#spirituality #selfdevelopment #personalitytransformation
How to stop worrying about what others think of you? It’s not just about anxiety, it’s about something that heavily weighs on us, taking away the joy, freedom, creativity, and growth. You go to bed, take a shower, wake up, have breakfast, work, attend meetings, hang out with friends – and you think about others’ opinions. You constantly find yourself in a state where you spend all your energy not on doing something, creating, developing, or being creative, but on pondering what others think about you.
Interesting fact: you spend way more energy on this than on your own development. Imagine: if you spend 1 unit of thinking about what others think of you, it’s the same as gaining 5 additional units of self-development.
I’m going to tell you about the important actions and factors that are the solution to this problem. It’s crucial not to deceive yourself here and acknowledge that you’ve been living in this state for a long time, many years, and it’s not “something” that appeared yesterday and has already disappeared. And even if it has disappeared today, it’s not “something” that won’t come back tomorrow. It’s very important to understand the comprehensive solution.
Stopping the thoughts about others isn’t about going to dance; it’s not getting into a state where you have to talk about something else; it’s not about getting involved in something where you have to be 100% focused. I suggest not going down that road: it’s a very difficult, dragging path and, in reality, not genuine. It’s like you’re endlessly fighting with yourself – the struggle and actions to resolve this issue become addictive.
The first thing to do is understand that absolutely everyone can have their own opinion that differs from yours. Remember that. Of course, we can’t agree with everything, especially if it crosses all your value orientations and boundaries. But you need to allow yourself to believe that the person has the right to have such an opinion, even if it’s very bad. I’m not asking you to agree with it, just accept it.
Second, realize that you don’t always actually know others’ opinions, their conclusions, their thought process, and understanding. If you think about another person, it doesn’t mean they’re thinking about you.
To really understand this, you need to be in an open dialogue with that person and at least enter a state of freedom and lack of expectations. Most likely, if you’re thinking about others’ opinions, it’s very difficult for you to do this, so allow yourself to believe that you just don’t fully know the truth. You might not understand another person’s truth, especially their thinking. The most important thing to do (what will lead you to incredible growth, where the question of others’ opinions doesn’t even arise) is never to judge people in any situation.
Judging another person increases your heightened state of anxiety about your own day and others’ opinions hundreds of times.
There’s an incredible practice you can do every day throughout your life. It definitely leads a person not just to an expanded perception but also to an unusual calm and resolution of this issue, where you’re in harmony with yourself, your actions; where you try to listen and truly understand what others are conveying, and realize that in our lives, people often bring very bad things.
This practice is to take a little time every day and reflect on how you treated others throughout the day.
It gives a feeling of incredible lightness, freedom, creativity, and one of the most important things a person needs – strong and genuine self-love. It’s like a person wants to do everything only for themselves, but they don’t love themselves – I mean real love.
This practice is about how every day you reflect on your attitude towards others throughout the day: what did you think of them? What did you do in relation to any person – at work, in the family, in the store, on the street, with acquaintances, friends, on the phone, in person, online, on Zoom? How did you spend your day with regard to others? Did you bring them goodness, help, love, compassion, or expectations, aggression, malice, trauma, anger, power, irritation, rudeness, did you do something to spite them?
Even if at first, you can’t agree that you should have acted differently, start doing this reflection every day. You’ll feel a completely different state in a few months: one that leads to real human scaling, true development. And this practice – without the desire to change anything, just doing it – leads to incredible results. Try it for at least a short period: a few weeks, months, even years – and you’ll see incredible changes.