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The feeling of not being heard by those around you is demotivating, lonesome, and depressing. People get caught up in their habits, and their habits may include ignoring those who come to them with new ideas. The fresh takes you have on life will be ignored by those who get stuck in their old ways. You’ll feel inadequate and you’ll feel as though others have better ideas than yourself. These feelings are exacerbated by being forced to constantly be around these people. They may be relatives you have to live with, or a group of people at work/school who you have to continuously deal with. Analyze your current situation with an objective frame of mind.
You are dealing with people, always. There is no single human being who is above the rest. Anything they do or say is always subject to the same rate of error that any other human is subject to as well. The goal for those who are reading this, is to sustain balance within their lives. Do not act out in rage, or spark altercations with people who don’t take what you say with the seriousness it demands. The desire to not be contentious should be coupled with the confidence to make your own decisions and state your own opinions. Though you may not force anyone to listen, you can’t be forced to not say or do exactly what you believe to be right either. The following, is advice on how to hopefully open the minds of those around you to the truth that you desire to enact.
The Habit of Sticking to Your Word
The people who don’t take what you say seriously, will not want to hear arguments about why they should listen to you. People are interesting beings in that sense. We doubt plans until we see them perfectly play out, we doubt words until they’ve been proven to be true, and we doubt people until they prove our doubts to be incorrect.
Your plans, words, schemes, and ideas will be doubted. Expect others to tell you all the holes in the plans you lay out and expect them to berate your new ideas. However, if you believe them to be wrong in their assumptions and judgement, do not sway. Listen attentively and allow the people around you to spread their (perhaps negative) viewpoints. If you label their commentary as ignorant, don’t tell them that. The goal is not to argue, but to prove them wrong through action. The only way they’ll be proven wrong is if you continue to follow through with what they’ve labelled as wrong.
Get into a habit of sticking to your word, no matter how wrong others label your word to be. For example, if you begin the journey of becoming a runner, people will tell you how bad running on pavement may be for your knees. They’ll justify their habit of swimming to be superior to your habit of running by voicing how much better their methods are for training the cardiovascular system. The people who don’t take you seriously may not be factually wrong in their disputes, but are wrong in their attempts to demotivate you to follow your goals and passions. Stick to your ideas, your words, and your plans.
Take everyone’s input seriously, but don’t allow it to discourage you from action until you’ve proven your ideas right or wrong to yourself, by yourself. Proving others wrong involves proving ourselves right, your words won’t do you justice, so get into a habit of turning your words into action. Act, in order to prove yourself right, and if you’re wrong, you’ll learn the lessons others aimed to teach you more effectively than merely listening. You’ll be able to go back to them and tell them they were right, which itself would raise their confidence in your opinion. The people around you will take you more seriously when they see you learning your own lessons, fighting your own battles, and proving them wrong by committing to the words they’ve tried to disprove and ignore.
Break Rules by Displaying Better, Working Solutions
As you begin to get into a habit of sticking to your word, you’ll sometimes have to break some rules. These rules may be written or not, but the push-back will be the same. Though everything may point otherwise, breaking the rules that limit what you truly believe to be true is fundamental in being taken seriously by the people around you. It is solely your decision to make. However, the reaction to breaking rules in life is the perfect opportunity to gain leverage over the people who don’t take your input seriously. You’ll now have their attention, so you better do something with it.
Break rules, but be sure the reason you break these rules is right. Offer better solutions, and propose ideas which will benefit everyone around you, not just yourself. The act of breaking a rule can be split in two: the act of gaining attention from those who wouldn’t show it otherwise, and the acting out of better ideas, doing better things, or achieving greater results than those who follow the rules set in place. Be taken seriously by showing, not saying, why the rules currently set in place are not right. The enlightened rule breaker is who you should aim to be. The act of breaking rules is not what gets people in trouble, rather, the actions they commit during the time they break the rules in question do.
Break rules with dignity, with respect, and with the confidence of improving the lives of those around you. Do not be selfish in your decision to break rules, and be confident in the altruistic factor your actions carry with them. A successful breaking of a rule uses the emotional response of those who enforce those rules to sway their opinion regarding your input. They’ll begin to take you seriously the next time, and you wouldn’t have to break rules going forward should you do it effectively just one time.