How to stop caring what other people think of you

[Chips73]

thanks to everyone for their comments, all positive and helpful!

I'm starting to recognise my negative feelings and address them instead of just letting them grind me down.

this was very good :

If you worry about your personal finances, it’s time to start caring about them. If you worry about your health, it’s time to start caring about it. If you worry what others think of you, start caring about their thoughts. And behold, your worries vanish into thin air once you’ve taken care of these issues

[The Probabilist]

I appreciate your appreciation.
All the best to you.

[LindaF]

I just came back to this thread after a break, and was surprised and excited to see a whole new page of helpful posts! Thank you. I'll read all the comments and check out the article someone posted today.

Linda

[Assistant]

It does matter what other people think of you. It matters in terms such as whether or not you get the job, get the promotion, make the sale, get the date, get invited to the party and so on. What other people think of you affects how they treat you just as what you think of them affects how you treat them.

You can take comfort in knowing that no matter what anybody thinks of you, including yourself, it cannot change your true worth. At the same time, what others think of you and what you think of yourself does affect behavior.

A better goal would be having a healthy perspective and concern for what others think of you. For example, its healthy to have a pleasant appearance but it is unhealthy to have your whole day ruined because someone did not compliment you on your appearance. Its healthy to give your best effort but its unhealthy to try to deceive others into thinking your somebody your not.

Here are some techniques I have found helpful in dealing with my irrational unhealthy emotional thinking about what other people think of me.

1. Meditation
2. Journaling
3. Evaluate and adjust my goals (ie. make mental toughness the goal)
4. Distraction
5. With paper and pen do my ABCs as follows:

A- Adversity: Write down an objective statement of the event that triggered the thinking. For example, so and so laughed at my opinion on x

B- Belief: Write down what you believe about A. This is where you vent. Write it all down. Get it all out of your system.

C- Consequence: Write down the consequences of B. For example, I am angry and depressed, I can't focus, I am losing sleep, etc.

D - Dispute B: Pretend you are someone else. How would you counsel yourself? Write it down. There are many excellent comments in this forum from which to draw. Keeping writing until you get to E.

E - Energized: You have relief and are ready to proceed on a positive course.
Write down the positive course you will proceed on.


Best Wishes

[Mark Lapierre]

Ooo I like that Assistant, ABCs. That's something that I've done in my journaling, but in a less structured way. That is, without something specific to guide me. And it did help, though I'm sure it would have been even better if I'd had that guide to follow. I tended to go around in circles a bit

[Assistant]

Interesting. Thanks. Have not had a chance to read it all yet.

I am not trained in psychology. My belief is that we learn early on in life and receive constant reinforcement from society that to be inferior in some way is usually bad, even dangerous and we develop our own strategies to minimize our weaknesses and maximize our strengths, in order to optimize our material and social success.

We learn to care very much what other people think of us because that is what we have been taught to do.

I am very interested in techniques that allow one to keep the influence of the groups in which one operates in a healthy perspective, a sort of accept it, deal with it but don't be adversely dominated by it mind set, if you will.

[bbox]

Hi Guys

I'm new here, but this site looks awesome from what i can see. People looking to further themselves positively, nice, very nice. Anyway back onto topic your story just made me think of a quote that totally changed the way I think about self consciousness and what people thought of me and all that.

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us most. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and famous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that people won't feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in all of us. And when we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” - Nelson Mandella from his inaugural speech.

Just made me think about how we perceive social interactions in a sense of "I have to care about what others think of me and shrink to their standards", wheras we should think to ourselves 'who am I not to stand out and say what I think and feel', as the quote says you really bless others by doing this and let them do the same. Mind you people won't always like it but who cares really? Are you really going to shrink yourself and not live your life because of someone else?

Other people don't have to live your life and if they don't like what you have to say, then they don't have to listen. The irony of it is that people are more drawn to you as you speak your mind and drop the baggage of over concern with what others think of you. For sure you can be aware of how others might respond to what your saying but it dosen’t mean you have to be overly concerned with it.

I think that's the attitude we should come to when communicating with others: being aware of how they might react instead of being worried about it.

anyway that's my take on it.

bbox

[Vee]

This is what I do -

1) Remember that most people are as scared as you a lot of the time

2) The best way I get through this is J.E.R.M - Jack ever really matters!

In the totality of it all - what really matters? As long as I'm not dead I'm ok. I can fall over in front in front of a crowd of people, be abused, buy a car, lose all my money, fall in love - it's all part of life.

I know this is easier said than done and it takes a lot of practice. But doing one stupid, new thing every day really helps me xxxx

[BloomCoach]

I love this thread.

Life is so complex. Your choices and actions are determined by so many events and emotions. So are people's perceptions and reactions. You can't control other people. It's impossible. So work on putting that energy toward being the most authentic person you can be.

Spend real time figuring out your values, your passions, your interests, and your dreams. Align your life and work with those and work hard not to let other people influence your behavior too much. If you are not authentic, the people you really care about can see that.

Keep your focus on being the best person YOU want to be. Ask yourself all the time, "Am I being true to who I am?" Then you will attract people who appreciate the authentic you.

[ExcellenceIsAChoice]

Hi,

It is beneficial to be "aware" of your surroundings and that includes what people think and do.

If you talk too much in conversations and bore everyone and wonder why people don't want to spend time with you wouldn't it help to know what that think about you and why?

You see, there are no absolutes in life. So we shouldn't just say that we should never want to know or care about what other people think about us.

The key, as mentioned in other replys, is that we should never give other people "power" over us by allowing what they say about us to affect us unless we choose to allow it to affect us - to bring about positive change in ourselve's.

[shasah]

What timing Just determined that I was worrying too much about what other people think and worked my way through it but it was interesting to see what works for other people. So thanks for bringing it back. It reinforced what I just went through and gave me other tools to use for the next time I backslide

[mmcdermott]

To quote the great Dr. Seuss -

“Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.”

So much great advice has been offered in this thread but still we all struggle to maintain the belief that we are all good enough. And the funny part is that if all of us are walking around worrying about what other people think, then aren't we all just holding each other hostage?

[nixa]

I admit that being liked has been pretty important to me. However, I realise that the people that like me, are the kinds of people I want to be liked by; the people that value the same things that I do, and are fundamentally good people that can see good in me. All I can do is be the best person I can be; I can't control the rest.

[WakingLife]

Originally Posted by DQueens

what they are thinking is really only your perception of what YOU think they are thinking.

I really like this, among so many of the other posts! (I wrote a list, just for keepsake or future reference, haha)

Then I started thinking about LOA and intention-manifesting, which is very similar to this principle that makes it so much clearer to me.

What you perceive to be true becomes true for you, and you react as if it were true as reflex. For example, my dad just walked through the room and I thought he might be angry, but then I thought to myself, he might be really happy! Then I started to feel the happiness and I reflexively reacted to my thought of his happiness, and felt lighter.

Ok, run on sentences unimportant, but to tie this in some more, when you think someone else is thinking something negative, you react as if it really WAS negative. Your body feels the negativity tied in with this. On the other hand, if you believe they're thinking something positive you feel the positivity in that.

Hm.. I'm not sure how much this is of help, buuut if you can create your reality for the better, and avoid unnecessary worry then awesome.

Just don't stretch this to obviously heinous actions and pretending they're awesome then believing it's awesome.. did I just go too far there? ha

re-summarizing my point: Being self-conscious, or confident is like intention manifestation in that you are responsible and in charge of all outcomes, based on your thoughts.

Be careful what you choose to believe, it just might come true

[blossom]

I don't know what anyone really thinks about me...I can guess, but I can never know, unless I ask. It is more important what I think of me anyway...what others think is none of my business really. It goes on inside their heads and is therefore private...I can let them think what they will!

[brendannz]

I've had the same problem. An important thing to remember is that people who are judgmental of you, are small minded people, and also they only judge you on a limited criteria usually. It's good to get to the point, where you only want to be around positive, and more interesting people

[JasonC]

I think this statement by Maxwell Maltz from Psycho-Cybernetics is relevant here:

"Self-consciousness" is Really "Others Consciousness"

It suggests that by thinking about other people's opinions, one is no longer running his or her own life but rather attempting to run someone else's life.

[Roman Soluk]

Originally Posted by JasonC

I think this statement by Maxwell Maltz from Psycho-Cybernetics is relevant here:

"Self-consciousness" is Really "Others Consciousness"

It suggests that by thinking about other people's opinions, one is no longer running his or her own life but rather attempting to run someone else's life.

It's definitely the truth! If we think of what other people will say about us, we will have to reject many things in our life. We will simply forget about ourselves, but will constantly think of our reputation among people.

I don't say that we need to forget about our reputation at all, but there must be a certain limit.

[Futhark]

I have recently posted on my blog about being a GEEK. Just be a geek. Be everything you want to be because one day you will not have another chance. People recognize when others are on a personal improvement path. They can feel it. THEY WILL FORGIVE YOU AND LOVE YOU.

[Aware]

Originally Posted by JeffS

You know, this probably isn't very comforting, but Paul Graham had a great comment in one of his essays that you really can't stop caring about what people think of you. If you did (he says) you'd be some sort of psychopath--caring about what people think is natural and a very important part of how society works.

Now, of course that doesn't mean you can't solve this problem: many of the comments above are very helpful, even if you accept that you'll always care what people think.

Very interesting thread.

Jeff, I disagree - I would not do certain things because I have values and not because I care what another person thinks if I do that thing. I would never be mean to a person for no reason - not because people wouldn't approve but because I don't like it, and I would not eat certain things, not because someone else cares but because I do. But I see a point it could have.

[C33]

What people think is very transient and can drastically change.

When people become highly successful, suddenly everybody is like: "Oh I knew it! He/she had so much talent, I knew she/he was going to make it...etc..." Most of these people were the least supportive, when the now successful person, was in dire straits, struggling to keep his/her vision.

We all know of parents who swear they had "always strongly disliked" their children's spouses, when faced with the fact that the spouse was abusive.

Of course, the more you love someone, the more their opinion counts.

It's tricky not to make a person a frame of reference. If somebody's opinion is not empowering, you can either choose to dismiss it, or dismiss the person.

I try ( it's a struggle) to treat people's opinion like the horoscope, I will only believe it if it's positive. ( In my life goal of only doing and taking into accounts the things that are helpful to me.)

If it's negative but coming from someone who is wiser and has proveable success in what he/she preaches ( expert level), I will try to see it as a learning opportunity. Maybe they now something I don't.

If it's negative but with no helpful information, just someone lashing out their frustrations, I will make the conscious decision to rebel against the negative prognostic as motivation for action.

If someone tells me I can't do something, it will motivate me to do that thing. I now I don't care about the person's opinion, per se, but I will use its message to my advantage.

It's not so much the opinion, it's how you profit from it. You can choose to benefit from negative opinions.

I don't remember which famous actor enrolled in theater classes because he/she stuttered. I can imagine that there was, at the time of his/her life, some helpful samaritan who said the future star would never be able to eradicate the stuttering by taking acting classes. The negative opinion of that person, might have strengthened his/her resolve to eradicate stuttering.

In that case, the negative opinion's outcome was to motivate the actor even more.

Also, someone could have told him/her:" you know what, this stuttering is hindering your progress in life. You should do something about it. "

Maybe this opinion, which underlines a paralyzing aspect of the other person's life, could be construed as negative. However, the outcome would be the same: enrolling in the class.

Maybe, this type of advice was given by the teacher of the acting class who saw potential and knew the class would work to end the stuttering, from knowledge and expertise.