This will get me every time.

“That is such a brilliant idea,” someone says. “I never thought about it that way before!”

I can feel my inside vibrate with pleasure and pride. I am smart! I am intelligent! All that hard work paid off! I am so special!

At the same time, I stop myself. It’s not that I don’t believe that I can be a producer of great ideas. It’s that I can feel myself suddenly magnetized toward the source. I want to be surrounded by people who respect my ideas and to bask in their compliments. I want it all! Forever and ever! I want to feel that thrill in my chest and the desire to ask aloud in blind pride, “Don’t I have the greatest ideas? I do, after all.”

But I scold myself. Because I know that an insult, a complaint, a disagreement will drive me away as easily. So what then, is it worth that a single vocal statement can sway me so easily?

It then falls into rewards and punishment. I question why a positive statement can have such effect. I question then too why a negative statement can nearly paralyze me. I then question why statements at all have an effect on me. I wonder if one day, I can hear statements and yes, have a small reaction. But the words that came out—the compliments of great brilliance or of great stupidity—have no effect on who I am and what I choose to do. They are words, after all, from someone else. And that the only words that matter come within me.