Whenever we want to do something but feel like people around us won’t appreciate it, we don’t do it. We begin to think “log kya kahenge?, (what will people think of us?)” This thought brings us down and prevents us from doing so many things that we love.
Why do we care what others think about us?
Believe it or not, we all are looking for approval or validation from others for the actions that we take. We want to feel appreciated and not rejected or opposed because it helps in boosting our self-esteem. When we see our self-esteem boosted, it makes us feel good about ourselves. We expect people to treat us with appreciation and validation and this matters so much to our self-esteem and shows how deeply we value ourselves. We define our lives and the way that we live by caring too much about what others think about us. To be honest, we are addicted to the fallacy of living lives according to how others would like it to be. And, I’ll explain you how.
Suppose, you suit up, get a great haircut or wear that short and sexy skirt and post your picture on social media and soon there are comments flowing down on your post.
Ideally, I believe most of these comments appreciate how handsome or gorgeous you look and there you go, you got the approval that made you feel good about yourself and your brain remembers how it felt and experienced when you were validated.
A research even showed that people who are desperately waiting for that notification to strike on their smartphones that someone liked something they posted, the dopamine levels in their brains shoots up closer to the levels on someone on cocaine. Cocaine is addictive! Why? Because it alters your dopamine levels and the same is the case with social media today. But wait! Let me tell you something more horrible. The people behind these social media apps and websites know about this fact very well and they use it as their strategy. Facebook knows how long it should keep someone’s profile picture on someone’s feed.
So, the more and more you use it, the more and more you get used to it and start believing that this is NORMAL. But, sooner or later, like me, you’ll question one day that “why do I care what people think about me?” And honestly, you would not have a concrete answer and even if you are able to answer it, you wouldn’t believe it.
Similarly, you also refrain from doing the things that you love because you fear that people will not approve it or reject it. This is called “The fear of rejection”. And it is very important that you do anything out of fear of rejection. I’ll talk about this in detail when I explain how you can get rid of this issue.
How can you stop caring about what others think about you?
When I first discovered that I cared too much about what people think about me, I was definitely taken aback and you would too. I tried to do the cold turkey approach by ignoring the fact that I would have to work on this on a deeper level. I started pretending that I don’t care what others think about me. Needless to say, it backfired. The more I ignored it, the more I started caring about it. And now, not only was I caring about what others thought me as but I was also thinking and stressing on the thought that I decided to not care about what others think about me and I am supposed to act like that. You see what I said there, “ACT”.
When you act, you know that you are faking it. The true way to fix this problem is to accept it completely and tell yourself that yes you do care about what others think about you and it is stealing your freedom from keeping you from doing what you want to do and that is okay and you are going to fix it. Acknowledge it! Now, I want to take this example into consideration which we will be using to hopefully try solving this issue. I want you to use a woman’s perspective here.
Let’s suppose, you bought a new deep cut top for yourself which you really really loved and you know it looks good on you, you love how you feel wearing it. But you don’t wear it because someone said that guys would think differently about you, guys will stare at you, your neighbors will talk ill about you, and what not, and you don’t wear that lovely top that you bought for yourself.
Who won? The people who don’t even matter in your life!
These people don’t even come to your aid when you are in need, they don’t even like to see you enjoy your life. Now think, despite everything that was going on in your head, despite the fear of rejection that you had, you still wear this beautiful top that you love and leave your house. As the day comes to an end, you will not only feel happy but great because you challenged your fear of rejection and won against it. What made you win against the fear of rejection? Doing something that you did not feel comfortable about! So, this is a practice that you need to make. You need to keep putting yourself in uncomfortable situations and doing the things that you feel uncomfortable doing in order to get over the fear of rejection. Do things because you love doing them and want to do them and overtime you will develop a mindset that you don’t care what the fuck others think about you.
The same applies when you are looking for people to approve and validate you. Like I said before, people don’t care about you, so why should you care about what people think about you? And why should their opinions matter on what you do or how you look. Here you are dealing with another great problem and that is self-doubt! You need approval from others to believe that you are worthy, beautiful, gorgeous, handsome, hot, sexy or whatever. But guess what? You can fix it. How? By positive self-talk. By affirmative talking! Here is an exercise that I want you to follow every day. Every day when you wake up, I want to tell 10 affirmative, positive things to yourself such as I am strong, I am confident, I have a high self-esteem, I am beautiful, I am handsome, I love the life that I live, I love the work that I do, and so on. When you start saying these things, you are planting the seeds of positivism in your mind about yourself.
When you do this consistently, overtime, these thoughts turn into beliefs, because your mind believes what is said to it regularly. Now that you start believing that you are strong, confident, hot, beautiful, gorgeous, or whatever, you no longer will self-doubt. You no longer want anyone else to tell you that you are gorgeous because you know it by yourself that you are one.
Oh yeah, I also want to add something before you get carried away with this “I don’t care whatever the fuck anyone thinks” attitude, there are certain situations where you have to care about what others think. For example, a religious gathering, a job interview, a date, I hope you get it.
So, I’ll wrap it up here.
I hope this article helped you and if it did, don’t forget to share it with your friends and family. Have a productive day and live a full life.
Love
Vincent