Why You Shouldn’t Care About What Other People Think
So much of life is us focused on the impression we are making on others. You don’t ask for extra olives on your Subway sandwich because you don’t want to be perceived as greedy. The receipt you got from the grocery store doesn’t quite add up, but you don’t inquire about it because you don’t want to look cheap. When your financial advisor (you do have a financial advisor right?) says something you don’t quite understand but think you should know, you let it slide because you don’t want to look stupid.
Enough!
When you give in to these impression-action-modifiers (as I like to call them), you aren’t being who you really are, and are in effect, living a damn lie. Not just a lie–a damn lie! And for what? So people can perceive you a particular way? Well here are some truths about you and the external world.
- Most people couldn’t care less about you. Need proof? Think about all the people you’ve seen this week. How many of them do you remember? Q.E.D.
- Okay, it’s true. Some people will care about you…all of FIVE minutes! So you slipped and fell and people laughed at you. How long do you think those folks are enjoying that moment? Okay, they might laugh for like 30 seconds if it’s a really, really, really, big fall. But then 30 seconds from now, they’ll be talking about how Lebron James will win a ring before the Cavs or whether soccer will ever make it big in the United States. They will go to sleep having already completely forgotten about you. And while I used a relatively harmless example, this holds for more serious situations (e.g., if I choose this school/major/spouse/job/career, what will be people think?? EEK!).
- There is a vanishingly small minority of people out there who might care for the rest of their lives about what you do. Such people fall in one of two categories: losers, or close family and friends. If the person is a loser, then yes, he has nothing better to do than ponder your life. You shouldn’t waste your time worried about such people anyways. When it’s a close family member or friend it’s tough. For this, I will state the following: if someone really close to you doesn’t like who really are, should you be reevaluating whether this person should be in your life? More often than not, you’ll find that true close family and friends will accept the *real* you.
Hopefully I’ve galvanized you to start being more authentic. To not care about what anyone thinks is to be socially inept and maybe a tad psychotic. I’m not advocating a “screw everyone” mentality. I’m advocating a be authentic mentality. It’s a beautiful place to be. Once you get there, you won’t want to go back. Trust me.
While watching a
Studies have shown that each time you use your willpower, your ability to use your willpower in the future decreases. Our brains inherently understand this finding. Think about the last time you thought about doing the dishes, when you were comfortably sprawled on your sofa and chose to forgo doing dishes. In that instance, your brain felt that washing dishes required too much willpower from you. Ergo, the dishes didn’t get done. The last time you said “the weather’s too sucky to go to the gym today,” your brain decided that going to the gym in “sucky” weather required too much willpower. The brain is
I’ve talked about
Terry Jones was at Purdue University April 7th, 2010. He gave a talk on the ”Business of Innovation.” He is the founder of Travelocity (although he’s no longer associated with the company). Before I get into the notes. His bio is a tad misleading. Terry isn’t a “take life by the balls entrepreneur” that had an idea and ran with it. He’s actually a corporate guy. Travelocity came from American Airlines (a company Terry worked at for years), which later created Sabre (also a company Terry worked at for over 24 years). With that preface, below are my notes.
Below are my notes from the Jason Fried’s talk at Purdue University that took place March 23rd, 2010. The talk was advertised as “How to Build a Brand.” However he immediately jettisoned the idea of building a brand in favor of the idea of building a business. The notes below summarize the talk. Enjoy.
To the question, “how do you overcome the pain from relationships that crashed and burned?” I’ve always gotten the same response: “time.” This answer has never satisfied me. So I never stopped looking for a better answer. And now, I think I have one, and I would like to share.
Welcome, I'm Nwokedi Idika and a Ph.D.