STOP Worrying About What Other People Think
I want to talk about this today because many of my clients feel paralyzed because they are worried about what others would think.
Areas of paralysis include: making a change, like leaving an abusive spouse. If people know what is really going on inside their houses, it could extinguish the external façade.
They're afraid that if their friends knew what was happening- addicted spouse, abusive relationship, toxic work environment, etc.- that they would judge them for staying. Or, they would tell them to leave when they're not ready. So they isolate themselves
They think they're the only ones in this boat. They think they have an abnormal situation that no one could relate to. Combine that with a spouse who tries to isolate them further, and they become lonely.
Worrying about what people think causes the following problems:
It wastes time and precious brain energy
Isolates us
Makes us feel bad
Keeps us stuck
Why do we worry about what people think?
We want to belong
We want a sense of tribe
We want external approval
We are people-pleasers (please refer to episode #4 on combatting people pleasing).
Many of us are worried about what our parents would think of our life- even as adults. Our parents train us not to air our dirty laundry. They also teach us not to brag a lot (this is pervasive in South Asian culture).
When people judge what we are doing or don't like it, it's uncomfortable because we all just want to belong and be liked. Once we can actually sit with this discomfort and notice it-it's often a vibration in the body-keep noticing and by noticing we can neutralize it. Once it's a vibration we can identify it for what it is and soften its power over us. Actually, we empower ourselves and begin to take hold of our own experiences.
I encourage you to practice sitting with discomfort or tell your parents something of which they wouldn't approve. Tune in to your reaction, the discomfort in your body. Stick to your guns. See how it goes. The concepts in life coaching are very simple, but they must constantly be practiced in order to actually implement. Our patterns are the unhelpful and unhealthy ones that we've engaged in and have been occurring for so long. But of course, it takes discipline and an offer to transform ourselves. But we can most certainly fake it 'til we make it and embody a different method.
I want to discuss how to stop worrying about what other people think because this will remove one major contributor to emotional exhaustion and stuckness.
Here's what to do: Look inward
It's simple but not easy.
It's so much easier to project our own judgments and fears onto other people. Often we do something that we know is the right thing to do, but might be against the grain of how we were raised. Which I do talk about in the previous episode-episode number 17 "How to Move Forward When How You Were Raised Conflicts with Your Current Values." And when we have this dissonance within us, it's much easier to fixate and perseverate on what this person's reaction would be because then we are off the hook. We don't have to look inward and take a good hard look at ourselves because that's much more difficult and painful. That is a part of the deep internal work we must do to get to a better place.
And to judge ourselves is one of the hardest things to do. It's easy to gossip and judge other people's actions when we don't want to examine ourselves. So the second step in not worrying about what people think includes asking yourself why you care what that person thinks and I turned inward and ask myself “what is my opinion about this? How do I judge myself? How do I reflect poorly in front of myself?”
Take some time to write this down-maybe in the notes app on your phone and run through this exercise when your brain starts worrying about what someone else will think. It sucks but it is SO helpful in the long run to build a sense of self, self-confidence, self-love, and focus. This practice helps to keep your brain out of spinning and confusion and not deplete energy that none of us has any spare to waste!