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I have lived my life for many years constantly worrying about what others think of me.
Everyday it was living my life for other people instead of for myself. Always making sure that whatever I am doing is something that looks good to others. But sometimes, you can’t always please others and to some people that is okay. To some people, what others think doesn’t affect them so much. But if you’re someone like me, it can affect you a lot.
There were times in my life where someone’s opinion of me really made me re-evaluate my self. It would make me think of ways I can be better for them. It was always hard to not care about what others thought of me because I guess there was a feeling there where I felt like other people know me more than I know my self. I trusted in other’s opinions. I believed the things people would say about me even when it was negative. I let people tell me what I can and can not do because I believed in them more than I believed in my self. With that, I have lived a life constantly living my life based on what others think of me or may think of me.
If someone was to say I am not capable of such thing, I will believe it and I will re-evaluate everything I thought I knew about my self. I could be confident in an idea or something about my self but one comment can change my entire mindset.
For the past 2 years, I’ve been self-reflecting a lot and looking at the traits I really hate having and one of them is caring too much about what others think. Simply I have just gotten tired of the constant thoughts in my head such as “Are people proud of me?”. “Do people think i’m smart enough?”. “Do people find me talented enough?”. “Am I saying the right thing?”. “Do people think I am doing the right thing?”. “Do people think I have what it takes?” etc…
All of it is just very tiring to deal with but in all honestly there’s no one to blame but my self. Yes I can have some anger towards some of the people I have dealt with growing up that said bad things to me that stuck with me for many years but I am the one who let’s these words get to me. I am the one that decided to let these words live in my head for years. I am the one that let’s people affect me. I am the one letting it affect my entire life. I am the one who continues to live life worrying about if I am good enough.
I am the one who is letting my self continue living a lifestyle where I am so sensitive to criticism, judgement and opinions that people may have of me!
The way I overcame this all is when I started to realize that it’s not the people around me to blame but it’s myself. The harsh truth is that we live in a world where not everyone is going to be nice to you. Not everyone is going to tell you what you want to hear. Not everyone is going to reassure you and tell you that you’re doing great. We have to learn a new way of living where we don’t need to rely on anyone to make us feel good about ourselves, to make us feel proud of ourselves. We need to learn how to do that ourselves. We can do this by telling ourselves that we are proud of the person we’ve become and what we have accomplished so far. We can tell ourselves that we are doing great and that we are in fact good enough. What you tell yourself should be the only thing that matters. That should be enough to make you feel good about yourself. Others opinions of you shouldn’t be the only way to make you realize how special, smart, unique, successful, beautiful and talented you are. Sometimes you wont always have a person to tell you these things and by waiting and waiting for someone to do that for you, you may never get to a point where you feel good about yourself because you’re relying so much for other people to do that for you. If there’s no one telling you these things to make you feel good, don’t do what I’ve done in the past where I start overthinking a lot to a point where I started to believe that everyone was always thinking something bad about me…
Instead tell yourself what you want to hear. Don’t wait and beg for others to do it for you. Make yourself believe in the things you want to hear. By doing this, soon you will see that people are saying good things about you more often and if this doesn’t happen it’s okay because you won’t be so hurt anymore. You NOW know your worth. Regardless of the many things that people may think or say about you such as “you’re dumb” “you’re not capable” “you can’t handle it” “you’re too weak” , at this point you will be able to realize that this is not true. After the many good things you say and think about yourself, you have come to learn that every negative thing that people say, you are the opposite of that.
This will only happen after practising being kind to yourself. After learning to love yourself. Repeat positive affirmations to yourself. Make a list about the things you love about yourself and about the things you should feel proud of accomplishing.
At the end of the day, no matter what, people will always have an opinion. Everyone is entitled to have their own opinion. We can’t stop someone from having their own opinions. But because someone’s opinions are something that doesn’t make you feel great that doesn’t mean what they say about you is necessarily true. You need to have the power to believe that the negative things that people say to you are just their opinions. It’s not the truth. This is where learning how to love yourself becomes a very vital lesson because when you learn to love yourself unconditionally and learn to know your worth, every negative thing that people say to you or think about you, you will hear it but you will be able to not feel anything towards it because you have built enough love towards yourself to believe that the negative things being said about you is not true. You will realize that we can’t control what people think and what people believe. Everyone can have an opinion. However, we CAN control how we react.
We can either take negative opinions/judgement/criticism/a joke and let it ruin us to a point where it leads us to depression and self-doubt or we can just accept that it is just an opinion and tell ourselves that “no one knows my true potential. I am the only one that knows what I am truly capable of and so I will take what people say and accept that it is just an opinion. I will now move on with my life because I won’t let a simple opinion of someone who’s not ME affect my life”.
Another step into becoming a person that doesn’t care about what others think is realizing that you will never be enough for other people.
Most of us care so much about what other people think of us because we have this feeling as if we have to be good enough for them.
Especially people who we value a lot in life and people we fear disappointing.
With this, we begin to start living a life where we are constantly trying to prove ourselves to this person and whenever that’s not enough for them to be proud, we then start going on this endless cycle of doing things that solely will make this person proud.
We do everything we can to just hear them say that are proud of us or that they are happy for us even if it is things that don’t necessarily make us happy.
However, in most cases we are dealing with someone who is hard to please. Someone who hardly compliments and more so criticizes. Someone who will never make you feel good enough. You may ask why should we ever try to please someone like this but sometimes these people are our own family.
For example, growing up I remember my dad always reminding me of how important it is for me to graduate from high school and attend post-secondary before starting a family because this is something that he didn’t do. His biggest goal for me is to be able to work a job I actually enjoy that will give me a stable life because he never worked a job he genuinely enjoyed. I always thought about this and wanted this goal of his to come true. I remember there were times in high school where I thought I wasn’t going to be able to graduate but I always kept reminding myself of what my parents want for me and after thinking that I definitely pushed my self even more because I was focussed on proving my self to them. Fast forward to a few years later I did graduate from school and I did attend college. I would think that my dad would be proud and say that he is but instead he ends up asking as to why I am not working yet.
After being disappointed in myself for not being able to find work in my field of study, I felt like going for a career path that was more stable and that offers way more job opportunities. I thought that this would make me look a lot better especially to my parents. Hence, I go back to school for a different field where I was able to get a job right away after graduating. That’s great right? I thought my dad would be so happy to hear that I am working a stable job now in health care but no instead he said “why would you give up your previous career field for something so stressful?”.
At this point, this had proved to me what I always believed and that is “you will never be enough for other people so stop trying”. I have always told myself this but this was just the confirmation. No matter what you do in life to impress others, you will never be enough for them. Someone will always find something to complain about you and that is why it is time for all of us to stop caring about what others think. We need to stop having this constant urge of proving ourselves to the wrong people. It is time to stop doing things solely to just impress other people. We need to do what we want. What we think is going to make us happy. We need to do what’s going to make us proud not what’s going to make others proud.
Whenever someone believes or says you’re not capable of doing something, instead of spending all this time and putting all your effort into proving them wrong, just sit there and laugh. Laugh to yourself because you know you’re more than capable and you don’t need to show them in order to know it. Because no matter how much you try to present to them of how much you’re capable of doing something, it will never be enough in their eyes. They will move on to the next thing they can complain about you. Start doing things for you and only you. Be proud of yourself regardless of what people think. The only person you need to prove that you’re smart, strong, capable, independent and beautiful is yourself.
Living life where we are constantly thinking about what others are going to say or think is hard. It is draining. The more you do this the more you realize that you’ve been living a life that is catered to what others would want for you instead of doing things that truly makes you happy.
Once you realize how much this affects your life, I hope you will be able to move forward and become someone who lives life for you and not for other people.
Learning how to stop caring about others think was a process for me. But what made me truly stop caring about what others think is realizing that no matter how much I try to prove my self to people, they will always have an opinion. Someone will always find something to make you feel bad about yourself.
Learning how to love my self and learning how to make me feel better helped me a lot. Once I stopped looking for reassurance from others, I started to feel powerful in the way that I no longer need to hear others say they are proud of me or say that I am good enough because I know that already. I don’t need others to make me believe that.
