Why You Can't Stop Caring What Other People Think

Everyone's answer to this question is always the same. You need to have more confidence. You need to not take it so personally. You need to just love yourself more. No, none of that is what's actually happening. And if you've tried those things and they didn't work, it's not because you didn't try hard enough. It's because they're pointed at the wrong target and something much more specific is actually happening here. And when you see it, the question of how to change it becomes obvious. So in this video, I'm going to walk you through exactly what's happening beneath the surface in your nervous system that causes you to care way too much about what other people think, where this pattern actually comes from, and the one shift that you can make today that will start to shift it. Because when it comes to confidence being the issue, that's what most people think, right? Well, if you're worried about what other people think, it's because you lack confidence. Maybe you're insecure in yourself and you just need to, you know, toughen up and it won't bother you so much anymore. That's like the common advice, even from therapists and YouTube and other stuff out there. But the problem is it's not actually a lack of confidence or a lack of self- Because so many people that I work with are very confident, very high self-esteem. They're professionals. They might run a company. They have a family. They're highly skilled in their profession. They're very smart at what they do. You put them in a room with their task, their job, and they'll handle it. And yet they'll walk away and they'll be replaying what they said. And is that person mad at me? So is that really a self-esteem issue or is there something else underneath the surface? Because to me, it looks like that person, and maybe you, actually has confidence in a lot of ways and has high self-esteem and believes in themselves. But something else is getting triggered in that situation, and that something else is happening not in your conscious mind but in your nervous system, in the emotional centers of your brain, where you have wired up one specific formula. Because when you're worrying about what other people think, you're actually wondering one thing: are they mad at me? Are they upset with me? Did I disappoint them in some way? Are they disapproving of me? And the reason we're asking that question repeatedly and worrying about it and stressing about it is because we've wired up that disapproval equals danger. To your nervous system, disapproval is like a mountain lion. And if you're out in the woods and you hear that it's mountain lion country and you're with your family, and then on a hike you hear a twig snap out in the woods, all of your awareness is gonna hyperfocus on That threat. That makes sense in that situation. And you're gonna run, you're gonna leave, you're gonna pay attention to everything, whatever is needed. And that is what your nervous system does when you've linked up that disapproval is danger. Disapproval becomes like that mountain lion. So putting aside your self-esteem and your confidence and all that, this is purely a survival reflex. And once we've wired up that disapproval is Dangerous, is a threat, just like that mountain lion, then everything else makes sense. You're going to hyperfocus on it. You're going to wonder afterwards, was that the danger? Was that the threat? Are they upset with me? What are they thinking about me now? What are they thinking about me now? Just like if you're hiking in the woods, and trust me, I've done this. I like to go on these big mega hikes in the summer, and I'll start in the dark when it's like 3 AM, and I'm out there by myself, and there's rarely a mountain lion out there, but they can be. And between dark until sunrise, you better believe every single fiber of my body Is on high alert, right? So was that, was that a mountain lion? Right? So that's what we're doing when you leave the meeting and you're wondering like, oh, are they upset with me? It's because it keeps looping because there is danger in your system. So you might be wondering, where does this come from? Why do I think that someone disapproving of me is threatening to my survival? I'm an adult. I know that I'll be okay even if John at work is upset with me. Well, that's your conscious mind, but the part that's reacting is not your conscious mind. It is below the conscious mind, and it is actually set of patterns, memories that you're reacting to that are in your nervous system. And this usually gets installed in our childhood between the ages of 0 and 10 or 11, sometimes a little later than that. But right in that spot, we look at our family, we look at our parents, we look at other kids and socialization, and we start to feel— not think about, but feel— what it's like when I get approval and love, and when I get Disapproval and dislike, hatred, anger, exclusion. It feels pretty awful. And as a human, we're hardwired for connection. And so when a parent gets really mad at you or the kids exclude you, on one level, you're going to survive, you're okay. But to your emotional system, it's not okay. In fact, there's a part in your brain that responds to that exclusion in the same way. It's the same brain center that responds to physical pain. So whether a parent hit you or a parent got really mad at you, your nervous system doesn't You don't really know the difference. You just encode it all as bad. And I call this nice programming in my book, Not Nice. So what do you want me to be? How do you want me to be? Should I be more of this, less of that? I don't want to upset you now because when you get mad at me, when you withdraw your attention from me, when you stop loving me, at least what it feels like, that feels really painful. And so I'm going to get really attentive to what's going to bring on approval and especially what's going to bring on disapproval. And you don't have to consciously remember all this. You might not remember all this, but when you were young, you paid attention, you tracked it, and you started to mold your behavior to make sure that you stayed in the band of what was going to get approval and avoided what was going to get disapproval. And you also tagged it with, don't go there, that's mountain lion country, that's dangerous, I got to avoid that situation. And as you avoid it more and more, it starts to seem more and more dangerous. Because why am I avoiding it? Well, because if I go into that mountain lion territory, I might not come back out. And that's why when you're looping again and again and again, Why did she give me that look when I left office? Or why did he frown when I said that thing? Oh my God, I made that joke at the party and they didn't think it was funny. Oh, they're probably thinking this about me. And you try to tell yourself, hey, don't worry about it. It doesn't matter what they think. Have you ever done that? I must've done it 1,000 times in my life. Who cares? Just forget about it. Just be confident. Well, that's like telling the alert center in your brain to just turn off. It's like saying, don't worry about the mountain lions. Just, just walk through the trail. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Well, your body's like, screw you, it does matter. And the only way to be safe in this old program is to avoid all disapproval. And obviously that doesn't really work in life because to avoid all disapproval, you have to basically bend over backwards for everybody, override yourself, and live a life of who do you want me to be and people pleasing. And so when you're going through life and you have this sentence running through your head 1,000 times a day that says, what do they think of me? Did I do okay? Do they like me or not? What you're really saying is your comfort is more important than me speaking my truth, because we will override ourselves again and again and again in order to make sure that we avoid disapproval when we're running this old outdated program. So when you reflect back in your own life, where do you think you picked up some of this message, this programming that disapproval is dangerous? Where is disapproval paired with something honestly really painful? I know experience, when I look back, it's pretty clear. And I remember being on the soccer field when I was about 7 years old, and my dad was the coach of the team. It was a bright sunny day in California and the green grass, and I always remember the smell of the grass. And we had to put different kids in goal. And that was just— and in that age of soccer, there's no dedicated goalie. And so, hey, John, it's— hey, little Bobby, it's your turn to play goalie, right? And everyone had to cycle through it. And so it came around to the game where it was my turn to play goalie for half of the game, and I didn't want to play goalie. When I played soccer, I was kind of— I was the kid that was sort of scared of the ball. And so it always frustrated my dad too, right? Because he's like, go for it. I'm like, I could get hurt. And that's bad if you're in goal, because in goal you got to be aggressive. You got to— someone's coming forward, about to score on you, you got to run out and get the ball. And sure enough, I didn't do that. I just stood in the goal. Probably froze there. And I don't remember how many times they scored on me, but it was a lot. And I remember it was goal after goal. And I remember reaching towards the back of the net. It was already in the goal and I was reaching with my little goalie gloves to grab the ball and pull it out from where it had gone in the back of the net from yet another goal on me. And I remember it was blurry because there was tears in my eyes. And I remember my dad yelling from the sideline like, come on, Aziz! Come on, Aziz! That was probably after the 4th or 5th goal that they scored on me. And it was brutal. And I remember this feeling of like, I have to be out here and I can't just walk off the field and I can't do any better. I don't know how to do any better at what I'm doing. And my dad is mad at me. I didn't use the word disapproving of me, but it was so clear. And in that moment, to my little 7-year-old nervous system, it felt like my dad doesn't love me. Now, I know that that wasn't true looking back as an adult, but at the time, that's what I encoded. And I mean, I just wanted to like run off the field crying, but I had to stay in there and finish out the half. And in those moments, it got wired up in me, oh, if you disappoint people, then that's disapproval and that's danger. That's going to be loss of love. That's going to be pain. That's going to be yelling. It's going to be humiliation. And so I carried that forward with me throughout my life where I was like, I'm not going to disappoint anybody. I'm going to overperform. I'm going to become a perfectionist. I'm going to go over above and beyond in all my relationships. It actually really interfered with my capacity to have relationships, especially romantic relationships, because it'd be like, I'm going to be everything for this person. And I could sustain that for, oh, about 3 weeks. And they'd be like, I got to break up. We can't do this. You're demanding too much of me. Person's like, what do you mean? I'm like, well, I can't disappoint you. And I run out the door. And even now in my relationship with my amazing wife, we've been together for like 15 years and still maybe she's in a certain mood. She's quiet or she seems upset or whatever reason, could have nothing to do with me. And I walk out of the kitchen and she's a little quiet when I'm leaving. And I'm like, is she upset with me? Did I disappoint you? I probably disappointed her. How did I disappoint her? It's like a program that runs in me. So what's the way out of this? Well, it's not what common advice would be, which is to just, quote, care less what they think. Because if you tell yourself to don't care what they think, that's great, but it's not going to change anything in your body. And so inside, you're still going to care very much what they think. The shift is to see that disapproval Even though I've linked it with danger, is not actually danger. Can you see that distinction? Because that will change everything. Disapproval is uncomfortable. It's not dangerous. Now, there's seeing that, and then there's actually getting that message down into your nervous system, because your conscious mind can get that right away, but your nervous system doesn't get it at the speed of the intellect. It gets it through the body and through repeated training. It's almost like retraining an animal or a dog, right? We have to expose it to whatever the thing that was scary and calm it down and do it again and again and again. So you get a sense of safety regardless of what comes your way. How do we put this into practice? What's the one thing that you can do that will really start to shift this now. We gotta look for a situation where normally you would change what you're doing. You would soften what you would say. You would hold something back. You wouldn't even have the conversation at all. And you would make sure that person's not disapproving of you as a result. So the next time you have that urge to soften what you're gonna say, don't soften what you're gonna say. Say it direct and true. Shoot straight. Say what needs to be said. And it will be very uncomfortable. And inside you might feel overwhelmed, like, oh my gosh, am I allowed to say this? Is this okay? They're gonna get so upset with me. And you have that experience, you get to the other side and you realize something, not just in your head, but in your body. I made it. I'm still actually safe. Maybe it was uncomfortable, but it certainly wasn't dangerous. And then you repeat that process because doing it once doesn't automatically get rid of all those years of programming and all the years that you lived under the influence of that programming, but it begins the shift down a new path. And there are ways to accelerate this by increasing the sense of safety In your nervous system. I call this the fear rewiring protocol because it's one thing to just tell yourself, I'm safe, but you have to know the language of the nervous system to be able to communicate to your body, to the animal that is your body, hey, you're okay, you're safe. But as long as you are softening and hiding and being overly diplomatic and overly people pleasing and not saying anything that could upset people and never saying no so no one could ever be disapproving of you, that's perpetuating this pattern and will keep you stuck in the cycle. So you have to shift away from that. You have to say the uncomfortable things. Do the uncomfortable thing, and then retrain your body to show yourself, to know on a deep level that it is safe. And we're not just talking about it's safe to say no or safe to ask for what you want or safe to disappoint somebody. The safety is not even that it's safe to be disapproved of. I mean, those are all great things, but the ultimate liberation here is that it's showing yourself it's safe to be me. It's safe to be authentically myself in the world, to say what I really think, to be who I really am, To express what's really true in me now. And that is a, is a right. It's a birthright. It's a gift. It's something amazing that you get to experience, but only when you've reclaimed that through retraining yourself, through building this new muscle. So if you take nothing else from this video, take this: disapproval is uncomfortable but not dangerous. And the only way for you to really get that And really free yourself is going to be to test it out and do the thing that feels more authentic, more expressive, more alive, more who you really are, and risk that disapproval. Because it's in that experience that you really create the freedom to be yourself. If you want more guidance on how to fundamentally shift these patterns on the deepest level, you can go to my website at www.drAziz.com and take a free 2-minute quiz that will help you discover your approval type. This is one of the 4 patterns that people run where when they're afraid of disapproval, how they override themselves. And each one requires a slightly different approach to unlock so you can become your more free, bold, authentic self. So you can take that quiz now, and then if you'd like, there's a free in-depth training that shows you how to make those changes in your nervous system for that type So you can really set yourself free, reclaim your capacity to speak and be who you really are, even if someone might think negatively, even if someone might disapprove of you, and so that you can be your full authentic self in the world no matter what.