How To Not Care What Other People Think

Ever wanted to NOT care what someone else thinks? Doesn't that sound nice? Have you even stopped yourself from doing or asking something important to you because you were afraid what someone might think or how they might judge you? 

How cool would it be to no longer be bothered by what other people think? How awesome and freeing would it be to no longer be concerned with another persons opinions. And we do we even care to begin with?

In this episode we explore WHY we care what other people think and what we can do about it. 

LISTEN TO THE END TO LEARN THE SECRET!!! I no longer care what other people think of me as a person. But it wasn't by accident and it wasn't easy.  Its a simple yet profound perspective that has profoundly freed up my life.

Chapters

• 0:36 Not Caring What Others Think
• 13:00 Need to Care About Others' Thoughts
• 22:48 Overcoming Fear of Judgment
• 33:20 Overcoming Self-Judgment and Assumptions

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:36

to another episode of the speak plainly podcast, where we speak plainly about things that matter. I am your host, owl, and in today's podcast we're going to talk about not caring about what other people think. We've all heard about not caring what other people think, and it sounds wonderful. I mean up to a point, right, because we all know sociopathy is bad and sociopaths are kind of the quintessential. I don't care what anybody else thinks. Narcissism is up there too, but for the most part, it seems to me that the majority of people in the world that I know anyway really seem to struggle with how to cope with what other people think about them. Or, more to the point, how does one live life in a way unbothered by other people's opinions? How can I move through life in a way that other people's opinions of me especially, don't have an impact on me, or at least don't have a negative one, right, because that's most often what's happening. We're really worried about what other people think about us, which makes sense with belonging and being a social species and all of that, but that's what we're going to be exploring on this episode. We're going to be talking about can you even move through life without caring about what other people think and we're going to be talking about. Can you even move through life without caring about what other people think? And we're going to be talking about what other people actually think, whether or not they are thinking about you, and what you can do about it. And by the end of the episode, if you stick with me clear to the very, very end, I'm going to tell you exactly what you can do to make yourself not care what other people think. Are you ready for it? Because it's really exciting and really freeing. I literally, in this episode, am going to teach you how to not care what other people think. How's that so?

Speaker 1: 2:41

I had a sociology professor one time who told me what I think of me doesn't matter. What I think of me doesn't matter, what you think of me doesn't matter, but what I think you think of me is everything, and that is sociology. Sit with that for a second. What I think of me doesn't matter. What I think of me is psychology, right? What I think of me doesn't really matter. That's my psychology. When it comes to sociology, anyway, it doesn't really matter. That's my psychology. When it comes to sociology, anyway, it doesn't really matter. What I think of me we know is predicated on many things, and mostly the way that we were treated when we were young and the way that we interpreted that treatment has a huge impact on our version of ourselves and how we view ourselves version of ourselves and how we view ourselves. But the thing that people struggle with is, whenever they're going out in public to do literally anything from grocery shopping to public speaking what is somebody else going to think of them?

Speaker 1: 3:37

We have a lot of unwritten rules in our society and we have a lot less unwritten rules than most other places, or maybe not most, but many other places. We're in a society that is extremely independence-driven. We are all about independence and autonomy and individualism. I want to be the greatest individual that I can be. In collectivist cultures it is not about individualism at all. It is all about the unit. It's all about the culture as a whole, the family as a whole, how the entire nation state as a whole is going to function.

Speaker 1: 4:18

And in those collectivist states there are way more unwritten rules, like so many unwritten rules, which makes sense because if you have a collectivist culture that is all based on very stringent stratifications because of age and rank and political position or power. It makes sense that without the emphasis on individuality and autonomy, it becomes very difficult to buck the system, I guess you might say. And so they have had to find very creative ways to do so, which is how you get weird things about, like giving someone a pair of socks in Japan is extremely insulting, or a wallet is extremely insulting. And it's extremely insulting because they had to find ways and traditions that they could pass down in order to show disproval, distaste, dissatisfaction, dis-everything to the people that outranked them, without doing it like loudly or obviously. And so they created all of these cultures and all of these cultural traditions to do that. So, as many weird unwritten rules as we have in the US and in the Western world, collectivist cultures ermagerd.

Speaker 1: 5:51

It's so much worse. It's so much worse, which is probably why anxiety rates and suicide rates and that sort of thing are really high among young Asian cultures, young people in Asian cultures Korean, japan, china they're all struggling right now, and I think it has a lot to do with being really worried about what somebody else is going to think, because what somebody else is going to think has a huge impact on us. If it's the right person, right, Say, it's our boss that we're talking about. Our boss's opinion of us makes a huge impact on our lives. Our boss's boss opinion of us could have an even larger impact on our life.

Speaker 1: 6:37

What our partner, our primary partner or our children think of us or what our parents think of us at a very young age extremely important but 99.9999999% of people on the planet's opinions of you don't fucking matter. And do you know why they don't matter? Because you will never hear them. This is getting somewhere. Follow me. They don't matter because you will never hear them. This is getting somewhere. Follow me. You're never going to hear their opinion of you, even if you ask them.

Speaker 1: 7:20

Most people are going to default to being nice and to conflict avoidance and they're not going to tell you what it is that annoys them about you. And they're not going to tell you what it is that annoys them about you. They're not going to talk to you about the thing about you that sucks the most, that you inherited from your shitty childhood, or your grandparents or your mom or your brother or whatever. They're not going to talk to you about that stuff. They don't care because that's not their wheelhouse. It's not going to affect them very much. So why do we care? Why do we care? Why do we care what other people think? Yeah, we've covered a few instances in which it really matters. But are there more reasons? Well sure, are there more reasons? Well sure, our immediate community, say the people in our community that maybe have businesses or whatnot.

Speaker 1: 8:10

So for me, I'm in a small town in the Pacific Northwest and I am just starting to do more music, I'm starting to do more shows around, and the opinions of the bar owners and the restaurant owners that allow me to come in and play my music, their opinion of me, matters, because their opinion of me is going to determine whether or not I am allowed to go play music there and make some money and do what I love to do playing music. So in there, that opinion matters. But again, 99.99999% of the world, I'm never going to know what they actually think, I'm never going to find out, they're never going to tell me. So why does their opinion matter to me? And the answer, I believe, is locked up in our evolutionary past. It is those people around us that have helped us to survive for millennia. It is our tribes and our groups, our villages, our collective cultures. It is the people around us as a social species who have helped us to survive. So our ranking, more or less our social ranking, does have some small impact on us, but again, it's small.

Speaker 1: 9:45

And you hear, I'm going back and forth between these two things of like okay, it matters, but 99% of the time it doesn't. Okay, it matters here, but 99% of the time it doesn't. And I'm doing this for a reason because there are instances in which it matters and historically, evolutionarily it matters, and you could even view this through the lens of generational trauma, of needing to rely on other people for millennia has made it to where now we care about what other people think, even though it doesn't matter to us, right? So that actually could be. That could be interpreted as a form of inherited trauma, because our great, great, great, great, great great grandparents would have died if it weren't for their neighbors and the people that they didn't like. But they had to work together to co-forage or to co-hunt, or to cohabitate or to build a, to build shelter or have a church or whatever. Those people and those interactions were necessary at that moment in time in order to survive. Just like holocaust survivors, they had to learn to shut everything down and just conserve resources. So the whole fight response and fight flight freeze is nil.

Speaker 1: 11:11

I did an episode recently where I talked about this. The children of Holocaust survivors had a 30% increase in PTSD rates and a great increase in depression rates, whereas the people who were the children of Jewish families during the Holocaust, who were not near the war and therefore not directly affected and still reported some amount of trauma in their lives, had a 0% PTSD rate. Granted, this was a very small study, but the thing about it to remember is PTSD and depression and a lot of this stuff. A lot of depression especially is about helplessness. It's about a feeling of helplessness and learned helplessness, and it's a perfect example here with the Holocaust survivors' children that in order to survive the Holocaust, they stopped fighting and stopped fleeing because you couldn't do either of those things and they just basically became as minimally functional as you could be and still survive. They were like tardigrades, going into their deep, dehydrated hibernation or whatever that can allow them to travel through space. That's basically what happened to the human spirit in these people who experienced the Holocaust and managed to survive for one reason or another, and now their children are programmed this way. They're programmed to respond to stress and oppression. In a certain way, they're going to be more triggerable toward oppression. They're going to be more triggerable toward certain things that are reminiscent of what their parents went through.

Speaker 1: 13:00

We are programmed and predispositioned in the way that our ancestors were, and our ancestors deeply needed each other in order to just survive, because they had to get their survival stuff from their immediate environment. They couldn't order things on Amazon and have it shipped from all over the world and have anything that you want within a few days, no matter how obscure or weird. They didn't have any of that, but now we do. And so now this more collectivist and I don't mean collectivist culture, but I mean our species is a social species. So this sociality in the species is deeply ingrained in who we are, and I think that's why, even though it doesn't make that much sense anymore to care so deeply what other people think, we still do Because we needed to historically in order to survive, in order to survive Now we don't Not as much we certainly do.

Speaker 1: 14:06

There are certainly examples, and I've spent a chunk of time listing those examples. There are absolutely examples that do where it does matter what other people think of you, but the real kicker here is you're probably never, ever going to actually know what someone else thinks of you. Even if you ask what you're not going to do, very rarely are you going to ask, because very rarely is a person's opinion of you actually important enough for you to know when you go. I need to know exactly what they think Very rarely does that happen. Know exactly what they think Very rarely does that happen. More often, what happens is you want to know what they think and the human brain does not deal well with ambiguity. We really don't like ambiguity.

Speaker 1: 14:56

I did a whole podcast on perception deception and it's about ambiguity of sensory signals in our environment and how our brains compensate for us to create all kinds of weird illusions audio illusions, tactile illusions, visual illusions. All of these illusions happen because there is ambiguous information, like that whole white and gold dress versus black and blue dress. I talk about that in a lot of detail in that episode. What it's pointing at is that our brains do not like ambiguous information and to prevent us from having ambiguous information, our brain takes what little information is there and makes it seem like it's not that ambiguous. We fill in the blanks according to what we have already experienced in our lives. Our brain constantly predicts what is about to happen next according to what has previously happened, not just from our lives, but from our, not even just from our day, but from our week and from our month and from our year and from our lives and from our childhood and even from our parents. Everything that we do and experience in the world is largely a projection of our expectations due to past experiences right expectations due to past experiences right.

Speaker 1: 16:21

I'm saying all of this to get us to the point of, since we don't normally ask and we don't like ambiguity, but that lingering evolutionary disposition is still there, saying you ought to care. I know you don't, or you think you shouldn't, but you ought to, you ought to care, and that is enough to make our brains automatically fill in the blank. And what I mean by that is, again, what I think of me doesn't matter, what you think of me doesn't matter, but what I think you think of me is everything. So what our brain does with all of this evolutionary expectation is go well, I should care what other people think, because I genuinely believe that should is a biological memory. I think the impetus to care what other people think on a deep, deep, profound level, the way that most people experience it in the modern day.

Speaker 1: 17:26

I think that's a genetic memory and our environment. We don't need each other the way that we used to, like we do. But it's much harder to see because we're all so many steps removed from basically every aspect of our lives. So many steps removed from basically every aspect of our lives. We're hella removed from needing to build our own house or catch our own food or grow our own food or process our own food or let alone make the things that we use on a regular basis. We're so far detached from it. It's kind of mad from it. It's kind of mad.

Speaker 1: 18:03

So when our brains automatically go to this, well, I should care, I ought to care, and I think that we all have this impetus, because that is an evolutionary advantage that we gained through our ancestors. But the environment in which we live in now that's no longer as important. We still have this lingering desire to resolve that, and what we do is then we assume a narrative about somebody else. So when we're kids, our parents will tell us hopefully, if you do this, you might get made fun of. If you do that, you might get made fun of. If you do this, people are going to think this, and if you do that, people are going to think that. And it's true, if you do certain like, if you take a poop in the middle of class, you're going to get made fun of, especially if you like poop your pants. So there are some things that you just don't do because they will get you made fun of and that they will make you ostracized. And that's a real problem, because evolutionarily, being ostracized meant death, and that same genetic memory that makes us want to care more than is actually necessary in the modern world, I think that same impetus is alive in this phenomenon.

Speaker 1: 19:21

So what's happening is our brain is looking around at our environment, doing exactly what our parents did for us, and saying if we do this, this person might think this, and this person might think that and this person might think this. And the end of that is like so what? And there really isn't one, there really isn't a, so what? That's kind of the end, which is why this is all so frustrating and so damned annoying. But I told you I would give you a solution, and here is the solution your brain is going to want to care what other people think, because it's an inherited trait that fosters survivability in our species in the past. So we're going to automatically do that.

Speaker 1: 20:07

But the thing that will change it all for you is recognizing. You're never going to know what somebody else thinks. You're never going to find out Not what 99.999 repeating into affinity. Find out Not what 99.999 repeating into affinity. You're never going to know what they actually think of you. So you can assume kind of anything. This is where creative license comes in. You can assume anything. But what you're assuming is that they're going to judge you, they're not going to like you, they're going to ostracize you or whatever, because our brains have a negative bias. It's more important to remember which berry is going to kill you than it is to remember which one tastes the best. So we have a negative bias in our brain. Negative things, things that are threats, are more salient in our minds. Things that are threats are more important to our survival. So someone's disapproval of us is a threat to our survival.

Speaker 1: 21:10

On a biological level Again talking about evolutionary biology Now here's what you can do. What you can do is assume a different narrative for those people, for the people around you that you were thinking are judging you or are going to judge you or view you in a certain way or lose respect for you. If you do this thing that you want to do, what you have to do in order to stop caring what other people think is you need to give other people the benefit of the doubt. You need to give other people a different narrative. The narrative that you have in your head for other people is negative, and it's negative because it's about survival. All of this whole thing we've been talking about the biology going from generation to generation has all been about survivability of the bloodline. Survivability of the bloodline. And if you can control what it is that you assume, other people are assuming about you and you're the only one who can do that because, again, what I think of me doesn't matter, what you think of me doesn't matter, but what I think you think of me is everything. So what's happening is I'm going well, I think that this other person is going to judge me if I do this thing. So wait, hold on. If I'm assuming that you are assuming these things about me, that has nothing to do with you. It has everything to do with me, because now I'm assuming that you're being judgmental, which makes me judgy. I'm being judgy because I am assuming that you're being judgy about whatever it is that I want to do.

Speaker 1: 22:48

This is internalized depression. Okay, there's other ways, it's not always internalized depression, but it's the exact same mechanism. This is the exact same mechanism as internalized oppression, because that whole I mean socialization is literally internalized oppression. Because I talked before about this attachment, authenticity war, about how my authenticity and what I want to do and what I want to say and express, and even what I feel, the willingness to express what I feel all of that is tied intimately to that is my authenticity. And the authenticity versus attachment war is this battle between my own self-expression and how much self-expression can I have and still feel like I'm a part of the group that is going to help keep me alive. That's the attachment versus authenticity war, and that's what's happening here, except we, those of us who are worried about what other people think, or are living life so limited because we are in such fear of what other people might think of us. The key to getting out of that if this is you listen closely.

Speaker 1: 24:03

If you are the type of person who is worried about what other people think of you, you are the problem. You are the problem because you are assuming negative things about everyone around you. You're assuming that they are going to be as judgy as you are. Because, again, what you are doing is you are assuming that they are going to judge as judgy as you are. Because, again, what you are doing is you are assuming that they are going to judge you negatively, for whatever it is that you are doing, they might not even notice that you exist and you yet are entirely convinced that they're gonna judge you negatively and that that is going to have some kind of impact on you. And that alone, that fear which is entirely made up in your own head, is enough to stop you from doing the things that would bring you joy, make you have a better day, make you have a better life or make you a better person, all because you are the one being judgy. There is no other way. There's no, no way around this. I need everybody to hear me.

Speaker 1: 25:03

If you're the type of person who is worried about what other people think you're struggling to function because you're worried about what other people are going to think of you, it is because you are being judgy. You are the one being judgmental, not them, you. What I think of me doesn't matter. What you think of me doesn't matter. What you think of me doesn't matter, but what I think you think of me is everything, and that's what this boils down to and again, not your fault.

Speaker 1: 25:26

This is the programming that we get from our parents and like proper socialization and this is that. That's a struggle that you'll never be able to get rid of. How much of me can show up in a given space and still be expected or still be accepted in that space? That's never going to go away. I don't think none of us are perfectly congruent with any of the rest of us, because we're all unique. None of us are perfectly congruent. So that battle will never, ever, ever, go away. So accept it for what it is.

Speaker 1: 25:56

That socialization makes us worried that way, our ancestral past makes us worried about what other people think of us. That negative bias in our brain is going to make us focused more on what other people might think of us. That's negative, because then that threatens our safety. All of these are biological realities that we have to deal with. We care more about what other people think than was actually necessary given our modern world and what we assume other people are thinking about us is super duper negative, because that is the negative bias in our brain. And so if you're really worried about what other people think of you and it is stopping you from doing the things that you ought to do, you have to take a long hard, look in the mirror and go hmm, I'm being judgy. That's it.

Speaker 1: 26:44

Because as soon as you realize that you're the one being judgmental and you are ascribing the same level of judgmentalness to all these other like fake people in your brain because, again, what they think of you doesn't matter, it'll never matter, you'll never actually know, but what you think they will think of you is everything. So these other people are made up in your head. They don't actually even exist. They're just like a name and like and like. Maybe if you know that person's name, they're just a name or they're just a person in the room with you, and now they're just a body. And you're projecting all of this narrative onto a body that you don't know the name of. Or it's a name of a person and you maybe have never seen them before, and you're doing the same thing projecting this narrative and this judgmental nature onto a name of a person. That's all you have. These are just concepts. That person's body with my narrative running in their head. That's just my own concept.

Speaker 1: 27:39

That person's name with my narrative running through their head because of what I think they think of me is entirely my fault. It is entirely my responsibility because I'm the only one able to respond to that. Is that clear? Yet If you're worried about what other people think, it is because you were the one being judgmental of other people, and mostly yourself. If you're worried about what other people think of you, it's because you were the one being judgmental of other people, and mostly yourself. If you're worried about what other people think of you, it's because you were the one being judgmental.

Speaker 1: 28:08

So, instead of trying to find a way to not be concerned about what other people think, I think that's a losing battle. I think that's a completely losing battle and there's no way around it. I do not. I think it's a complete waste of time to try and not care what other people think you have. I have millennia of genetic information that all points toward what other people think of me as really important for my survival. So trying not to care not helpful. Recognizing that what other people actually think of you is not something that you'll probably ever be exposed to, and 99% of those fears are based on your projections of what you think the other person is going to think of you. That's power, because now you can go.

Speaker 1: 29:01

I'm assuming that. I'm assuming that because my brain is negative. We have that negative bias in our brain that's super real and well documented. So I'm assuming the worst, because assuming the worst is historically in our evolution going to most likely keep me safe longer. Cool, accept that, accept it and be like all right. I'm judging them to be a judgy bitch, because being a judgy bitch has actually been very useful in my evolutionary past. Now it's no longer as helpful. So I just need to recognize that they're not thinking these things about me. I am thinking these things about me and then to re-regulate my nervous system, use your physiological sigh, which, if you didn't catch that episode or any of the episodes that have the physiological sigh, I'll go over it again really quickly here.

Speaker 1: 29:51

The physiological sigh is the quickest way to activate your parasympathetic nervous system and calm you down and get yourself re-regulated as fast as possible. And what happens in the physiological sigh is you take a big breath, as big as you can get. Expand it, get all your lungs full, go, and then, when your breath is full, then take a second breath on top of that breath and go and then slowly exhale it all out. Do two or three of those where you inhale as full as you can, take a little mini break and then take another inhale on top of that. And doing it in your chest is better than doing it in your belly, at least for me, because otherwise it doesn't seem to reach my anxiety. I know belly breathing is better for like parasympathetic stimulation, but I think the actual breathing way up into the chest to access how much sympathetic activation there is and then slowly breathing all of that out, that works better for me. Anyway, that's the physiological sigh.

Speaker 1: 30:57

So if you find yourself in a moment where you feel paralyzed because of what you think somebody else is going to think of you, recognize all the things I've just said about the evolutionary history that you have and the negative bias in the brain and go okay, I'm assuming these things and that all makes sense. I got lots of good reasons for that, but it's not helpful, that's all. So in this moment I'm going to recognize those things mentally, take a mental note. Take a little break, take a big breath, second breath on top of that and slowly exhale. Do that two or three times and then come up with a new narrative. Come up with a new narrative for that person. A new believable narrative for that person.

Speaker 1: 31:38

If you're worried about what your neighbor is going to think if you walk outside in your robe, come up with a new believable narrative. If you know that neighbor, then maybe they're funny and maybe they'll think it's a joke and something like that. Or maybe the narrative is that they won't even see you. Or maybe the narrative is that if they see you, they'll see you in the robe and be like oh, that's cute, they're so comfy, they just walked out to get the mail in their robe. That's cute, they're so comfy, they just walked out to get the mail in their robe. That's adorable. Because that's what I would think.

Speaker 1: 32:08

And once I purposefully worked on my own judgmental nature, I stopped worrying about what other people were thinking, because I stopped attributing to malice what can be explained by ignorance. And that's the bottom line here your opinion of me. I am ignorant to, I am completely ignorant to your opinion of me. However, I still keep thinking it's malicious, I continue to think. Those of us who are struggling with this, we continue to think that a person's opinion of us is malicious when really we're ignorant of it. We have no idea what they think of us, and if we asked, it probably wouldn't be nearly as negative as we originally thought. So there you go.

Speaker 1: 32:55

I really wanted to take a minute to talk about living in a way where you don't care about what other people think Like. It sounds like a wonderful way to be, a wonderful way to be being able to move through the world without caring what other people think Like. It sounds like a wonderful way to be, a wonderful way to be being able to move through the world without caring what other people think of you. It sounds wonderful. I don't think it actually can happen, though I don't think that's an option just because of the biological machine that we inhabit.

Speaker 1: 33:20

I think there's too much genetic material in there pointing us in the other direction. So if we really want to stop having the troubles that we have by being worried about what other people think of us, then we need to recognize that we have no idea what other people think about us, that what we assume other people are thinking about us is exclusively coming from our own brains. So it's actually us that's being judgmental. And if we want to feel less judged by the world, then we need to become less judgmental ourselves. And in those moments you can take a big deep breath, do your physiological sigh recognize that you're assuming something that you have no evidence for, that you're not judging yourself for assuming that, these things that you have no evidence for because that's what our biology is predicated to do.

Speaker 1: 34:15

And then you give yourself a little blessing, you give yourself a little peace and go oh yeah, that makes sense with all the crap that I now know about this stuff, that makes sense with all the crap that I now know about this stuff. And you simply create a new non-paralyzing narrative for the people around you, because the one that you had before that painted you as malicious. That's not real. And if you ask them their opinion of you, they're going to tell you the nice things more than likely, because that's the way people are. People would rather avoid conflict in general, so they're going to say nicer things to you than you probably expect.

Speaker 1: 34:52

So if you're worried about it, you got to understand that all of that judgment is coming from you, and that's fine. Of course it is. That makes perfect sense with everything we know about evolutionary biology and conditioning, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But you're the only one, so take charge of that. Recognize that. That's you judging yourself and it's probably because you're in a dysregulated state. So do your little physiological sigh, re-regulate yourself, assume a new narrative and try again. Rinse and repeat. That is how you learn to move through the world in a way where you don't care about what other people think. That's the closest I got for you. Thank you very much for joining me today. I hope that this was a fun podcast for you. I hope that you have a marvelous weekend and remember, stay curious and stay uncomfortable. Thank you, you said it, you said it, you said it. You said it, you said it, you said it, said it.