There’s nothing quite like the flames of adversity for forging new realizations about oneself. I’m writing this shortly after emerging from one of my job’s peak periods. It wasn’t my first of these short bursts of high intensity and pressure. It was a period of about four weeks during which complexity is at its highest, mistakes are unthinkable, and your work is under the microscope of all the higher-ups.
With this hard sprint in the rearview mirror, I wanted to reflect on my performance to see what I could learn. From a business perspective, the event was a success for the company and for me personally. But it certainly wasn’t painless. Sure, the exceptionally long hours were tough. Of course, under the hot spotlight, there were some tense exchanges. But what really got me—the times where I truly suffered—were the times I worried about what other people thought of me.
“Bitter wisdom is better than sweet folly.”
— Matshona Dhliwayo
How to care less about what others think
I’ve read probably a half dozen books covering the dangers of over attachment to the ego and how to care less about what others think. And as is hopefully evident from the fact that I’ve been writing this blog for almost three years, I take my practices of mindfulness and Stoicism seriously. Yet I could not help but slip into the pit of excessive concern for how I appeared in the eyes of others. Of course, like with any job, what others think of you matters. Worrying about it is not only natural but to a certain extent it is healthy. But the moment you lose sleep over it, as I did a few weeks ago, or the moment the worry distracts or subtracts from the work, then it’s time to inform and develop a healthier approach.
The aim of this article is to spread some insight and practical methods on how to care less about what others think of you.
Lesson one: Don’t attach your sense of self-worth to your job
With most occupations come reliable, regular assessments of our performance. We’re constantly assessed based on measurable results but also sometimes based on the subjective opinions of others (meaning performance evaluation is not 100% within our control). Assuming we’re paid a fair wage for our efforts, these assessments are worth a lot. They can mean the difference between having a steady income and not having it. But these are assessments of our performance, not assessments of our true nature. It’s easy to confuse the two. Without mindful effort, we can easily associate how well we’re doing with how well we’re being.
This post contains affiliate links, which help us keep the blog afloat. Click here for more information.
So how can we dissociate our sense of self from the work we do? To start, make sure your core values are top of mind and part of what you’re trying to accomplish each day. I recently wrote an article on how to define and develop core personal values, so I won’t go into it in depth here. You shouldn’t need too much extra impetus to get your work done each day. This is the positive side of the coin when it comes to performance assessments and the accountability your boss imposes on you: They push you to do your work.
Evaluate yourself on what truly matters
Who’s telling you to be kind in 100% of your interpersonal interactions at work? Who’s reminding you to maintain your calm, mindful awareness throughout the day? Do the quality work that contributes to a favorable performance assessment, but it’s imperative to do it while developing and displaying your own personal values. At the end of the day, look back and reflect on how well you performed in harmony with your values. Leave your performance assessment to your boss. Assess yourself based on what truly matters to you—how well you treated others, how you took care of your health, how you challenged your comfort zone.
When you examine your day through the lens of higher values, and especially if you can be proud of the actions you took to uphold those values, then two powerful benefits arise. First, reviewing the day along these lines allows you to process the day’s events in a healthy way, which reduces the likelihood of ruminating on them in the evening. Second, if you did your best work and you’re proud that you did it with calm and kindness, then you care less about what others think of you.
Another helpful ego check that puts some distance between you and what others may or may not think about you is the realization that your work is not that special. People in the past have done what you’re doing. People in the future will come along and do it better than you. Your truly special contributions in life won’t come in exchange for a wage. They happen at home. They happen in your community and through relationships.
Lesson two: Non-attachment to beliefs is the key to care less about what others think
It’s the perceived belief that someone thinks poorly of you (whether they actually do or not) that causes suffering. If someone actually verbalizes their dislike or displeasure for you, then again, this is their belief. Then, there is a certain belief you hold about yourself that becomes threatened by what others think. Perhaps you liken yourself to be a hardworking person, but you receive the impression that another person thinks you’re lazy. This disharmony between your belief about who you are and their belief about you provokes distress.
Since we cannot control the other person’s belief, we need to recognize the fundamental truth about beliefs, especially the ones comprising our sense of self, which is that they are impermanent. We should view our beliefs about ourselves the same way we view the weather. We can prefer the sunshine, but we don’t fall apart when it’s rainy. Likewise, we will inevitably develop beliefs about ourselves and even have preferences for some of them, but we cannot grasp onto them.
When we fail to realize that beliefs are essentially fluid and constantly changing, we tend to cling to them. You’re much more likely to be bothered by someone’s perception of your work ethic if you’re inflexibly clinging to that notion—demanding it to be true in all circumstances and in the eyes of all those around you. You can’t unhear or un-know what other people think of you after you’ve picked up on it. But by ceasing to grasp at your own belief about it, by playfully considering all possibilities, by allowing the clouds to temporarily hide the sun, you relieve yourself of the burden of trying to maintain an impossible consistency with something that is impermanent. This flexibility allows you to return your focus to what truly matters.
Lesson three: Process focus
Another way to care less about what others think of you is to focus on the process of what you’re doing. All great productions are an accumulation of countless minor acts done well. It’s easy to focus in the big moments—when the boss is watching, the night before a final exam—but consistently applying your best focus to the small things is what makes for greatness. This requires a certain level of discipline and mindfulness. It takes effort to care for the little things as much as the big things. We should all be more motivated to give our full attention and care to the small things because the majority of life consists of the small things.
Bringing our full awareness to even seemingly mundane activities has a twofold benefit. First, it leads to better results. In turn, the more we’re focused on producing quality work the less we’re focused on what others think. Plus, as our results improve through consistent process focus, we gain confidence. We gain trust, too, and build a reputation of competency. When mistakes become the exception and not the norm, we’re much less attached to how others view us in light of those rare mistakes.
Lesson four: People think less about you than you think, and you’re doing better than you think
Researchers David Watson and Donald Friend would call fear of what others think ‘Fear of Negative Evaluation’. They developed an assessment to measure this specific type of fear called the Fear of Negative Evaluation Scale (FNE). The FNE Scale consists of thirty statements to which respondents answer true or false. The final score indicates whether the person is mostly relaxed, has some fear of evaluative situations, or is generally fearful of what others think of them.
One study using the FNE demonstrated that people who scored high on the test (generally fearful of what others think) also gave themselves the poorest self-assessments for public speaking performance.
“Feeling fearful of negative evaluation by others causes a speaker to focus on their awkward appearance or the number of long gaps in their speech. Positive aspects of the performance, such as appearing confident or self-assured, were more commonly overlooked by this group. Understanding that a high FNE may cause internal negative bias can therefore be helpful in assuaging any doubts you might have about your ability.”
— Dr. Hannah England, Fear of judgement: why we are afraid of being judged
This demonstrates that you’re likely performing better than you think, especially if you’re exceptionally worried about what others think. As Dr. England points out above, knowing your own internal negative bias helps you get past it.
People are thinking of themselves, not you
In 1977, researchers Dunbar, Marriott, et al studied the topics of conversations and found that 78% of casual conversation content was about ourselves and our perceived beliefs. If we’re honest, we can see this to be true. When someone tells us about their recent trip to Thailand, we usually come back with the recount of the time we were there. We almost always connect what the other person is saying with our own related belief or memory.
Then, in 2018, researchers Meyer and Lieberman demonstrated through brain imaging studies that the same area of the brain which is active when we’re disengaged from demands on external focus (aka the default network mode) is also active when we’re thinking about ourselves. Therefore, thinking about ourselves is the default, or at least the two states are closely interrelated. The takeaway is that perceived judgments from others are likely to be nothing more than constructs of our own mind.
The goal is definitely not to rid yourself of any concern for what other people think of you. This would be to your detriment. The goal is to strike a healthy balance. Signs that you’re maintaining a healthy concern for what others think include engaging voluntarily in activities that make you nervous (the opposite of avoidance), when you receive criticism you’re able to parse out the helpful from the harmful and move on with your work, and your sleep quality is unaffected.
Compassion is central to caring less about what others think
When you anchor yourself in your core values, you’re less susceptible to negative evaluation because you have more important things to focus on. And in the pursuit of those higher values, if you’re focused on the process, your attention bandwidth has less free space for perceived judgments. Finally, when we acknowledge that who we are is constantly changing, negative judgments are less able to stick to us.
When reading through my notes on the book Ego Is The Enemy by Ryan Holiday, I found this striking passage and thought it would serve well as the parting advice for this article:
“Imagine if for every person you met, you thought of some way to help them, something you could do for them? And you looked at it in a way that entirely benefited them and not you. The cumulative effect this would have over time would be profound: You’d learn a great deal by solving diverse problems. You’d develop a reputation for being indispensable. You’d have countless new relationships.”
I would add that you’d also have less fear of negative evaluation and you’d generally care less about what others think of you.