Sameer just stepped out of the meeting room looking exhausted, but he quickly smiled at a colleague who passed by to mask the anger and frustration rising inside him. He came to his desk, exchanged a few pleasantries with his friend Ramesh, and sat down to work.

He was not his usual self and kept rereading the email and the note that had been handed to him in the HR meeting room he had just left. Sameer left early today and is repeatedly revisiting the meeting he had with HR this morning.

The feedback and one statement she made about his technical skills, citing a recent client visit and what followed. Sameer was talking to himself as if he were trying to explain to HR, who he felt had no idea of the entire context, and she had so easily jumped to the conclusion.

Sameer went to discuss this at length with his spouse, who was a little occupied that day, so he called his friend and colleague and shared the whole story. During the conversation, when his colleague pointed out a similar remark that HR had made, both sides became a little aggressive; his colleague made an excuse and hung up.

He lay, tossing and turning, hating every minute of that meeting, and wished he could rewind the whole thing like a movie and erase a few lines or add a few.

---

This year, due to a major change in the organizational structure, his role was reduced to an individual contributor, and the appraisal cycle included lengthy feedback, some of which was intended to hone his current skills if he wanted to continue in the job.

He knew he needed to complete the long-pending executive education program because he firmly believed that once he had that elite pedigree, he was safe. He believed that one more qualification, one more credential, one more achievement would finally make him safe from other people’s judgments, including that of an HR.

Sameer successfully completed the executive education and all that was required; however, a few months later, he was shown the pink slip.

Sameer attached his identity to his organization’s playbook; he was devastated by his job loss. He felt so ashamed of the whole thing that he isolated himself from his network and carried a low self-worth.

The day he was handed the pink slip

He felt as if he was standing somewhere in the middle under the scrutiny of everyone, and people laughed at him.

Why people’s opinion mattered to him so much was a question he himself remained unaware of, let alone having an answer to it.

He was unemployed during our coaching work and was very skeptical to begin with, so I started assisting Sameer in finding what really mattered to him, the values he always held, which were, for him, buried under the many masks he wore for survival.

Alongside this, I gave him a list of bespoke journal prompts to help him understand why people’s opinions mattered to him so much, the origin of this story, what it means, and how it impacted him and his approach to life. During the review session of his responses, Sameer found a layered set of emotions and early experiences attached to his self-worth in his narratives. He also understood the mismatch in values that was blocking his path to success, and success that was now defined by him for himself.

It took more than six months of work to identify the values, align them with the approach to work and personal space, and then another seven months of practice to transition into an identity that accepted who Sameer was.

When our work ended, Sameer was aware of many things he had known nothing about himself when we started, along with several blind spots and the reasons underlying them. The depth work made him pick up his patterns and triggers early on before they start to push him back into his old self.

The work is not to control people’s opinions nor to change them; the work is to free you from the trap (What will people think) that has no end and serves no one.

If, like Sameer, you’re tired of living by other people’s opinions and want to reconnect with your own values, let’s begin with a conversation here

Warmly,

Mehnaz Amjad.

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