I think that one thing most people can agree on is that to become very “successful” in this world, there comes a point where, in attempting to get what you want, you need to stop caring what other people think of you. Whether these “other people” are you family, friends, or just a random person on the street. And this is because if you care so much, all it will do is restrict you and keep you from chasing your goal. It often keeps people from ever starting on their goal or stops them from reaching that new level.
But personally, one of my biggest pet peeves is the way people tell you to “not care about what others think.” And what I mean by this is you’ll oftentimes hear people say “who cares what they think” or “screw what they think, just do you” or anything along those lines. And the reason this bothers me so much is because people often say this as if it’s so easy to do. And yes, maybe for some people it is. But if you’re an overthinker like me, not so much. Caring what others think of us is in our human biology. It’s a natural desire that we have.
People will often tell you not to care what others think, but they never tell you how.
However, over the years I have come up with some realizations that have helped me to stop caring about other people’s thoughts of me. And what I’ve noticed is that the more you remember these realizations, the easier it gets to stop caring. And I’m going to talk about each of them below.
However, first I want to start with an honorable mention. One that I hear often but I don’t always feel works for me. I commonly hear people say “no one is thinking of you anyway, they’re usually only thinking about themselves.” And this IS true, however my only issue with this is that this is not true all of the time. They might be thinking of you, and in a negative way, that’s just reality. So I like to ask the question, in the case that they ARE thinking about you, would you still be able to not care? The three realizations I’ve listed below will help you with this.
#1 – YOU DON’T NEED ANYONE TO THINK GOOD OF YOU
I want to start with this one because this is my personal favorite. You don’t need anyone at all to think good of you in order for you to keep enjoying life or to keep experiencing good times. Sure, you would like them to, but that’s just not always going to be the case. If that random person at the coffee shop saw you slip and spill your coffee all over the shop floor, is it embarrassing? Yeah for sure. But you will never NEED that person to think good of you for you to go on and keep enjoying life. It will not kill you. Therefore you do not NEED that validation. At the end of the day all you have is yourself in this world and that’s all you need to survive and keep living an enjoyable life.
#2 – THEY’RE THOUGHT OF YOU IS A TINY BLIMP IN TIME
When people DO think badly of you, the span of time in which they think of you is unbelievably short. I’m guessing that the last time you thought of someone else in a negative way, most likely, it was maybe a minute at most. No longer. And when you realize this, you see that someone else’s thought of you is such a small blimp of time in the grand scheme of all the time passed in the universe. This realization makes that thought that they had of you seem so insignificant compared to everything else in your life.
#3 – YOU MAKE MISTAKES
Eventually, to not care what others think, you need to come to terms with the fact that you are human and you make mistakes. You are not perfect and you never will be. I’ve noticed that a lot of times when I get caught up being worried about what others think of me, it’s usually after I made a mistake that embarrassed me or shed a bad light on me. But when this happens to you, you know that you didn’t MEAN to make that mistake. You didn’t have bad intentions, you didn’t try to do something wrong, and that’s what matters most. It happens and will happen again in the future. That’s the way life is. You could sit around and think about all of the embarrassing mistakes you have made in your life that made people think badly of you, or you could quit wasting that time and remember that those things will always happen in life and they happen to everyone.
The reason I like to look at this concept in terms of realizations is because it begins to make “not caring what others think” become like a skill. It becomes something that you can build on and improve at. Because like I said at the beginning, the more you remember these three realizations, the better you will get at creating a life free from the restraints of others judgement and thoughts.