by Chris Cade

At the beginning of this year, I posted on Facebook the following thought of mine:

“If you know that you are living authentically and with integrity, there is nothing anybody else can say to you that will shake that. Other peoples’ insults hurt because at least some small (or big) part of you believes the insult to be true.”

A woman named Jana replied with this:

“Maybe the insults hurt because someone cruel enough to say them directed them at you for no good reason except their own jealousy or intent to hurt. That does happen. Yes you need a thick skin, but no one wants to be reviled, deserved or not.”

Though this might sound like a technicality, I’d like you to consider another possibility that is both subtle and has important implications.

The -insults- always hurt because some part of you identifies with the insult. Put another way: You have a reaction to the insult because some part of you believes two things to be true about it:

(1) That the insult is true

(2) That the insult reflects negatively on you

If you believe those two things when somebody insults you, then you’ll get shaken. On the other hand, if you don’t don’t believe them then you’ll stand rock solid. You’ll be living authentically and with integrity.

Now to be clear…

Even if you are living totally authentically, in integrity, and believe that the insult is false, you may still feel pain when somebody insults you. In this case, it’s not the insult that actually hurts you. You can experience hurt from other aspects of that experience.

For example, you may experience the pains of:

• Betrayal
• Not being seen or adequately acknowledged
• Or even recognizing how far you have strayed from yor own True Nature

Those are pains that can accompany an insult regardless of whether you believe the insult to be true. And if you believe the insult to be true, those hurts will compound the pain even further.

However –when all is said and done– an insult will only cause you pain if some part of you identifies with the insult and believes it to be
Your Partner In Transformation,
Chris Cade
Liberate Your Life

P.S. On the flip-side, next time you accidentally hurt another person… consider the possibility that he or she may be identifying negatively with what you’ve said (even if you didn’t mean it that way!)