Whose opinion of me should I actually care about?

I realized that I needed to build a pyramid of trust. What is a pyramid of trust? A pyramid of trust means that you have maybe one to three people in the top, you have maybe two to four or five people in the middle, and you kind of have everyone else. You can only base your life and decisions on your own desires, inclinations, drive, et cetera. It is not going to appeal to everyone. I became a priest. Obviously there's lots of people who thought maybe that I was wasting my time or my talent or whatever else, or I'm too religious, or I'm too this, or I'm too that. I encounter people all the time. But my pyramid of trust was based on three things. One, the person had to have holiness. They had to have a life that was set apart to the love of God. Two, they had to have wisdom, insight, experience, knowledge. And three, they had to love me unconditionally. Now, if that's the parameters, you're only ever going to have maybe one to three people in that top tier. You're going to have your spiritual father, your spouse, and maybe one or two friends. You may then have a few more friends and peers in the middle section that also can give input on your life, but you rely heavily on this pyramid up here. You care chiefly what they think about what you're doing and how you're doing and accomplishing it. You take their opinion seriously. But in the process of taking their opinion seriously, you realize you have to disregard everyone else. In fact, you have to disregard the vast majority of people. You have to focus on where you're going, why you're doing it, and how you're going to get there. And then you rely heavily on those people who have these qualifications to speak into your life and to give you honest and genuine feedback. My wife is so important in this role. I keep her always in the top of that pyramid, because she knows me in a way more deeply than anyone else. And so if she says, sweetheart, this missed the mark, I think maybe you could have done this better, or I would adjust this, I take her opinion as if almost like God is speaking to her or speaking to me through her. She is a prophetic voice in my life, in the raising of my children, and even in my priestly ministry. She is the one that I rely on for giving honest feedback. Now, when I'm looking for direction on where I'm going to go and what the next steps are, I'm going to look more to my spiritual father in that regard, because he's objective. He's going to be able to show me the path and tell me how to get there, because he's farther along than I am. And so there's different roles within that pyramid, and there's different weights in which you put, and there's different things that they're going to accomplish. It would be kind of crazy to ask my wife how to become a better priest, in the fact that she's not a priest, but I have my spiritual father to ask, hey, I'm doing this or that, or I'm processing it this way, how should I be processing it? What should I be doing differently? I can't emphasize this enough. Once you figure out the pyramid of trust, intrinsic to the pyramid of trust is the disregard of anyone's opinion that is not at the top or drifting into the second category, because you're going to end up with such a wide variety of opinions. And the reality is, if you know these people, you probably don't want to emulate their life anyways. So why take their opinion or their influence or their suggestion? It simply does not matter. You have to drill that into yourself, and you can't give any leeway.