Can You STOP Caring What Other People Think of You?

At least if I'm not trying, I can live with this idea that if I did try, I could be really successful. If I did try, I could make the team, I could build that business, I could find love.

My biggest worry for the future is that I will continue to hold myself back because of my paralyzing fear of judgment.

So what is that fear? I suppose it's really a fear of latent potential. It's a weird fear, really, when you think about it, because it suggests that we do think we have a lot of potential. If you truly think that you have no potential, that's not really a fear you have. It's just your reality. That fear is a fear that I will not become all that I can become. I will not do in my life all the things that I am capable of doing. So it's kind of interesting because embedded in that, there is actually some belief.

I also think it's a fear of rejection, right? When you think about it, because if what's holding her back is a fear of judgment, from other people. She feels that if she expresses her true self and her true potential, she will be rejected for it. Or somebody will say, you,'re ridiculous. You know, you're not good enough. Why do you think you can do that? And so that is the sort of criticism and rejection from other people is probably the emotion. It feels like judgment, but it's actually a fear of not being accepted.

Well, you can It's this idea of the unhatched egg. If you keep telling yourself there is something special in this egg that can hatch, but you never hatch the egg, you can keep telling yourself there is something special. When this hatches, there's something special there. But if you break the egg open and there's nothing there, then you don't just lose the ending. that you thought you could have, you also lose the hope. And a lot of people, there's this terrifying fear of the rejection because.

At.

Least if I'm not trying, I can live with this idea that if I did try, I could be really successful. If I did try, I could make the team, I could build that business, I could find love. But, and it's the same is true when you go out and you see someone you're attracted to, if you never speak to them, you can go home with this fantasy in your mind that remains intact. That had you spoken to them, something could have come from that. But the closure of going over to that person and saying something, and then that person's not interested, that's a kind of closure that most people don't want, because now they have to relinquish the fantasy. They can't go home and say, if I spoke to that person, I. You never know what could have happened. No, no, no. You found out. The sad part about it is in preserving the fantasy, we kind of missed the point about what actually gives us potential. The thing that gives us potential is experience and competence, which comes from actually doing something enough times and getting in the reps. It's like going to the gym. The thing that gives you the body is the reps. And you, you can't, if you stay at home and dream about the body you could have, you're not getting in the reps that are actually going to create that body in business, if you keep wondering whether your idea is a good one instead of going out there and actually exposing it to the light of day and people's opinions, you're not actually getting the feedback you need to turn what is probably an average idea into a good and maybe even a great idea. My jiu jitsu trainer said last week, said something really cool. He said, the difference between the good and the great is that people who are great are willing to stay good for longer. And it's such a mindset shift from greatness being something inspired and something that you keep in your head as this kind of latent potential fantasy of one day being great. No, greatness is much more boring than that. Greatness is just you're willing to remain good for long enough that eventually you're the last one in the room and you end up being great because you stayed in the room long enough. And for that person, my biggest non-insight, would be that that fear of rejection is making you miss the point entirely of where your potential actually comes from. Your potential comes from going and iterating over and over and over again. And if you can be the kind of person that can ignore to a large extent the short to medium term results of that iterating and those reps and instead just see the trajectory that you're on as a result of doing those reps that allows you to kind.

Of.

Kind of almost circumvent all of those short term fears of being rejected and instead just focus on creating a trajectory in your life. that makes interesting results inevitable.

There was a wonderful line. I was reading Haruki Murakami, the novelist, book about writing the other day, and he talked about how he's always been inspired by this quote from another writer who said, I approached a desk every day without hope and without despair. And both of those, he says, are dangerous. He says, your hope is damaging in itself in that it leads you to grandiosity and despair. that you think you're terrible, you're useless, but he says more like a craftsman, I'm coming to chop wood every day without hope and without despair. And I think that it's the expectations, it's the dreaming, it's the idealizing that makes you feel so paralyzed. What if it doesn't live up to that? What if everyone sees it and judges me as this? But a woodcutter doesn't need to think like that if you're chopping wood.

That's so good. and you can almost see it through the lens of arrogance. Like, what special right do you have to show up and do great work just by being you? Like, it's not. It doesn't. That it doesn't work like that. It. It's much more boring than that. And. And I think we've learned that lesson from doing videos over the years. You know, we've just. Jameson, you and I met, what, 10 years ago? And pretty much since that point, we've made a video every week since. And there are for sure videos we've liked more than others. And there's ones that we look back on and we go, that stands the test of time. And there's others we look back on and it's like, I wouldn't put that out again. But those are reps. Every week was a rep. And if you get too precious about the reps, you just, you're really actually missing the thing that's going to lead to your potential. So, very, it's a very relatable fear. Hopefully, we can, we've made it much more pedestrian for people to just go and do things instead of being so analytical about the results of what they do.

The last thing I want to add to this, as somebody who absolutely suffers with a fear of rejection and judgment and not being liked, Working on it, but definitely suffer with it. I think remembering that, what's that quote? Which is like, you would worry less about how much people thought about you if you realize how seldom they do. And your fear of judgment only comes from a place of you focusing on yourself to a degree that nobody else ever will. And if you surround yourself with loving people who accept you, There's actually a lot of room for you to just be yourself and explore and play and make mistakes. And people will not care about your mistakes and they will not feel your embarrassment 5% as much as you do. And sometimes we make the mistake of thinking that it's just as big in our heads as it is in other people's and it stops us from doing things.

But... And even the person that says that, you know, even the person that points out, I don't like that thing you did this week wasn't that good. That piece of writing, that speech, that whatever, that piece of work, anything. If someone says, I don't like that video you just did, okay, fine. It's not my, it's not going to be my best. Like my best is coming. My best is always coming. You're commenting on something that's already history. to me. I'm already better than yesterday. So it's. We get so hung up on what someone thinks of our practice run. I don't like at a certain point, I don't give a what you think about my practice. Like, every. Even you make. Every time you make something, it's practice for the next thing you make. So when you're judging it, that's fine. You're. You're judging a piece of practice. My best is always coming. So, even the critics, you have to look at your critics as judging a practice, not judging the best of what you'll ever do. Wait, before YouTube sends you down the rabbit hole of watching raccoon videos or videos of large crocodiles on Florida golf courses, I have something that will help your love life more than these things. And it's at whyhe'sgone.com if you want to know why. Someone faded out. Why? They were giving you attention and all of a sudden they stopped. This guide shows you. Go to whyhe'sgone.com and then enjoy your baby bear videos.