When You Can’t Control the Story Someone Else Tells About You

The story someone else tells about you may affect how some people see you.

And that can be a painful thing to realize.

Maybe you walked into a room one day and noticed that something had changed. Nobody explained what happened. Nobody told you why.

But someone who used to talk to you didn’t anymore. Someone who once included you seemed distant. You could feel that something was different, even though you couldn’t quite put your finger on it.

You may have wondered what people had heard.

Listen next: I talk about this in this week’s podcast episode

Maybe someone had told their version of what happened. Maybe people had made their own assumptions. Or maybe nobody had actually said anything at all. Sometimes people simply notice how someone else is treating you and begin treating you the same way.

Whatever happened, you may find yourself wanting to explain.

You want people to know your side. You want them to understand that there is more to the story than what they may have heard.

But sometimes explaining yourself only pulls you deeper into something you were already trying to leave behind.

And that’s one of the hardest things about being misunderstood.

You can’t control what other people think about you.

There are going to be people who don’t like you. There are going to be people who believe things about you that aren’t true. There are going to be people who hear a story about you and decide they don’t want to know you anymore.

And you may never get the opportunity to change their minds.

That is painful.

But it doesn’t have to become your life.

You don’t have to spend the rest of your life standing outside someone else’s version of your story, trying to get back in and correct it.

You can be honest about who you are.

You can take responsibility for the things that belong to you.

You can apologize when you’ve done something wrong and make things right when you can.

And then there are things you have to release because they aren’t yours to control.

You may never know exactly what someone said.

You may never know why someone else decided to believe it.

You may never get the chance to tell your side to every person who has formed an opinion about you.

But you don’t have to abandon yourself trying to make them understand.

The story someone else tells about you may affect how some people see you. But it doesn’t get to determine who you become.

Maybe that’s one of the hardest parts of reclaiming your life.

Learning to let people misunderstand you without abandoning yourself in an attempt to make them understand.

You can keep walking.

You can let your life speak for itself.

Listen next: I talk about this in this week’s podcast episode