We’ve been raised to try to get everyone to like us, from the teacher to our peers. However, this has us seriously f-ed up.. And making us not like ourselves.
In this episode, I share the hard pill to swallow and why being okay with people not liking you is your KEY to success, freedom, happiness AND greater global impact.
Get 20% off your Organifi Green Juice + Adaptogenic Superfood blends at organifi.com with coupon code “sahara”
Intro + Outro Music: Silent Ganges by Maneesh de Moor
Let’s take the discussion further in the Mind-Body Balancers FB group: www.facebook.com/groups/1213662491998309/
Discover Your Dosha (Mind-Body Type) with my free quiz: iamsahararose.com
Connect with me for daily Ayurvedic and modern spiritual wisdom at Instagram: @iamsahararose Facebook.com/iamsahararose Twitter.com/iamsahararose
Order Eat Feel Fresh: A Contemporary Plant-Based Ayurvedic Cookbook and receive my Essential Oils for Your Doshas E-book FREE here: eatfeelfresh.com/book
Episode 200 – Why You’re Not Meant to Be Liked By Everyone with Sahara Rose
By Sahara Rose
Namaste. My name is Sahara Rose and welcome back to the “Highest Self” podcast. A place where we discuss what makes you your soul’s highest evolvement.
What’s your dosha? Well if you want to find out, I invite you to take my quick little quiz over on iamsahararose.com, and in a couple questions, I will let you know the exact percentages of the doshas in your mind and in your body and email you a free three-day mini course on how to include Ayurveda into your modern lifestyle. So head over to my website, iamsahararose.com, to discover your dosha today.
Welcome. Welcome if it’s your first time listening, what up? If you’re here every week, what it do? I’m here to share with you wisdom that comes through from highest source consciousness in a very modern way, which is just the way I speak, cause I’m your bestie, and we’re talking about all that good ish, and that’s what the “Highest Self” podcast is all about.
So right now the topic that just came through, I was like, “What should I talk about?” And this is what came through for me right now, that too many people are so concerned with being liked that they don’t end up liking themselves. Okay, so let me explain. I feel like we’ve all grown up like from the time we were kids to we were trained to want to be liked. You know, you go to school, “Oh, does everyone like me? Do I look good? How does my picture? Am I popular?” You know, we’re always trained, you have to be liked, you have to be liked, you have to get into college, you have to apply for the job, you have to get the date, you have to strive, strive, strive, you have to get other people to like you, and that’s how you can move forward in life.
And the thing is, if we live our lives just trying to get people to like us, we’re going to end up hating ourselves. You’re never going to get people to like you when you’re being authentic. There will be some people who love you, and some people who hate you, but if you’re trying to get everyone to just like you, then you’re just being vanilla right now, you know? You’re not being your true authentic badass self, you’re not being the you that you are assigned to be on this planet.
I feel like a lot of us are afraid of criticism. We are afraid of people being like, “Oh, I don’t know, like I just wasn’t jiving with her. I don’t know, just wasn’t my thing.” Or, “I unfollowed her,” or, “I actually hate her.” You know, where we’re so afraid of people saying something negative to us that we are water ourselves down. We’re like, “Okay, how can I be less of that? How can I be less loud? How can I be less opinionated? How can I be less sassy? How can I be less, less, less, less, less?” Until we’re left with cardboard, you know?
Imagine if I was like this tasty, South Indian curry, and I had all these rich flavors and spices, and you’re eating it, and you’re like, “I don’t even know what this is.” But guess what, not everyone likes South Indian curry. They’re like, “What is that? I don’t know what these flavors are, I don’t like it, it’s overbearing, it’s weird, it’s foreign, I don’t like it.” There’s gonna be people who don’t like it, and there are gonna be people who love it.
So imagine if I said, “Oh, I have too many spices, let me take out the cumin, take out the ginger, take out the cinnamon.” Eventually, you’re gonna take out all the spices, you’re gonna take out the vegetables, you’re gonna take out the coconut, you’re gonna take out the tomato, you’re gonna take out everything, and what are you left with—water. Everyone likes water, but do people love water? Do people stand in line waiting to drink that glass of water? No .Water is just it’s okay, it’s cool. I mean we all need to drink it, but you were born to be that curry, you were born to be that cookie dough, you were born to be that ketogenic ginger fudge. I don’t know, whatever it is that you are, you were born to be that thing, and not everyone is going to like it. And that is okay, in fact, that is necessary.
You know, I did a podcast episode last month called “How To Deal With Haters Energetically,” and it ended up being one of my most shared episodes. Which says a lot about our society that we all are dealing with these haters. Like I joked about in the episode, there’s probably like ten haters out there, and they’re just like going out hating on people. Like isn’t it funny when people unfollow you, they feel the need to leave the message? They’re like, “I’m unfollowing you. Hey, hey, you, you. I’m unfollowing you. Let me just comment one more time so you know that I’m unfollowing you. I don’t like you. I don’t like what you did, so I’m taking away the honor of my follow, which is really gonna make a massive difference in your life cause I haven’t paid you any money, and I’ve never met you in person. I don’t mean anything in your life, but guess what, you should be really sad cause I’m unfollowing you, and I’m spending all my time typing to you to let you know that I’m unfollowing you because that’s how important I am. Right, right, right? Comment back, like me, follow my post.” We’ve all had those people, it’s hilarious.
So these people who are striving to get our attention often do so with hate, they often do so by telling us they don’t like us. And we, in our society who’ve been so primmed, and poodle-trained to be liked by people who are like, (gasps) “That person unfollowed me.” (gasps) “That person said they don’t like me. Oh my God, that means I must be doing something bad, I must be doing something wrong, I must be too much. They must be right, I talk way too loud, I talk way too much. I say the word totally way too much.” You know, there’s always going to be those things, and guess what, if people aren’t, then you’re not saying anything important.
If you don’t have people who don’t like what you’re doing, you’re not saying anything important. Did you hear that? Because if I’m just saying, “Peace on earth,” I mean there are even people who are going to be like, “No, no peace on earth. What? You don’t believe in descending ourselves? You don’t believe in gun rights?” Like you could actually save pretty much anything with any kind of media and there’s going to be haters. But I don’t know, what’s something that has no haters? Like “Dogs are great,” even that, the cat people are gonna be like, “Well, what about cats, you didn’t mention the cats.” Pretty much anything you say you’ll find some haters around. And you could think of the most bland thing, water is good for you, I don’t think anyone can argue with that, but is that the message that you want to leave out to the world: water is good for you, that’s it?
You know, when we start adding a little bit more depth, a little bit more opinion, then we start to ruffle some feathers, and we start to get the people who don’t like that, and the people who come out of their little hate shells, and like, “Ah, yes, I found someone to hate on,” and we freak out.
So I want you to know that in this journey, you’re going to come across those people. And it must not stop you because all it is, is a sign that you’re going in the right direction. You’re going in the direction of speaking the truth that people are triggered from. Because anyone worth saying is going to attract some triggers.
I mean if I in the 1800s said, “Black people are equal to white people,” I would have had a lot of haters, I potentially would have been burned and hung. So we have to know that when you say something of meaning, you’re not going to be liked, you’re not going to be open-armed, you know, received. You may by a lot of people, but you’re going to attract the hate and the negativity that can’t take it, that can’t take the truth.
And that means you just have to speak louder. That means you have to anchor further into your truth. That means that your opinion is so needed that people can’t even begin hearing it. You know, if I said, “Gay people deserve to get married,” imagine you know, now I hope most people would agree with that statement, but it’s not the case.
So anything worth standing for is going to get bashed, and it’s getting bashed because it’s the old paradigm dying. When the old paradigm dies, it does not disappear, it dies with a scream. It dies and tries to bring you down with it.
So if you are too concerned with being liked, you’re never going to make a difference in society. And you were put on this planet to make a difference. You are not here to just, you know, live a mundane life and not really achieve that much, and but at least everyone liked you. You were that cupcake that everyone thought was good, not really memorable, but it was okay.
Do you want to be a Kit Kat, or do you want to be an extravagant, sugar-free, almond butter gelato with coconut flakes on top? You know, like be you, and there’s going to be the people who say, “Ah, sugar-free, ah, coconut flakes,” and that is the point that you are authentically your own flavor, and that is a flavor that not everyone is going to like.
So how do we get give up this desire to be liked? Well, it’s actually really going against everything that we were brought up to do, and I believe the first way to do it is to just sit with it, is to just sit with the feeling of not being liked. You know, if something’s happening to you right now that maybe you’re attracting some haters and stuff, like how does that feel for you right now? You know, when that person comments like, “You’re stupid, and you’re full of shit,” or whatever it is. How does that feel for you?
You know, and it actually can’t hurt you if you don’t believe it. If it’s hurting you, that means part of you believes what they’re saying. If someone commented and said, “You’re a stupid idiot,” you know, and if I actually part of me believed I was a stupid idiot, then I would be very, very offended by it. But since I don’t believe I’m a stupid idiot, I’m like, “Mm, okay, cool.”
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So if someone says something to you that’s really triggering to you, then question the part of you that may believe that statement is accurate. And it’s a really hard pill to swallow because at a certain point in our lives, we’ve all believed the bullshit, we’ve all believed the darkness. Someone’s called us dumb, someone’s called us fake, someone’s called us phony, someone’s called us whatever it is, and our lower selves believed it, and that’s why we were hurt by it.
But then when we see that we’re freaking blessing to this earth, and that we’re pure light, and that we are working our talks, and that person’s statement has no validity, then that no longer hurts us, you know? And then it just goes right by us, and we actually stop attracting it as much, you know. So if you’re attracting a lot of hate and it’s really hurting you, question what is it in me that may believe that statement is accurate?
And then if you get down to it, you know, “Okay, well, a part of me does think that I’m stupid,” you know, let’s say. Why does a part of you think you’re stupid? “Oh well, you know, I didn’t go to college so when people call me stupid, it triggers the part of me that feels like since I didn’t go to college, I’m dumb.” Well do you think that’s true? Not going to college makes you dumb? “Well, I don’t think so because I actually learned a lot, and I actually know a lot of things that people who did go to college do,” et cetera. You could do that with yourself.
Or any kind of example ,let’s say people are calling you a phony. Well, do you actually think that you’re a phony? Well, you could say, “Well, I don’t know, I kind of have imposter syndrome, you know. I feel like sometimes I don’t know what I’m talking about and I don’t know why people trust me, and da, da, da.” So question: what part of you thinks you have imposter syndrome? “Well, the part of me that doesn’t think I’m worthy of all these people coming to me.” Well, what is that part of you? “I don’t know, the part of me that thinks that you have to have a certain amount of experience, or this, or that.” Well, do you think that that amount of experience will make your advice worthy? “Well no, cause I give really good advice, and this.” So therefore there’s no reason to feel an imposter.
So you could work backwards with any kind of situation and see that you probably don’t actually believe it in your mind, but for some reason you’re believing it in your heart. Your heart is telling you, “Aw, I’m stupid,” but your mind knows, “Okay, I’m actually not,” and then that switches your heart, and you’re heart’s able to finally see the truth. Your mind if just playing that trick on you, and then once you shift the mind, you shift the feeling. You see, the mind and the body are connected, so you may be called stupid and you feel bad, even though you know that you’re not stupid, but it’s until you’re able to actually feel that you’re not stupid that the feeling shifts. You see what I mean? So, it can start with the rational and move into the feeling, which will shift the initial feeling. A little bit of mind-body connection for you here.
So we oftentimes even have to go back to when did it start in our childhood? Because a lot of us have had long-standing feelings of unworthiness, of not feeling enough, of feeling inadequate. And sometimes it takes going back to when did this begin? You know, as a kid, when did you feel like you weren’t worthy? When did you feel like you weren’t enough? When did you feel like you weren’t important? I think all of us have had some experience of, you know, “My mom forget it was a half-day at school and she didn’t pick me up, and I waited outside of school for four hours until she finally came.” That definitely happened to me a bunch of times.
But what does that tell you as a kid? “No one cares about me, no one came to pick me up from school, no one remembers me. I’m going to be here by myself forever,” you know, and that can actually create trauma in your subconscious, even though it may not seem like a traumatic event, but in your little life it was. So that feeling could have put in you that, “Mom doesn’t remember me. No one remembers me. No one cares about me. I’m not enough.” And just that one experience could have been sitting in your subconscious this whole entire time, triggering everything else.
And all you have to do to heal is just become aware of it. Is just to become aware of that initial memory and see, “Oh my God, I do remember that’s what happened to me, and how horrible I felt, and how after that I felt like no one remembered me, and I felt like I would always be left alone. Oh my God, it was just that memory, it’s not true. My mom just forget that it was a half-day that day, it had nothing to do with me, it had nothing to do with how much she loved me. I can’t believe I thought that, oh my God, I am so loved, I am so taken care of, I am so cared for.” And then you heal it, just like that. You know, it doesn’t take a lifetime to heal something, it takes a moment, it takes awareness. So when we’re able to go back to the core causes of what makes us feel unworthy and unloved, then we’re able to heal it.
So, you know, trauma does not have to be a big thing, there’s many, many little things that can create trauma in our subconscious because those things feel like a big deal for us. And for some people, it sticks, certain situations stick, and for other people, it doesn’t. And this is why doing somatic work is really important, you know, healing trauma through the body, because a lot of times we hold onto tension and trauma in the body that we may not be aware of cognitively in the mind.
So you may have this long-standing shoulder issue, but it’s actually related to the weight of the world on your shoulders. And no amount of massages, body work, et cetera is able to heal it because it’s actually this energetic heaviness that you’re holding onto. And it’s not done til you’re able to see, “Oh my God, I’ve felt this shoulder pain ever since my parents got divorced. Because when my parents got divorced, suddenly I felt like I was the adult in the family, and I had the weight of the world on my shoulders, and I had to take care of all my younger siblings, and I had to be there for everyone. And suddenly I became this mini adult, and I had to make sure my mom was okay, and I had to help my dad around the house, and I felt all these responsibilities, and then my shoulder pain started,” you know.
Then with that awareness you can say, “Wow, I don’t have the weight of the world on my shoulders. Look, everyone is fine, they don’t need me to take care of them, that was just a story that I told myself because I didn’t know any better when I was a kid. I can release that burden, I can release that feeling of the weight being on my shoulders because it is not. I am free, I am light, I am boundless, I am energetic, I am radiant. I do not have to hold onto anyone’s pain or anyone’s suffering. I do not have to hold on to my own. I am free, I am free from these burdens, I am light, I am airy, I am flying, I am soaring, I am free. And just imagine that feeling of expansiveness and weightlessness, and your shoulders feeling so loose, and good, and juicy. Mm! Just that can heal a lifetime of shoulder pain that no chiropractor can fix.
So when we go back and we do the somatic healing work, we are able to release the trauma, and the tension, and the tribulation that we’ve held onto from the time that we were children. And then we’re able to drop the stories that we have to be liked, we have to be accepted, we have to be okay in everyone’s books in order for us to move forward because actually, this world is run by people who are not liked. The people who are making a difference in this world. The Gandhis, the Martin Luther Kings, the Nelson Mandelas, the Harriet Tubmans. Anyone making any kind of difference. I mean look at Malala, she was shot by the Taliban, just for saying that women—young girls—deserve education.
So the people making a difference in this world are not the ones who are the most liked. They’re often the ones who are the most hated. So if we want to make a difference, if we want to live up to our dharms, we cannot chase being liked. Because this lifetime is not a popularity contest. Y’all see what happened to the most popular people in middle school. They are not doing so well today. You know, so if popularity was an indicator of success, we would have known by seventh grade who was going to make it, and most of those people still live at home. No, I’m just kidding, I’m sure there’s some popular seventh graders who are still crushing it in their Limited Too t-shirts, but personally, I don’t know any.
So it is a long, a long, long, long lifetime of holding on, of desire, but it only takes a moment to release. So if you just make the decision like, “I’m okay with not being liked. I’m actually really happy with it.” Because guess what, I get to be myself, and some of the best business advice I ever heard is be polarizing. You know what that means? It means be so yourself that people either love it or hate it. They’re either like, “Oh my God, I’m obsessed with that girl, spirit animal.” Or they’re like, “Oh my God, I can’t stand her, she just rubs me the wrong way, hate the way she talks, not for me.”
You actually want to be that, especially for marketing purposes because when people love you, they’re going to talk to you about their friends, they’re going to be listening to your podcast on repeat. They’re going to be like, “Yup, this is my girl, we’re soul mates, this is happening. If you’re listening to this right now, me and you, we are happening, soul mates, twin flames, love you forever.”
And if you’re not listening to this podcast, maybe you did, and you’re like, “Oh my God, this girl swears too much and says the word ‘totally.’” Then guess what, I guess we’re not gonna be soulies, and that’s cool, too, because you probably were never gonna buy my online programs anyways, so it doesn’t matter, you know. So you’re not supposed to be liked by everyone, but you’re supposed to have your core people, and that could be five fucking people that like you who are willing to go to bat for you than have everyone be like, “Meh, it’s okay. It’s cool. I like it.”
So let’s drop the feeling of wanting to be liked. Because that way we’re able to step up into all the magic, all the good juju that we have that we’re putting out there, you know? Show the sides of you that you’re afraid to show anyone else. Show yo freak side, girl, we want to see it. Show the side of you that you’re ashamed of. Because that’s gonna be the side of you that people relate to most. That thing that you want nothing to know about you is that thing that’s gonna make people connect with you, you know.
If you’re super ashamed that you didn’t go to college, I would start your marketing page of, “I didn’t go to college. Instead I was backpacking through Asia and this is what I learned instead.” Or, “Instead I was working three jobs, and this is what I learned, and this is what makes me a good coach,” whatever it is. Start with the thing that you are the most afraid of, the thing that sets you apart in maybe a way that you feel like, “Oh my God, people are not gonna jive with this.”
You know, like for me, I twerk, I love twerking. For me, twerking is a spiritual practice, it opens up the root chakra, which is the base of all of our chakras’ energy centers in our body, allows the kundalini energy to move through our spines, allows us to open up to universal source consciousness, healing the old paradigm stories, the beliefs, the false conditioning that tells us that we are not beautiful, that we are not enough, that we are not alive. When the root chakra is blocked, which it is so often in our society, because we’re sedentary, we’re sitting in chairs, we have tight pants on, we’re so constricted that our jaws end up stuck because we’re not connected to earth anymore.
So I twerk. I go to twerk classes, I put it on my Instagram, on my Instagram Story, and I get a lot of people who are like, “Unfollow. Oh my God, I don’t like that. What are you doing?” And guess what? I get really happy about it because I’m like, “Great. I get to clear out the people who are not there for 100% me. Because yes, I meditate, and I practice Ayurveda, and I write books with forewords by Deepak Chopra, and I also am a freak on the dance floor, and I twerk, and I belly dance, and I salsa, and I love to move my body. And sorry, not sorry, that I have a feminine form. Not gonna apologize about that. So if you can’t handle all of me, honey, you don’t need to because that’s not your job, that’s my job. So I’mma show myself twerking, and I’mma love myself twerking.”
So show that side of you that seems weird that you don’t want people to know about. I remember when I first started twerking, I was like, “Oh my God, imagine if someone saw me here. Imagine if people knew that I twerk. Like this is like my dirty little secret, like the freak class that I go to.” And now I’m like, I’m letting everyone know, like I’m gonna be hosting an event for my new deck in September, and I want to do a little twerk class there.
Because this is a part of who I am, and I think if all of us ran with the thing that sets us apart, that’s weird, and you know, the thing that’s gonna make people either love you or hate you, if you ran with that, you’ll see that your business, your life, everything is gonna skyrocket for you because you are being 100% authentically you, and you’re gonna attract people who dig it. You’re gonna attract people who are saying, “Wow, that inspires me to be more of me. Oh my God, I also love heavy metal music and I’m a meditator.” Or, “I also love ‘The Bachelor,’ and I’m a love coach.”
I don’t know, whatever it is, that thing that you’re ashamed of, show it, rock it, because there’s no need to be ashamed of anything. All of those parts are parts of you that you need to fully own. And when you can own them, no amount of criticism can bring you do. Because you know, honey, that you are unstoppable.
I’m excited to see it, I want to know all about your freak flags. Let me know over on my Instagram @iamsahararose. Check out my twerk videos, too, while you’re there over on my Insta Story, at the highlight, “My Bacheloretta,” and hop over to the Facebook group, the “Mind Body Balancers” Facebook group. It is where we share about these episodes, what came up for you. I’d love to know your different quirks and the things that you were once ashamed of that you are now ready to rock and own. Let’s do a little share circle.
And if you loved this episode, I would love to share with you the first half of my unreleased book, “Eat Right For Your Mind Body Type,” which is different from my book “Eat Feel Fresh.” It is my unreleased, never to be released book because it is now part of my “Eat Right For Your Mind Body Type” program. I would love to send it to you absolutely free. All you gotta do is leave me a review in the iTunes store, take a screenshot and email it over to me at [email protected]. Again, take a screenshot of the review and email it to me at [email protected] and I will send you the first half of my unreleased book, “Eat Right For Your Mind Body Type.” Namaste.
Episode 200 – Why You’re Not Meant to Be Liked By Everyone with Sahara Rose