A short motivational/spoken piece by Dr. Aziz explaining why people often feel judged and offering reassurance: most people are preoccupied with their own thoughts and rarely notice or remember others' actions. He illustrates this with a social psychology anecdote about a conversation partner being surreptitiously replaced during an interaction, arguing that because observers are not focused on you, you can relax and be yourself.
Do you ever feel like everyone's watching you wherever you go? You're feeling very self conscious? People are judging me, you know, I used to live in that for many years, and then I got something and now clients that I work with get it. It's like a light bulb that goes off in their head, which is this. People aren't that focused on you. They're really in their own world, in their own head, their own thoughts and might seem like, no, they're looking at me, or they're probably judging me. You know, there's a fascinating social study they did where they had these people talking to someone. Like a stranger comes up to you and starts to chat with you. And then they have these construction workers walk through after like 10, 15 seconds of talking. And they're carrying this big plank or mirror or something and they walk through, right through the conversation. And during that moment, they switch out who the person is talking to. It's a literally different person. And guess what? Most people don't even know. They just keep talking. So if that's happening, don't worry about it. People are not that focused on you and you can just relax and be yourself.
