Stop Worrying About What People Think
“God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us?”
— Friedrich Nietzsche
I know. It’s quite odd to start off with an old, controversial quote about God which seemingly has nothing to do with the topic of discussion; but don’t worry it’s relevant.
The quote refers to Western society’s decision to “kill” religious belief after the discovery of scientific thought and reason during the Enlightenment period. When we think about North America, Europe and other Western areas, the first thing that comes to mind certainly isn’t spirituality or religion — not in this day and age anyway. But Nietzsche was worried that this erosion of religious belief would collapse the moral foundation on which much of the world was built, leading to a wave of meaninglessness and nihilism. After all, if people no longer believe in God, then what will they believe in? Where do we go from there? What’s the point of anything? What’s the difference between right and wrong? Who is watching us?
If we no longer think that God is watching, so to speak, then I suppose the only thing left to believe is that people are watching. So we’ve replaced God with the judgement of our peers. We hardly know what to believe anymore so we increasingly pursue validation and rely on other people to tell us if the things we do are valuable. We often think that the only two ideals in life are to “fit in” and get accepted by the people who observe us or “stand out” and get rewarded with money and fame, both of which involve caring a lot about what people think and none of which are ultimately very fulfilling on their own.
So where do you find meaning in your life? How might this affect your tendency to care about what people think? These are interesting questions to think about. But even if we ignore any further questioning about God and the meaning of life for the sake of this discussion, then our original problem still remains: how can we stop caring about what people think?
We care for a reason
We’re not born with a fully developed understanding of ourselves or the people around us. Even though babies always seem to know what they want — food, sleep, TV, milk or mommy — their self-perception and ability to infer the thoughts and feelings of others is weak. But as they grow and interact with their environment on a more consistent basis, they begin to better understand how their actions affect the people around them, and most importantly they start to develop a more profound idea of who they are. In other words, we grow up learning to use our interactions with those around us partly as mirrors for ourselves—these interactions tell us what our place in the world is and give us a sense of identity, direction and purpose in life.
But as I said, caring about what people think isn’t just about understanding who you are; it’s also about understanding those around you. If you want to form and maintain valuable connections with other people, then caring about what they think and how they perceive you is not only beneficial, but necessary. How could you possibly resolve a conflict with someone important to you if you don’t consider what that person thinks? How else could you understand what you might have done to cause or escalate that conflict? It’s already difficult enough to be humble when we do care about what people think, but things would be a lot worse if we didn’t worry at all.
The problem therefore isn’t that we care about what people think, but rather we’ve learned to care so much that we often define ourselves based on our beliefs about how others see us; we’ve betrayed our own self-evaluation for the constant judgement of other people. This article outlines a few concepts that have helped me change the way that I perceive and approach interactions with people so that I worry less about what they think. I hope it will help you take back some of your freedom as well.
It’s really about them
Remember how I said that we grew up using other people as mirrors to develop a better understanding of ourselves? If that indeed is the case, then what’s the problem with completely defining ourselves based on what other people think? After all, mirrors are supposed to give us an exact image of what each person really looks like, right? But what if that mirror is dirty? Better yet, what if that mirror is both dirty and shattered into several pieces? Then what? Can I depend on it to give me a complete and accurate reflection of what I look like? Is it sensible to think that the fragmentation and grime that I see when I look at that mirror are all necessarily parts of who I am? The obvious answer is no, and yet we naturally seem to believe that the way people react to us is a direct reflection of who we are as individuals. But there’s an easy solution for this problem:
“If you are willing to look at another person’s behaviour toward you as a reflection of the state of their relationship with themselves rather than a statement about your value as a person, then you will, over a period of time cease to react at all.”
— Yogi Bhajan
In other words, don’t take it personally.
When people mistreat us it often feels like a blow to our self-esteem. It makes us feel weak and inferior. Some people sulk, pout and feel bad for themselves when confronted by these feelings of insufficiency, while others immediately get into defence mode, burning with irritation and the desire to prove their adequacy. We react emotionally because we don’t realize that the way people treat us has more to do with them than it has to do with us, so we rush to protect our ego. But we fail to remember that the reflection we see when looking into a dirty, shattered mirror is heavily impacted by the imperfection of the mirror itself. We therefore have no reason to get upset about the image that is reflected back at us.
Of course none of this is to say that mirrors are completely useless when they’re not perfect. If I have no idea what I look like then an imperfect mirror might still teach me several things about myself that I didn’t know before, and that’s not nothing. But I just need to be careful not to strictly define myself based on the reflection I get from that imperfect mirror. In a world where people weren’t fundamentally broken creatures, we’d treat each other perfectly; we’d be smooth, clean mirrors capable of reflecting the true image of everyone around us. But we’re not. We therefore need to be careful enough not to define ourselves based on the way we’re treated by others and attentive enough to determine which aspects of that treatment actually tell us something true about who we are. We also need to remember that we ourselves are broken mirrors, meaning that the way we treat people is a demonstration of our own issues as well. The more we tackle our own brokenness, the better we will treat other people and the more useful we will be to them as mirrors.
Opinions are subjective
We often worry about what other people think out of fear that any negative thing they say about us might be true; we’re afraid to be deemed “unworthy” and denied acceptance. But what good is it to be seen as worthy by other people when there are so many different ideas about what worthy even means? One person might tell you that they love your outfit and the other person might say the exact opposite. Who should you believe in that scenario? How do you know which judgement is “truer”? Are you just going to believe the person whose judgement conforms to your bias, or will you change your outfit so that both of them like it? And even if you do choose an outfit that both of them like, surely you’ll still be able to find two other people who don’t like what you’re wearing; then the process of getting everyone to like you starts all over again.
See where I’m going with this?
You can’t please everybody. I would go so far as to say that this is impossible given the diversity of opinions that exist and also given the fact that people are broken mirrors as discussed earlier. Why should it even make you happy to hear that somebody likes your outfit if you know that what they like is only based on their personal taste? Why bother catering to them at all if you understand how arbitrary subjectivity can be? Why isn’t it enough to figure out what you like? If personal taste is so subjective then you might as well tend to your own subjectivity given that you’re the one both literally and metaphorically wearing your own outfits in life.
Obviously none of this means that you should completely ignore the opinions of other people. After all, they might tell you something that you ultimately end up agreeing with. You might change or modify your outfit because you like the tips and suggestions given to you by another person; in other words, it’s fair to question and reconsider your own opinions and ideas when presented with new possibilities. But this is not the same as conforming to what other people think. To conform is to be mindlessly controlled by someone else’s belief system without making your own analysis or self-evaluation. To conform is to willfully give away your autonomy in favour of someone else’s judgement. To conform is to care too much about what other people think. You shouldn’t let other people steer your car when you’re the one in the driver’s seat. Instead you should learn to make up your mind and come to your own conclusions, because you are the only one who can live your life.
Separate your tasks
I was reading a book called The Courage to Be Disliked and learned for the first time about a concept called “Separation of Tasks.” It’s basically a tenet of Adlerian psychology which states that we should never hold ourselves responsible for a task that isn’t ours to begin with. Instead of taking on the duties of other people or forcing them to do things in whatever way that we’d prefer, we should allow them to face the consequences of their own choices. At the core we are all autonomous individuals who intuitively want to be treated like we oversee our own destinies, but problems arise when that autonomy is taken away from us by other people. This idea may seem obvious at first, but it really isn’t when you start to consider how we tend to handle certain situations.
Think of the relationship between a child and a parent. Many would say that one example of a parental duty is to make children do their homework. But is that true? Are parents ever meant to force their children in one direction or the other on the basis of authority? Adlerian psychology solves these types of problems by asking one simple question: whose task is it? Who is responsible? Obviously homework is not created for parents, and the child is the only one who can be held accountable for its completion once he returns to school. So then homework must be the child’s task, and forcing him to do it would be considered an intrusion on that task even if he is just a child. Parents are supposed to guide not impose; they are meant to teach their children how to make the right decisions rather than making decisions for them. After all, an adult is of no use to himself nor anybody else if he was only taught to follow instructions while growing up. So the job of a parent when a child receives homework from school is simply to pay attention to the child, let the child know that homework is his task, and offer assistance whenever the child makes the choice to take on that task.
Now let me give another example that’s more directly related to this article. Have you ever caught yourself worrying about how other people might react if you say or do a particular thing? Have you ever filtered your words and actions in order to control the way that you’re perceived? Have you ever panicked about how other people may think you look? Well these are perfect examples of your intrusion on another person’s task. How so? Because just as the parent might force his child to do homework, you are trying to force other people to view you in a particular way; you are trying to take control of something that isn’t even your responsibility. Instead of remaining focused on the world around you and your interaction with it, you have chosen to obsess about yourself and how people perceive you while keeping up the impression that you’re focused on others. That’s a lot to juggle at once.
We spend so much time trying to hijack people’s impressions of us that we start to blur the lines between their responsibilities and ours. But we are not the ones who can decide how other people see us, and it is not our task to be concerned about their decision either. In other words, what other people think of you is none of your business. The better you get at separating your tasks from other people’s tasks, the simpler life becomes for you.
Surrender to the chaos of truth
Thinking is a beautiful thing, but sometimes we think too much. It’s easy to ruin your life by spending more time stuck in your head than present in each moment of your life. But why do we spend so much time thinking about things rather than just doing them? Why is there so much internal dialogue? Instead of just getting up to go make a sandwich, for example, we talk to ourselves about making the sandwich before doing it. But what’s the point? Why would we need to tell ourselves something we already know? This unnecessary thought process is the exact same place where discomfort, anxiety and fear are all manufactured. Have you ever noticed that when you think about falling asleep you can’t fall asleep? When you allow yourself to get stuck thinking about it you start to toss and turn for what feels like an eternity. You’re only able to fall asleep when you get tired enough to stop thinking about it and you just allow yourself to lie there. In the same way, when you think about eye contact it gets harder; when you think about your breathing, it gets harder; when you think about what to say next in a conversation, it gets harder. The general problem is that we are trying too hard to control situations rather than just allowing ourselves to be present — to just exist.
When you surrender to the chaos of truth as I call it, you are no longer trying to control things; you are simply allowing the reality — the truth — of a situation to be what it is, chaotic and unexpected as it might turn out. Rather than thinking about how to approach your interactions with others, for example, you can decide to truly embrace your authentic self and let the results of that choice be as they may.
I would say that meditation is a big part of being able to do this, and no it isn’t about sitting on a mat with your legs folded and eyes closed chanting “Om” every second. The whole exercise is simply about noticing your thoughts as they pop into your head and just watching them — nothing more, nothing less. A lot of people think that meditation is about “trying” to empty your mind and slow down your thinking, but all you really have to do is be aware of your thoughts as they cross your mind and simply allow them to exist. You can do it while you’re sitting, walking, washing the dishes — it doesn’t matter. I know that it sounds like a strange thing to do, but it teaches you to stop identifying with your thoughts so that they no longer have any power over you. Believe it or not, the more you repeat this exercise, the less you will worry about what other people think; because after all, you can only worry about what people think if you get stuck in your head, but you can’t get stuck in your head if you no longer identify with your thoughts. You see how that works? Obviously this isn’t to say that you should never think at all, but there is a time for thinking and a time for allowing yourself to just observe and be present. It’s up to you to figure out which is which.
The Final Step
If any of what I’ve said resonates with you, don’t let it stop there. Say to yourself that you want to get better and mean it, then try applying the things that I’ve said in this article one at a time and see what works for you. After all, what’s the point of reading this article if it doesn’t contribute to your transformation in some way, right? I wish you all the best on your journey.
