Caring what people think is like being addicted to smoking cigarettes.

See with smoking, the illusion is you feel an urge to smoke, and then having a cigarette relieves the urge. So you naturally assume that smoking removed the urge feeling. But it’s the other way around.

No one ever starts with an urge to smoke. Smoking comes first, then the urge follows. In that order. So smoking causes the urge for the next cigarette. It doesn’t relieve the feeling at all. That’s an illusion.

When you care what other people think, and then act to relieve yourself of that worry by people-pleasing, or practicing conversations in your head, or trying to justify yourself to others, you feel like your actions relieve of your worry (assuming you’ve won them over).

But like smoking, the worrying feeling was actually caused by your previous people pleasing behaviour! And who knows when it started?? Probably before your earliest memories.

It doesn’t matter when it started.

The key here is to realise that when you act on feelings of worry about what others think, you set yourself up to worry even more in the future. You create the craving.

Like with quitting cigarettes, when you quit the behaviour and resist the urges, refusing to act on those “commands” in your head, you eventually lose the craving over time. Stick with it, and eventually you don’t want to smoke ever again.

So if you really want to stop worrying what others think, you must first resist the urge to engage in behaviours that try to control what they think. This means any actions where your motive is to manage how others think or feel about you, to change their opinion of you, or to manage your overall reputation.

People pleasing, practicing conversations in your head, explaining and justifying your actions to others, lying and pretending to avoid conflict, ensuring others see what you’ve done so they’re impressed, being falsely agreeable, hiding away from people, helping and giving advice without being asked…

These are all behaviours that aggravate your addiction to validation and approval from others. The list goes on and on. And your list will be unique to you.

Obviously, there is an awareness dilemma here: how to know when you’re about to engage in addictive behaviours, and how to stop yourself from doing them?

To assist you with this, I’ve crafted a checklist of questions that you can ask yourself when you start worrying what someone else thinks of you (before you decide on what you’re going to do about the worry).

Make a commitment: you’re only allowed to act on worries about what others think of you AFTER you’ve gone through this entire checklist as honestly as you can.

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Is it true?

Before you even consider taking any kind of action, be honest with yourself: is it true that the person I’m worried about will actually take the time and energy to form an opinion of me?

Or in other words: am I really that special?

For someone to think or feel something about you, they need to give a fuck about your existence. Does the person you’re worried about place you high in their priorities? Are you really so important to them that they’d rather sit around thinking things about you than dealing with everything else going on in their lives?

Is it just ego that makes you think you’re so special that everyone is thinking about you all the time?

And even if they are, where’s the evidence that they’ll think something negative? You must have a low opinion of them to automatically assume they will have negative, malicious and judgmental views of you.

If you come to the conclusion that it’s actually unlikely this person will think much about you, or that even if they do that it will be negative, then NO FURTHER ACTION REQUIRED.

Move on with your life as if everything is fine.

If you’re absolutely certain they will be thinking something bad about you, move onto the next question…

Is there a genuine threat?

A negative opinion is not the same thing as a genuine risk to your safety.

This is what I call “Brick Theory”. If I throw a brick at your head, it will harm you no matter what you think of it. It will harm you even if you don’t know that I’ve thrown it. It will harm you even if you don’t believe bricks will harm you.

Bricks are objectively harmful.

But if I, say, throw an insult at you, it now depends on how you receive it.

If you don’t hear me say it, no harm done. Unlike a brick, you need to know it’s coming to be affected by it.

If you don’t understand what I’ve said, no harm done, e.g. I insult you in a language you don’t know.

If you have a robust sense of humour and don’t take other people’s thoughts personally, you might even find the insult funny, in which case yet again no harm done.

For you to be harmed, you must interpret what I’ve said in a way that hurts your feelings. Without you doing that, I can’t hurt you with words.

So when you’re worried that someone has a negative opinion of you, ask: “Will they actually throw a brick at me over this?” In other words: will you actually get fired, or have your YouTube channel taken down, or get evicted from your house, or get violently assaulted, or have your children taken away, etc?

Or will they have these thoughts and feelings and that’s it?

If there’s no genuine threat, NO FURTHER ACTION REQUIRED. Let them hate you. It doesn’t make a difference to your life.

Another way to ask this question: if I didn’t know someone had a negative opinion of me, would I notice anything change in my life?

Most of the time, caring what others think requires knowledge that they could be thinking something. If you don’t know, your life remains unaffected.

Putting it bluntly: I can almost guarantee that right now there is someone in your life who has a negative opinion of you that you have no awareness of – you wouldn’t even suspect them of feeling this way – and yet nothing bad is happening to you as a result of it.

What is most likely to happen if I didn’t do anything about this?

So, let’s say you are pretty sure something objectively harmful will happen as a result of these negative thoughts and feelings they have about you. You now feel an urge to do something defensive to protect yourself.

Before you act, consider the impact of doing nothing at all.

Oftentimes, situations are best left alone to sort themselves out. Time is the great healer. There are many problems that are solved by leaving them alone and just waiting. Is this one of those?

For example, if your wife is mad at you for something you can’t fix, talking to her about it to try sooth her anger is probably just going to provoke her further. She’s said her piece, and the damage is done. Just leave it. She can’t stay mad forever.

Or when somebody makes accusations about you online, trying to “cancel” you. Responding only validates them and fuels further interest and conversation. If you go radio-silent, the mob will eventually move on to someone more interesting.

So before you do SOMETHING, make sure you’ve rationally calculated what doing NOTHING would lead to.

Would acting on this be counter-productive?

As a follow-on from the previous question, this is perhaps the single most important question you can ask.

I always say, the true tragedy of Nice Guy Syndrome is that all the strategies backfire on you. People pleasing causes the very problems it’s trying to solve!

All too often, when someone is worried what others think, they then engage in behaviour that only makes things worse in the long run. They’re short-sighted with their strategies, and don’t realise they’re self-sabotaging.

If you apologise when someone wrongly accuses you of something, just to make them forgive you for your imagined crime, it only confirms their suspicion (and the suspicions of anyone watching) that you did in fact do it. You just pleaded guilty to being a bad person! How’s that helpful to your long term future?

Even when you defend yourself against unfair accusations, you simply confirm that there’s something you need to defend! If you treat false accusations as insane nonsense that must be ignored, you set the frame that the accusation is complete bullshit that doesn’t even deserve a response.

If you give someone excuses like “I’m sick” to reject their invitation to the party (instead of saying “I don’t want to”), they will know you’re giving fake excuses and will resent you for it. You’re not as convincing as you think you are.

If you bend over backwards and sacrifice yourself to impress your boss, he will build contempt for you rather than admiration, and see you as a slave rather than an asset.

If you try to prevent your partner getting upset, you kill the romantic tension and eventually destroy the relationship completely. “Dead bed” is built on the avoidance of conflict.

The reason I challenge you to consider doing absolutely nothing about other people’s opinions is because defensiveness – justification, people pleasing, avoidance – just makes people lose respect for you, and even more importantly, makes you lose respect for yourself.

How can I test my assumptions: what’s the LEAST I can safely do?

After all of these questions are answered, if you STILL think you need to do something about other people’s opinions, then at least ask yourself what the smallest amount of action is, rather than going all in with a nuclear attack.

My prediction is that if you slow down and restrain yourself – do less, react slower, allow them to actually start doing something harmful before responding etc. – you’ll notice that you’ve been overdoing it your whole life.

In my experience – in my own life as well as witnessing my coaching clients – the general rule is that doing NOTHING about how other people view you is the BEST approach. Let them hate you. Let them misinterpret you. Let them talk shit about you behind your back.

Over time, people will notice that you’re never defensive.

Defensiveness Makes You Unlikable

The great tragedy with people who worry what others think and get defensive about it is they don’t realise how self-sabotaging it is. Defensiveness is unattractive, impossible to respect, and makes you feel like shit about yourself. It’s a no-win response.

Ironically, if you really do care what others think and want them to like you, then getting defensive (i.e. trying to make them like you) is the absolute LEAST effective thing you could do.

The very best thing you could do would be to roll with it; let it slip past you; assume nothing anyone thinks, feels or says has anything to do with you personally; just stay on track regardless of the reactions you may or may not cause.

This does not mean you should allow people to cross your boundaries. In fact, setting and enforcing boundaries is a great way to train yourself in not caring what others think by deliberately upsetting them with your assertiveness.

Being non-defensive simply means you never do anything to change their mind about you. Boundaries are for protecting yourself and your loved ones, and demanding respect from people. But you don’t use boundaries to make people like you!

Remember, you create fear by acting afraid. You worry what people think because you get defensive. Stop defending yourself from attacks that are not objectively harmful, and notice how much less you care about their opinions over time!

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