Last week, I heard a story on the radio that rated the Midwest, specifically the major metropolitan close to the suburb I reside in, as one of the hardest working cities in America.

No doubt, many who heard this locally puffed their chests out a little bit with pride. Others perhaps slightly lamented this fact, as they thought about the hours put in to their specific jobs and all the things they’d rather be doing. Both these groups and anyone in the middle carried on with their day, which was likely spent trying to impress someone else.

The brutal truth is this: We cede power of our self-worth to someone else’s opinion. In fact, we care way too much about what people think of us. We spend too much time wracking our brains over a comment someone makes, spinning it out of control in our own mind to the point of obsession.

Sadly, we let this define us. From our self-worth to emotional balance, we are infinitely more worried about someone’s opinion reign supreme over what we say we value.

Actions must always speak louder than words, and sometimes you’d be amazed at where you will find a voice of reason. I’d never given much thought to Rashard Mendenhall, an NFL running back who just announced over the weekend he was retiring at age 26. I did not know what his likes or his interests were, nor that they would even be close to my own.

In fact, upon hearing of his retirement, the immediate reaction I heard on talk radio was that of ridicule, mostly because why would someone throw away a promising NFL career at 26? All that money! All that fame!

Then, you read Mendenhall’s thoughtful comments, delivered without a press conference or fanfare, and you get it. Or at least you should. He speaks of the changes in our society and not finding a way to fit in:

Today, game-day cameras follow the most popular players on teams; guys who dance after touchdowns are extolled on Dancing With the Starters; games are analyzed and brought to fans without any use of coaches tape; practice non-participants are reported throughout the week for predicted fantasy value; and success and failure for skill players is measured solely in stats and fantasy points. This is a very different model of football than the one I grew up with. My older brother coaches football at the high-school and youth level. One day he called me and said, “These kids don’t want to work hard. All they wanna do is look cool, celebrate after plays, and get more followers on Instagram!” I told him that they might actually have it figured out.

And he is absolutely correct. Times have changed, rapidly so, over the past 10 to 15 years. The increasingly connected world we have created through technology makes it a more social place, but a less emotional one. We do just kinda want to look cool.

If we look hard-working, put together and speak well, watch all the right shows and drive the right cars, then we’ve got what exactly? A meaningless, consumer-driven existence that we have built solely on what others think is meaningful or cool.

And that group of “others” is a rabid bunch, documenting every up-and-down. One minute, you are beloved, the next, a bum. In this constant over analysis, we forget there are no experts, just opinions. And as we know, Americans have lots of opinions – and we are paid and unpaid to share them.

As Mendenhall says:

There is a bold coarseness you receive from non-supporters that seems to only exist on the Internet. However, even if you try to avoid these things completely — because I’ve tried — somehow they still reach you. If not first-hand, then through friends and loved ones who take to heart all that they read and hear. I’m not a terribly sensitive person, so this stuff never really bothered me. That was until I realized that it actually had an impact my career. Over my career, I would learn that everything people say behind these computer and smartphones actually shape the perception of you — the brand, the athlete and the person.

Perception shaping reality? Around these parts? No… you don’t say. There is a snowball effect to perception, one of the lessons we did not learn from early educational books. And when we start to feel its effects, it damages us in many, many ways.

From our parents, to our coaches, our teachers and friends, we begin to rapidly care about what other people think of us. In a vacuum, influence is not necessarily a bad thing. When it changes who we are, why we do or do not do certain things, then influence holds too much power over us.

It strips away individuality that produces well-balanced and centered people. There is certainly enough room for all of us, with our various likes and interest, just not enough acceptance. We’re all like the movie “Mean Girls” and life continues to operate like the cool kids table in the cafeteria. That is, if you let it.

Mendenhall is getting out of professional football, at least to my understanding of what he’s saying because he is a person of various interests who wants to live a full and complete life. He’s done the NFL and it was fun, but now, it’s time for something else.

Over my career, because of my interests in dance, art and literature, my very calm demeanor, and my apparent lack of interest in sporting events on my Twitter page, people in the sporting world have sometimes questioned whether or not I love the game of football. I do. I always have. I am an athlete and a competitor. The only people who question that are the people who do not see how hard I work and how diligently I prepare to be great — week after week, season after season. I take those things very seriously. I’ve always been a professional. But I am not an entertainer. I never have been. Playing that role was never easy for me. The box deemed for professional athletes is a very small box. My wings spread a lot further than the acceptable athletic stereotypes and conformity was never a strong point of mine. My focus has always been on becoming a better me, not a second-rate somebody else. Sometimes I would suffer because of it, but every time I learned a lesson from it. And I’ll carry those lessons with me for the rest of my life.

These are lessons we have all previously learned and now ignored. How many times are you questioned? Daily? Weekly? If you do not do whatever everyone else is doing or how they would do it, then obviously you must not love it or care about it, right? There is an unprecedented level of competition that has entered our minds – a battle between others and ourselves. A game of one-upsmanship, where anything you can do I can do better. I care more about my job than you do because you did not respond to the “urgent” e-mail at 10:05pm last night.

But rarely is that so. Most of us care. Most of us try. But this fight to keep perspective, it is a challenging one. It would be nice – yet unrealistic – if we all just believed when someone said they were working on it, taking care of it or that they tried their best.

Let your actions be your words.

Worried about your height and if people think you are too short or too tall? Worrying about it won’t make you grow, or shrink. Your ancestors and the gene pool took care of that long before now.

Worried about what clothes you wear, what car you drive, how you talk or what others will say when you meekly admit to having never watched “The Wire” or “Breaking Bad”? Why? What does any of that mean or say about you anyway?

To be proud of who you are and what you like is to be an individual, which means you are different. You are not just one of the crowd. We are not cattle, to be prodded toward unity. In the modern age, ridicule and harsh words are used as scorching prods and we are well branded by each other.

Mendenhall’s final statement rings most true:

As for the question of what will I do now, with an entire life in front of me? I say to that, I will LIVE! I plan to live in a way that I never have before, and that is freely, able to fully be me, without the expectation of representing any league, club, shield or city. I do have a plan going forward, but I will admit that I do not know how things will totally shape out. That is the beauty of it! I look forward to chasing my desires and passions without restriction, and to sharing them with anyone who wants to come along with me!

I could not think of anything better: a decision to be and live freely, without worry of judgment without expectation of what everyone else thinks.

We all kind of have a plan, but cannot begin to predict how it will play out. Uncool and unpopular and un-put together as that may seem, we could all afford to be called some of the most passionate people on the planet, who follow dreams and see what the road of life has in store. What if we were called some of the most relaxed, or even-keel, down-to-earth people in America?

Now that would be a statistic based on opinion I could learn to care about.