How To REALLY Let Go of Fear of What Others Think!

So how can we really let go of worrying about what other people think of us? This is probably the biggest question that I get. And it's like a fundamental human challenge, right? It's like how do I be me and not be so stressed or worried or tight or constricted about what they are going to think of me and that they could be family members or a sibling or a lover or a partner or a boss or a colleague or a friend or even a stranger. If you have a lot of social anxiety like I did for many years, then even a stranger's thoughts are significant and dangerous. And so we can spend much or all of our waking hours being in some level of tension, stress or fear about what they are going to think of me. And we don't feel safe, we always feel threatened, we always feel on edge. And it gets even worse in our close relationships, right? Because now we have more to lose. And I don't want to get, you know, fired. I don't want to get seen negatively and lose opportunities at work. I don't want to get broken up with. I don't. Or I just don't want to have an uncomfortable conversation or I just don't want them to judge me. And so there we are, restricted, limited, and having to spend more and more life of our lives in a cage. Smaller and smaller range of opportunities. Because hey, what if someone judges me? Oh, what if they don't like it? You know, And I call this the nice person cage can also be called the social anxiety cage. Maybe one day I'll talk about the difference between niceness and social anxiety. In any case, it all comes from the same place and what do we do about it? So how do we really let this go? Well, letting it go is the key. So let me guide you through some steps you can take today, right now, to let go of it and to make this much more practical and useful. Can you think of a situation where you are worried about what someone might think of you? Maybe there's a workplace environment situation, certain meetings, certain colleagues, certain boss, certain superior, certain client or customer, dating situation, you know, maybe the idea of someone new you'd like to meet or even someone you're dating right now, or your partner or a parent, right? Somebody where you feel that discomfort. Like I, I would be me, but I don't know what they would think. You're worried about it. Okay, you got somebody right now, great. So hold that, bring that to your awareness and notice that we spend a lot of mental energy like how do I fix it? Okay. God. Okay, I gotta say this, I gotta do that. Or we're fighting them in our head, right? Why are you judging me? You suck. You know, and what we want to do is we want to withdraw some of that energy because that's just as, you know, that's endless. We could spend days, weeks, months, years ruminating. In fact, if we spend a ton of time ruminating, it starts to spiral into anxiety or depression and nobody likes that. So we got to find our way out of that. The way that we do that is to withdraw energy from the fighting and the running and say, wow, I'm scared right now or I'm angry right now or something, right? You're feeling something, so you want to bring your awareness and your attention to what you're feeling. So right now, when you imagine that person and you feel some sort of discomfort, right, if we're worried or concerned about their opinion, we're going to feel some sort of tension or unease or pain in our experience, right? So the way that we do that is we bring more of that awareness out of the mind and into your body. So take a full breath right now and let it out. Great. So where do you feel that discomfort of wanting them to like you or fearing them not liking you? Most people want to do this. There'll be a tension they'll start to feel. It's either in their throat, their upper chest. That's a big area for people that definitely around the whole area on your chest, your heart, your ribs on the sides, could be in your stomach. Could be a tight squeezing feeling or an empty bottom dropping out feeling or low back. I'll get a lot of stuff for me around my, like right here, my ribs, into my back. So, you know, couple days of that and you can have a lot of chronic tension or pain in your body just from the worry about what other people are going to think. Especially if you got something big coming up, right? I got this presentation or this event or this thing or this date or whatever. You know, by the time you get to it, you might be in a lot of physical or emotional pain from being so clenched for days and days. And we got to let go. It's the only sane thing to do because you can't control what everyone's going to think or feel about you. It's impossible. And the more constricted and tight and worried and tense you are, the less well you come across anyway. So it only hinders your chances of them liking you, which you can't control anyway. So let's let Go. So the way you do it is you find the sensation in your body, the discomfort, and you meet it. You move towards it. You stop running from it. You meet it with love, as much love as you can muster. And maybe start with some patience, some allowing it. Because right now you're like, oh, God. Oh God. I don't want them to like me. And all these feelings are terrible and I gotta. I gotta make sure they like me and I gotta get rid of these feelings. And we're in such reactivity. So let's slow down and drop the reactivity and just say, whoa. Worry, Longing, or aching for them to like me. And you just find it. You'll find it in your body. You can do it right now with me. Maybe it's in your stomach or your chest and you just breathe in and bring more and more of your attention to it. In fact, let them go now from your mind. You don't have to keep. I mean, you might, you might think about them. You can't necessarily stop that, but just stop feeding it, you know, and just go right into that sensation in your body and find that place where it's like buzzy or squeezing or aching or tense. And maybe it's moving, maybe it's tight. Maybe it feels expansive and kind of fiery inside. Maybe it feels dense, like there's a rock in there. Big bundle of frozen solid energy. Whatever it is, you don't need to fix it. This is the key thing. This took me many years to learn. You really don't need to make this go away. You just bring your attention to it. And the more you're like, okay, I'm gonna bring my attention. This is terrible. Is this gonna go away? This is awful. Is this done yet? Like, the more you're kind of leaning on it like that, the longer it takes, the more it gets stuck. You know, you probably heard that old adage, what we resist persists. It's true. Especially with our feelings. So feelings are like a wave, you know, they will come, they will rise up, they'll peak and they'll crest and they'll go away. But if as the feeling's coming, we're like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. And bracing ourselves and tightening and fixing. Then the wave doesn't. It just gets jammed right there and you're feeling that feeling, feeling that feeling, feeling that feeling, and then you got feelings on top of it. Anger and self pity and it's not fair. Why do I always feel this way? And then I'm depressed and I'm Anxious and you got all this big mountain out of a molehill of a feeling. So there's that feeling. Let's just face it. And let it run its course and give it the space that it needs. If you go to my book website, notnicebook.com I have a guided audio called the Peace Process that I learned from one of my mentors, Christian Michelson. And you know, it's based on this book here, Letting Go by David Hawkins. If you haven't read this one, I highly recommend it. Letting Go by David Hawkins. Very simple, usable technique that we're doing right here. To be with any feeling, including the fear of someone not liking you, what you'll find is that that fear of so and so not liking you, that one person at work, or that one date, or, you know, the upset and all the torment around it, you know what? That actually predates that person. I work with people a lot on rejection, right? And they're sort of like, oh, so and so rejected me. It feels so bad. That bad feeling around rejection predates goes way back long before this person rejected you. And you just have like years and years and years of running from those feelings. And then you stop running from those feelings and you do exactly what we're doing here, a couple minutes at a time. Three minutes one day, ten minutes another day. You know, if you really want to go for it, sit down for 20 minutes straight and do it. And just know that every time you're doing it, you're just chipping away at that emotional reservoir of unattended pain. And every time you do it, it's valuable. Think of it as like you got this reservoir and you're just taking some buckets of water and, you know, going take them out of the reservoir and walking over and putting them onto the flowers and the grass where they belong. And, you know, when's the reservoir going to get empty? It doesn't have to get empty. As long as you're willing to go take some buckets and move them, you'll feel so much more free, so much better, so much more at peace. So play with this technique. Go check out that audio@notnicebook.com let me know how it goes down in the comments below. And until we speak again, may have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that you're awesome and that you're loved and that you're worthy and that you're whole and complete as you are. Until next time.