Dearest Darling Friends,

 

Would you be very quick to accept a delivery you never ordered?

 

Most of us are walking around carrying heavy, jagged parcel that doesn’t belong to us. This parcel is called ‘insult’.

 

We treat insults like court summons we are legally required to answer. Here is the counter-intuitive truth…

 

An insult is not a finished product; it is an invitation to a contract.

 

And you are the only one with the power to sign it.

 

The Myth of the Accurate Mirror

 

When someone insults you, whether it’s a jab at your leadership style or a snide comment on your choice of clothes — they are not handing you a mirror.

 

They are handing you a picture. It’s a picture of their own fears, their limitations, and their unresolved projections.

 

In sociology, there is a concept known as ‘Reflected Appraisal’.

 

It suggests that we often build our self-image based on how we think ‘others’ perceive us.

 

The danger in business and in life is that others use distorted glass to think about us.

 

We go on to allow THAT someone who has never walked our path to tell us the terrain is impassable.

 

Do not trust the measurements of a scale that has never been calibrated!

 

An insult is often just…

• Envy dressed as judgment
• Projection dressed as insight
• Laziness dressed as certainty
• Inferiority dressed as superiority

 

When a person who has never built a company tells you that you lack ‘vision’, they aren’t describing your competence. They are describing their own ceiling.

 

The Labor of the Offended

1. The most exhausting part of an insult isn’t the moment it’s uttered.
2. It’s the three weeks of unpaid labor you perform afterward.
3. Its the rent free accommodation (in your mind) that you provided to the person who insulted you.

 

Once you accept the ‘offer’ of an insult, you start editing your life around their opinion. You over-rehearse your conversations. You mess up your life.

 

Meanwhile, the person who ‘insulted’ you is completely unaware you are thinking about them so much.

 

The Zeigarnik Effect suggests that our brains are hardwired to obsess over unfinished business. When we receive a slight, we feel an evolutionary ‘open loop’.

 

We think that by arguing back, even just in our heads, we can close the loop and find peace.

 

But the loop doesn’t close through victory; it closes through non-agreement, it closes by ‘Declining the Delivery’.

 

The difference between ‘hurt’ and ‘calm’ is whether you accept the delivery or decline it. When you decline it, it remains their weight, and their problem to carry.

 

When you stop trying to ‘prove your worth’ to people who aren’t even looking at the real you, you reclaim hundreds of hours of mental bandwidth.

 

You stop being a reactive character in someone else’s drama and start being the author of your own.

 

Reflect on this:

 

• Whose ‘delivery’ are you currently using to navigate your own self-worth?
• If you stopped trying to win the argument in your head, what could you build with that extra energy?
• Is your identity a democracy where everyone gets a vote, or is it a residence where only genuine well wishers are allowed?

 

Your Next Step:

 

Think of one ‘delivery’ that was not yours but you have accepted. You have been carrying it for some time. It can be a piece of criticism or sarcasm or a rejection that has been weighing you down.

 

Write it down on a piece of paper. Then, literally throw it in the dust bin and walk away.

 

Let me know, how did you feel after that.

 

With love, prayers and best wishes,