Do you care what other people think of you?
In this article, Jodie Cook, author of Stop Acting Like You’re Going To Live Forever, How To Raise Entrepreneurial Kids, and Ten Year Career, will share a framework to help you move past caring too much and move towards feeling freer.
Let’s dive straight in!
Click With The Right People
If you have a circle of friends that you hang out with (and even if you don’t, there’s still hope), you’ve probably got one or two that you’re closer to.
On the other hand, the others in your group might not invite out for a solo meetup. And that’s OK.
Not pushing too hard to be everyone’s idea of “heaven” is a perfect thing that helps us stop caring too much about what others think.
Action Steps: Think of the people you get along with and don’t get along with in your life—or think of fictional characters or movie stars. What traits and values do these people have? Find commonalities to understand the type of people you can click with.
Focus On What You Can Control
One thing that we cannot control is other people’s reactions. For example, you might put in a lot of research, spend countless nights writing, and finally publish a book. But there’s always a chance people might not like it.
So what do you do? Focus on you.
Sure, it might seem simple. But knowing that you’re delivering value and giving your best intentions is enough. That seed of emotion allows you to let go of what you can’t control.
Action Step: Grab a pen and paper. Create two columns for things you can control and those you can’t. Cut the paper in half and get rid of the list of the things you can’t control.
Be Judgment-Free
Most of us are very tuned in to make judgments that they’ve become a part of our daily life:
- Seeing someone unfit in the gym? Judgment.
- Seeing someone too fit in the gym? Judgment.
- Other drivers cut us off? Judgment.
But, making judgments as part of our day-to-day makes them more important than needed. And we also end up judging ourselves. Instead, it might be helpful to take a step back from it.
Rather than see our judgments as something to be commented on or taken action with, we see them as existing—nothing more, nothing less.
When you do that, judgment plays a less important part in your life, AND you give less weight to other people’s judgments of you.
“Sometimes letting things go is an act of far greater power than defending or hanging on.”
—Eckhart Tolle
Action Step: Find your positive affirmations to repeat to yourself daily. Let the judgments go, and try not to label them.
Zoom Out Your Perspective
When someone doesn’t like us, we tend to globalize it—this means we instantly think that a huge number of people don’t like us. It might be helpful to localize our problems instead.
Try this zooming-out exercise when a situation bogs you down:
- Close your eyes and visualize yourself on top of the building that you’re currently in.
- Then, visualize yourself going out further and looking at the town/city/area you live in.
- Go out further and see the planet—maybe you’re on the moon or looking down at the Earth.
- Look at the other planets and zoom out slowly until you can see the entire galaxy.
Using this technique, you might see how minor your problems can be. This perspective exercise creates such a distance, just like what Elsa said in Frozen…
It’s funny how some distance makes everything seem small.
Protect Your Energy
Your energy is your life, and often others can take it away quickly.
But to feel more accessible, we need to protect our energy. It might be hard to do, but there is a cool technique you can use.
When you don’t want to “absorb” the negative words of others, imagine a jar over your head and allow the negative comments to bounce off it and not touch you. Or, you can imagine someone throwing a negative ball of energy towards you—but instead of catching it, just let it drop.
You don’t have to catch a ball when someone throws it at you.
Using visualization techniques has been proven helpful—keep using them regularly to reap the benefits.
Remember Your Why
Ask yourself: Why am I here?
Often, knowing your why will allow you to pursue it with purpose and without caring what others think.
And at the end of your life, you might imagine, “This was me. This is what I did. I achieved everything I was capable of.” Or, you might see yourself and think, “I let others control my life and defeat my purpose.”
The more you focus on your purpose, the less you give weight to what others think or say about you.
Action Step: Need help finding your purpose? You might already know how. Check out this guide: 10 Life-Changing Steps to Become the Best Version of Yourself.
It Starts With You
When you start to not care about what other people think of you, you will become more proud of yourself and your work. And remember: it all starts with how YOU feel about yourself.
Learn How To Overcome Fear And Conquer Self-Doubt to become even more confident!