Ep 64 | Stop Caring What Others Think with Brian Gubernick

Thank you for joining me today. It's Brian Gubernick, and welcome to the No Days Off podcast, where we believe that every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. Let's get into today's topic. It's a unique one. It's one I've actually been thinking about and exploring myself. The topic is how to teach your children not to care about what others think of them. This is an interesting one, and, and I believe it should resonate with everybody, whether you have kids— obviously it's focused towards the kids— but I think we all have relationships in our lives, in our respective lives, uh, with others that sometimes maybe we wish they didn't care so much about what other people thought of them. And this was a journey for me. This was one that I certainly do not have mastered, and I wanted to, to solve for this because the truth of the matter is I have two young kids, 12 and 10, and a recent topic of conversation in our house is the fact that I believe, and my wife believes, that maybe our girls care a little bit too much about what, what others think of them. Their friends, society, Instagram, whatever it may be, it's bothering us. And so what we've done is kind of go on this search, this journey to figure out how to best coach and influence our girls in teaching them to care a little bit less about what everybody else around them thinks. When you do the research as we've done, We've learned several things, some are rather obvious, but some not so obvious. And so what I put together is a compilation of the best things I learned and how to approach this. Helping your child, I've discovered, really develop a shield, if you will, to the thoughts of everybody else around them starts with the kid developing a very healthy sense of self-esteem. And a healthy sense of confidence. In doing so, with higher self-esteem, with greater confidence, comes more resilience and as a result maybe a lesser impact or effect had by others' opinions. So the question then becomes, well, if we've got to boost self-esteem, we've got to boost confidence, and make for a more resilient child? How do you go about doing that? Well, first, as it pertains to building a strong foundation of self-esteem, it starts with encouraging your kids to explore their own strengths and explore, explore their own talents and their interests. And especially to focus on the praise, the focus of praise should be with respect to their efforts and maybe not so much to the achievements. Don't get me wrong, the achievements are, are important, and ideally you want to see success had, but we want to really praise the activity. We want to praise the effort. And while we're praising that effort, we need to emphasize the unique abilities or unique qualities that that child displays. Really what you're aiming to do is helping your kid to understand that their worth is just not determined by what others think. Their worth is not determined by that. It's, it's their own self-worth. It's their own self-esteem. So number 1, if you want a child to care a little less about what others think, you've got to boost their self-esteem. You got to boost their confidence. Number 2, I believe you've got to model As the parent, as the leader, you've got to model self-acceptance. Recognize that your kids oftentimes are learning by observing their parents' behavior. I know that my kids watch my wife and me like, like little hawks. So we've got to be mindful of how we talk about ourselves, how we talk about others. We've got to demonstrate a self-acceptance. We've got to demonstrate a resilience. When we're faced with judgment or criticism. In other words, we can't tell them, "Don't care about what others think," but then we're modeling a behavior at home that displays that we care about what others think as individuals. So modeling the behavior expected of the girls is insanely important here with respect to teaching them how not to care about what others think. Next on my list, and, and from the research I did, You've got to encourage a diverse or more diverse social circle. What that really means is that you've got to encourage your child to interact with a variety of people, expose them to all sorts of different perspectives, and help them understand that there's no single path or single correct way of doing or being. Everyone's opinion is subjective. Now this one rings so true for us. It's such an important one for us because the truth of the matter is our girls go to school and they're around a lot of kids that act and look like them. Then our girls go to dance, the dance school, uh, pretty much every day. And again, around a very similar circle. And we have to take action to create, we have to be purposeful to create more diversity in their circles. Absent that, they will find themselves in some sort of groupthink sort of environment where they believe maybe there's a single right way. But here we are encouraging them not to care about what others think. Well, you've got to show them that diversity exists. And I'll tell you, that's one area of all the things I researched, it's probably the one we have to spend the most time on. Just show them that there's various, there's so many varying ways of thought or opinions. The last thing, and there's lots of things we could do, but the last thing that stood out to me when doing this research and figuring out how to teach our girls to care a little less about what others think of them. Last thing I found was what I would term to be keep it all in perspective. Keep it in perspective. What do I mean when I say that? We've got to continue to coach and influence our girls to understand that they have to focus on the controllables. They've got to control the controllables. In this particular scenario, what's that mean? The only person thinking about you is you. I think we, we as adults probably have to think about that or remind ourselves of that. Quite often. The only person thinking about you is actually you. So use the circle of control to describe what we can control. What can your children control? Well, one thing they can control is their thinking. So if you ask your kids a great question that I discovered in doing this research, if you ask a question like, "What's the absolute worst thing that could happen if someone thinks this?" What's the absolute worst thing that can happen if someone thinks this? And let them, let them answer that question. And then similar, ask the question, what's the worst that can happen if you don't do what makes you happy because you're worried about what others will say and think? Really, really powerful questions. And with more powerful questions come more powerful answers. So the focusing question for you today, if you're a parent, I think we all struggle with this one a little bit, or we're faced— I shouldn't say struggle, but we're faced with it. Why are we faced with it? Because the world is dramatically different from when we were kids. Even young parents out there that, you know, you were teenagers just a decade ago or less, the world is dramatically different. Social media, of course, is driving a lot of that. The internet drives a lot of it, and there is a tremendous amount of comparison, more so than than I think anybody has ever experienced. And with that comparison comes, you know, questions from kids like, "What is so-and-so going to think of me? Am I good enough?" And I think that focusing on things like self-esteem, building resilience, modeling as a parent self-acceptance, encouraging diversity in their world, and keeping things in perspective, I think those are steps towards aiding kids in not worrying what others think. But we've got to be diligent. We've got to be, we've got to be focused on this and be purposeful around it. So the focusing question, what can you do for your kids to help them with this, with this particular situation? If you don't have kids, right, there are people in your world right now, and maybe you're even this person that might care a little bit more about what others think than, than you'd like? Well, how can you coach the things I just described, or how can you look in the mirror and think about them yourself and free yourself from being held captive to the thoughts of others? Something deep to think around. I think it's worth your time. That's all we have for today, the No Days Off Podcast. Thank you so much for listening, and remember, every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. So let's get after it.