Are you very sensitive to other people’s opinions? When someone says something negative about you, does it usually hurt a lot? When someone thinks badly of you, do you tend to mull over it incessantly? Then it’s crucial for you to learn how to not care what people think.
It’s smart to take other people’s opinions into consideration and use whatever you find valuable in them. However, if you care too much what others think of you, it’s very easy to get hurt, very hard to do what you want in life and very likely to end up unhappy.
The good news is that you can learn how to not care what people think of you, and you can desensitize yourself to other people’s opinions.
As a confidence coach, I’ve helped many individuals achieve this. I’d like to share with you and prescribe several of the practical actions that helped them the most.
1. Understand Your Reasons Clearly
Most negative opinions directed at you that you’ll hear from others concern things you chose to do, or to believe: “The career you picked is stupid”, “That sweater you’re wearing looks awful”, “Your ideas about marriage are wrong”, and so on.
People who are hypersensitive to such statements or views typically have a weak sense of why they do certain things or why they believe certain things. So when others evaluate these things negatively, it matters a lot to them.
In contrast, if you know exactly why you do something or why you believe something, if you understand your motivations clearly and you know you’re not just acting on impulse or following the heard, it’s much harder to care what other people think.
This is why one of the top advices I offer in teaching others how to not care what people think is to develop a good understanding of their own reasons. It’s like putting armor on you and making your choices impenetrable to naive criticism from the outside.
2. Make Opinions Relative
William Shakespeare once said (in Hamlet, to be more precise): “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so“.
I completely agree with this. Opinions are all relative. They don’t reflect reality; they merely reflect people’s subjective perception of reality.
So the fact a person thinks your hair looks good and another that your hair looks bad has little to do with reality and a lot to do with personal taste. And you might as well follow your own tastes when it comes to your own life.
This is a key idea that you can use to desensitize yourself to people’s perceptions.
When others say bad things about you, remind yourself of the relativity of human evaluations, about the fact they are subjective, not objective. I can vouch from personal experience that this will help you noticeably to calm down and stop feeling bad.
3. Expose Yourself to Adverse Opinions
It’s difficult to care what others think of you if you are used to a wide range of opinions being thrown at you on a regular basis.
For instance, I regularly publish articles on various websites, and in many of them I express some hard-to-swallow ideas. So in the articles’ comments section I get a lot of comments like “This is awesome”, “Brilliant article” but I also get many comments like “This is retarded” or “You’re an idiot”.
And after a period of time, I got used to it. I got used to the praise and I also got used to the ruthless criticism. I still enjoy the praise, but I don’t care about the unconstructive criticism anymore. Now, it actually amuses me.
The lesson here is to stop avoiding hearing adverse opinions and expose yourself to them instead. The more of them you hear, the easier you will take them.
Meet a variety of people, make conversation with them, be genuine and talk openly about your life, beliefs and preferences, even if they may not agree with them. It’s a great way to learn to enjoy appreciation and ignore condemnation.
4. Increase Self-Esteem, Decrease Approval-Seeking
Something I noticed early on is that almost without exception, caring too much what people think is only a symptom of a deeper problem.
This problem is that these oversensitive individuals don’t hold themselves in high regard and they’re perpetually concerned with the approval of others. And in order to get good results, they eventually need to work on this deeper issue and fix it.
Since there is a lot to say on this topic, I have a special presentation for you, in which I discuss how to build self-esteem, stop approval-seeking and gain social confidence. Click here to check it out right now.
Whether it’s learning how to not care what others think or any other positive attitude, it’s always by working from the inside out that you get the best results; from the deeper issues to the surface ones.
Caring too much how others see you is a problem created in your thinking. And ultimately, in adjusting your long-term thinking patterns lies the solution.
This is not hard, but it’s not easy either. It’s just a psychological process, which as long as it’s aided by the right advice, will happen effectively and it will not only transform your emotional reactions, but your entire life.
Image courtesy of bejealousofme
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hey Eduard, thank you for this wonderful article and for your great blog. It so happens that at this moment I’m trying really hard to not care what other people think, as I am trying to switch positions within the same company and I am faced with mixed reactions from my colleagues, ranging from surprise to skepticism and indignation. This is a promotion and also a new career path for me, because i’m not just changing positions, but also professional fields. This means it will be a great challenge, and even more so because I have to deal with these reactions of the people I work with, and I will have to be twice as strong to achieve my goals and be successful on my new path.
Anyway, I will try to keep in mind the strong points that you’ve made here and hopefully spare a couple of sleepless nights 🙂
Looking forward for your next article!
Good one, but i am of d opinion dat before u stop careing about what people say, one need to make his attitude agreeable with ethical norms so as to avoid behaviors dat are not in tune with nature .whats ur take on dat.
Fair enough. But you need to keep in mind that ethical norms are relative and some of them are simply not practical. So one way or another, if you think for yourself and act in your own interest, even from a position of respect for others, you will piss some people off. It’s a part of life.
So much wisdom in this article right here… I had been working on point 1 myself but will take the other points into serious consideration… also nice knowing other people struggle with the same thing haha. Regards, Gus