CTL-VII-0003
“I stopped worrying about what people think and I feel lighter.”
Other people's opinions of you are not yours to carry. When you stop trying to manage how you appear in other people's minds, you reclaim enormous energy. This lightness is what living within your own bounds feels like.
Your Practice
Write down exactly what you stopped caring about and why it no longer owns you. Keep it. The next time the need for approval tries to creep back, read it. Then act on your own standard anyway.
The Architects
“There is no higher rule than that over oneself, over one's impulses: there is the triumph of free will.”
Baltasar Gracián, The Art of Worldly Wisdom (Oráculo Manual, 1647), Maxim 8, "To be without Passions" (Joseph Jacobs translation, 1892)