"People can relate to you - even as they judge you. And if they see that you are truly sincere, they can even forgive you your 'sordid past.'
Yet I tell you this: So long as you are still worried about what others think of you, you are owned by them.
Only when you require no approval from outside yourself can you own yourself."
Neale Donald Walsch
I think that Walsch touches on something very important here. I think there are times in everyone's life where we get caught in the trap of worrying about what other people think about us. This can especially happen in elementary or high school as we grow up and try to forge our identity. We get caught up in what people around us think of what we look like, how we act, what we believe.
But hopefully as we continue on in life we shed that need of approval from others and find our identity squarely as people within God, as confident yet humble human beings. This is easier for some than others. Many people need therapy to accomplish this, particularly if their childhood wasn't one that fostered healthy boundaries.
Now this doesn't mean that we should come to a point where we have no needs or that we are islands, separate from everyone and everything around us. As humans we do have needs - to be loved, to be touched, to share what we are passionate about with others. The key though, is to solidly have our core within God, in whom we live and move and have our being.
