By Dina Aldabbagh

The common move is to use other people’s responses to us as a permission slip for that behavior. We say a joke, open up in a certain way, act with a level of passion, and then…watch. How did they respond? Did they like that? Is what I did “okay”? We seek permission to be something by trying to gauge other people’s perspectives on us. 

The truth of the matter is that you don’t know what’s true for anybody else. You’re not in their mind, so you cannot know their thoughts. You can try to labor to understand why they acted in a certain way, and spend all your energy trying to act in a very specific way to elicit a very specific response, or you can realize: this is not your play.

Your job is actually not to put yourself in anyone else’s shoes, it’s to be you. In order to elicit a specific response for someone, you would have to get into their mind. There is a problem in trying to understand somebody else’s mind: you put yourself in their identity. In order to know they will act the way you want, you will have to get into their shoes. When really, all you need to do is actually remember which shoes are yours. It is labor to understand someone’s mind — all with the end of trying to have their validation confirm that you’re allowed to be your identity. This is not your play. This is wasted energy. 

The pursuit of trying to find out the “why” someone does something is the problem. You trying to put yourself in their shoes is not your job. Your job is to be you. Fully you, knowing that whatever you see or don’t see from others does not speak to your identity. Honestly? People’s actions do not have that much to do with you. Just because it seems like a direct response to you does not mean it is. People’s responses, their conduct, their emotional state — it’s all driven by their personal, unique makeup as a person. You may have triggered a specific response in this one given moment, but it speaks nothing to you. Just to them. 

Therefore, you must simply know that your identity is solid and stable without any dependency on external circumstances. It doesn’t need their validation, their go-ahead. You don’t need a smile, an encouragement, or a positive response for you to be allowed to be the person that feels right for you. Does it feel right for you? Then it is. That’s your permission slip.

Further than labor, it also gives up your own identity. You are you — your thoughts, your perspective: they are unique to you. As is everyone else’s. All you’re doing when you’re trying to understand their mind is getting out of your identity — the one God assigned YOU. He did not assign you theirs, why are you trying to get into their position? Even if just to understand it. Perhaps understanding their mind does not matter — because it’s already got nothing to do with what’s for you. That’s just a them thing. You, however, have your own thing. 

So, firstly, know that their response to you is not personal. It’s not. It’s about them. Secondly, you could try to perspectivize it and understand where they’re coming from to confirm that it really is not personal, but…what if you didn’t need to know their “why” for you to be safe? What if their “why” was inconsequential to you? What if you just needed to know that your identity is based on more than other people’s reactions to it? 

Your identity does not come from what others say about you, it comes from what God says about you. He has told you what’s right for you. Those moments where you imagine your future? The things that drive you? Your desires? Those all point to one thing: what is for you. God has told you, “This is for you. You are the person who has these things.” What others do or do not do next to you does not determine anything about you. They’re just being them, next to you. But they are not your God. They do not decide your identity.

People can act in all sorts of crazy ways next to you, to you, in response to you, and it still only speaks to them. Remember, we are all only ever acting based on who we are. What God told you is for you is yours. That is the only thing informing your identity. Everything else has nothing to do with your identity. When you act how you want to act, it’s not to get anything from the world, it’s because you already are that thing. And you already are because God said you are. 

That may sound a bit abstract, but just know this: if it feels right for you, it’s for you. If it feels wrong for you, it’s not for you. There’s no other measure of your identity. That’s it. You have the knowing of what feels right and wrong for you, and the knowing of what it is is the awareness that it’s already true for you. Nothing you do, then, needs to be a plea to get that because it’s already yours. You’re just acting from that identity. 

That’s the true problem with trying to understand others on too deep of a level: you get into their identity. Your mind is your sanctuary. When you try to understand other people’s “whys,” you’re letting their ground be the one you inhabit. You are taking yourself out of your home — the land assigned to you — that will produce a very specific kind of crop, and instead, you’re thinking their thoughts. 

But their thoughts are not meant to be your thoughts. The only thoughts you ever want to mimic are those that are higher than yours — so you have to observe when someone is thinking from a lower place than you and let their thoughts be theirs. This is easy to do because any thought that is better for you is one that feels better.

Their mind is their burden, not yours. When you try to understand their “why” — the reasons they do things — investigating what thought process could lead them to act in that way…you are inhabiting their mind. You are letting them change your thoughts. Keep your mind your sanctuary. What if you didn’t have to go into their mind?

What if knowing a “why” wasn’t consequential to your safety? Matter of fact, what if not knowing, not spending time trying to understand the “why,” is what protects your safety? Because then you stay you. You stay getting the fruit that your thoughts — your mind — produce. You will never truly know their “why.” Don’t get me wrong, you could be very good at reading people, but to be able to know with full accuracy why someone is doing something takes labor. And that labor requires you to leave your mind and jump into theirs. Which is not for you to do. 

You just need to stay in your identity, and remember that everything that you do comes from your identity – which is based on what is already true for you. So anything that you see out in the world doesn’t even speak to your identity — even the good things, to be honest. When someone compliments you or treats you well, they’re not speaking to your identity, they’re speaking from theirs. They are simply the kind of person who compliments others, and you just triggered that moment for them. 

However, when someone does not do those things for you, that doesn’t mean there is a lack of that identity suddenly. It just means that some people react and some people do not. Those are all their own experiences. What they do is their experience. 

Ultimately, when you’re making a “read” on someone, you’re really making a judgment. That’s what discernment is, right? It’s a judgment. Reading something is recognizing the patterns and judging the outcome to be the same as the pattern would indicate. But judgments require something out of you. They call you out of yourself.

They require your mind to think about other people. Essentially, a judgment requires your mind to take on a different form of thinking. Maybe that’s a negative one or maybe that’s just someone else’s form of thinking. Regardless, the judgment is not your responsibility to make.

When you are aware of your identity, and that it is completely secure, and that the life that is in line with that identity is also completely secure, you literally don’t have to entertain anything else. “Entertain” doesn’t just mean outwardly pay attention to, but inwardly pay attention to. You don’t have to think about it. If you are safe, you just simply don’t have to pay attention to “why,” the story it represents, or the reasoning to why it came about. All you have to know is, “This isn’t important for me.” 

That’s where your safety lies. When you are so secure in yourself that you don’t need to understand the world outside of you in order for you to feel regulated, then nothing gets to take you out of your place. You stay right there, in your place, because it’s your form of thinking that is taking you there — it is your identity that is taking you to everything that is meant for you. 

So if you get out of your form of thinking — aka your identity — then you are literally letting it take you to other places. That’s the only way you give up the things that are for you: when you let other people’s thoughts take you somewhere else. That is another identity — it WILL take you somewhere else. 

Your identity can simply be bogged down to your perspective. You are a human being like everyone else, but it is your perspective on the world that makes you experience it differently. Therefore, your security comes from not being pulled into other people’s identities — their form of thinking — because you will then get everything that is for you…based on your form of thinking. That is security. Others’ perspectives can all be around you, but their ways of thinking can’t pull you into their world. Once you start to ponder it, you’re being pulled. That’s not your role. 

Perhaps that’s why God tells us to just have faith, full stop. The Bible doesn’t tell us to think too much, it tells us to have faith. That means “have belief, and stop.” Faith is really just knowing, with a full stop. When you’re trying to understand, you are then considering a whole bunch of other things. But really, you just need to be aware of what’s right for you and let that be that. That’s faith: not entertaining the understanding of how it works, just that it does.

This allows you to see things how you see them. You don’t need to be in other people’s shoes. You don’t need to understand them. Because the caveat is that when you are taking on someone else’s perspective, you’re also taking on their fears, their doubts, their limiting beliefs — that’s all a part of one’s “perspective.” So, as such is the consequence: taking on someone else’s form of thinking changes your trajectory. Their scope of what is possible is exactly what fits in their mind, but their mind is not your mind. 

What is possible for you is something different. It’s based on your identity — which is why you must protect it. Everything you do should not be an appeal from others, it should be a statement. Every single thing you do, say, and think should be coming from who you already are — you just have to know you already are that person. If it feels right for you, that’s who you are. You don’t need to ask others for permission. 

“Please laugh at my joke so I know that I’m funny enough to make jokes” — no. You say: “I’m making this joke because I am funny, whether you laugh or not. That is the identity you live from. From, not for. Not: in an attempt to achieve. It’s present tense. Not will live, when you see it, but live now — because it’s already true now. Live from. 

Let your identity be the source of how you show up in the world. Let not what anyone else says or does be the source your identity is dependent on. No one gets to decide your identity. No one gets to tell you that what God said is true for you is not true. God himself said it — it’s done. Let no one make you act out of your identity.