's just not that deep. It's not that serious, and essentially how they invalidate those feelings and experiences. So what I said is that people like to think that being tall isn't that bad, and I was saying that, yeah, like, being tall, at least for me, is itself is not that bad. It's just the experiences and the body shaming and all that stuff that comes with it. And people were flooding the comment saying, oh, someone needs to grow a thicker skin, or oh just ignore them, or oh it's not that serious, and I'm just like, Okay, y'all completely miss the point this whole thing of just saying, yeah, like, grow a thicker skin, or it's not that serious, it's not that deep. Like it's easier said than done, especially when you're living through it constantly on a daily basis. You're facing these experiences because in that moment, you feel as though you are lesser than you, feel like you are inferior, you feel like you're not good enough, you feel like you're ugly, you're big freak. And when you're in that moment, it's like your point of view is very different from if you're just looking on the outside. If that makes sense. It's almost as though people who didn't live through that or experience the things that you experience are basically invalidating your experiences and your feelings and your viewpoint over something that they don't even understand wholeheartedly. So if you're a tall woman who feels this way too, I'm here to tell you that your feelings are valid. A lot of these people have never walked in our shoes before, so they don't really understand what it's like going through the things that we have went through because of our height. And it's okay that they don't understand because everybody has different experiences, everybody lives a unique life from each other. But what's not okay is them basically invalidating those feelings over something that they don't even understand wholeheartedly. So it's okay to feel bad, it's okay to feel hurt, it's okay to feel sad. No, it's not stupid to feel those things because what you're experiencing is real and definitely does mean you're a human being, which is a good thing. We want to make sure of that. You know, if other people's words, especially if they're important to you, or if that person is important in your life. If their words are making you feel bad or sad, or if you feel hurt by them, it's okay. You have a right to feel hurt by that. It happens to all of us. And on top of that, people really neglect to realize how age and self esteem are connected. Like, yeah, if someone came up to twenty one year old me and said I look like a beanstock or called me a giant freak, I really wouldn't care and I wouldn't be affected by it. But if someone said that to eleven year old or twelve year old me, I would probably feel really really bad. I guess you could say, we're going off of these comments that I grew with thicker skin over time. But also I did a lot of work on myself. I had to do a lot of self reflection for myself. I had to do a lot of thinking. I did a lot of growing up too in order for me to think the way that I think now. Especially when you're younger, hormones are going crazy, and part of that situation is kind of having tying a lot of your emotion to what other people saying, what other people think about you, because you know, we are human beings and we want to be validated by our peers, and we want to be accepted. But if we feel as though we are not accepted, then we start going We start going crazy, we start feeling a lot of these emotions. Whereas now several years later, nine, ten years later, it's kind of like, if you don't like me, then who cares? I personally don't care. There's so many other people out there on this planet that are going to like me for me and if you, especially if you don't like me for my height, like what are you doing? So today I want to provide just a couple tips on how to not let other people's opinions and other people's words about you affect you, Because in my last episode I did talk about how to respond to negative comments about your height. It could also go for how to respond to negative comments about your body, but I never really touched on the after effects, like what could happen after that situation as you think about it more, and how that may impact your self esteem. Because some of us me included, are overthinkers. We don't think too much about the situation at the moment, but then several hours and several days later, we're just thinking way too much about it, and then we start thinking all of these negative things about ourselves. I am so guilty of that, so I want to provide some tips on that, and I think that first step is realizing that you can't control other people's opinions and thoughts. Their opinions and thoughts are often based off of their experiences, their unique experiences, all of the things that they face in their own life and their own timeline, and you are not living their life with them. You are not. I'm sure you're probably not with them twenty four to seven, three sixty five and sometimes three sixty six, So you quite literally don't have much control over that. So you obsessing over what they think about you is not going to have any impact on them. Quite literally. Yeah, you know, there are times where people change their opinions and change their thoughts about people, but especially the older you get, a lot of these things are pretty set in stone, so you can't really do much of anything about it, especially over the dumbest things like if me being tall makes you mad, that sounds like a you problem that you need to fix. Then, after realizing that you can't really control these people's thoughts, and opinions and experiences and whatnot. It's really important to release control because you can be like, yeah, like I know for a fact that I can't control, and you still obsess over it. You need to just let that go. Trust me. It's like a burden off of your shoulders. And to help do that, you can really focus on the things that you can control. Just like you can't necessarily control your height, for the most part, you can't really control these people's opinions and experiences and thoughts. However, you can also control how you react to the situation, how you respond to the situation. As I spoke about in the previous episode, you can even control well, you can't always control your emotions, but you can control your reaction your emotions in that moment, like don't lash out of the person. Don't be saying those tall girl comebacks. Please for all of us, please don't say that. But you can control what you do in that moment, and you can control what you think about yourself. So I would recommend focusing on that. And when you're focusing on that, you don't have time to focus on what other people think of you, because that's just too much time and too much energy when you could be focusing all that time and energy on yourself and you are not the only person who has insecurities. A lot of these people have insecurities as well about themselves, and they have a tendency to project it onto others and hopes of making them feel insecure as well. And then you know, it's like an insecurity party, and we don't go to we don't go to insecurity parties. So sometimes it's also just realizing that it's more so a problem that they need to figure out and sort out themselves, because sometimes most times, half the time, a lot of times what people say to you and what people say about you is often a reflection of what they think about themselves. And I think that it's really important to validate yourself, you know, hype yourself up, look in the mirror and just be like, ooh, that's a baddie or whatever. Just repeating self affirmations and doing nice things for yourself can make you feel a whole lot better about yourself and it could really help with your self esteem as well. And also realizing that being tall is just it's not being tall itself is not a bad thing. Being tall adds to your character. It adds to you as a human being. It does not define you at all. Being tall doesn't mean that all these other characteristics are associated with you. Like No, being tall does not make you any less feminine, It does not make you any less attractive, and it surely does not make you any less of a human being with feelings and who wants to be respected. No, you don't have to play a sport, and you don't have to model, and you don't have to do all these other crazy things as associated with being talld. You just need to do what makes you happy, and you need to do what you believe makes you successful. As long as you're not hurting others, there's no better way of going about it. So yeah, I hope that helped a little. And if you hear other people saying, yeah, like grow a thicker skin, and oh, it's not that serious, it's not that deeper. Basically, try to invalidate your feelings in any way, shape or form. Just understand that maybe they're also projecting their past trauma on to you. Maybe people have told them all their life and feel that other people need to do the same because they did that, and it's like it's important to feel your feelings. It's good to feel your feelings. It's good to process your emotions. That can make you an emotionally intelligent person growing up, and you know how to better react to and respond to situations in the future instead of just like burying all of your emotions and not thinking about it and then one day it just randomly comes out. We don't want that. It's good to process your feelings. It's good to feel your feelings, and it's good to think about it. There's no there's no harm in that. And I will leave you with that. Thank you so so much for tuning into this episode. I really appreciate it, and I appreciate you as always. Feel free to hit me up on my socials and let me know what you think of this episode and let me know have other people tried to invalidate your feelings. We can just talk about life in general. You have mid terms two? Are you in school? Are you struggling with midterms? Two? I'm done to talk about any and everything that is appropriate and within reason. My solciers are going to be linked below. Again, it's a a Tell Gross podcast on Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest, and thank you so so much again for tuning in, and thank you so so much for existing and being here. I really do appreciate it. You are awesome and I'll catch you in the next one. Good night and goodbye.