Are you used to constantly worrying about what might have been thought of you? Sometimes this anxiety turns into fear and painful dependence on someone else's assessment? You can not get rid of someone else's unfriendly comment in your address? I have good news for you. There is a simple technique that will allow you to quickly don't give a damn about someone else's opinion of you.
No, this does not mean turning into a beast, which does not consider the opinions of others and does what it wants. This means eliminating unnecessary and unnecessary concern about the unfriendly assessment of others, which, believe me, anyone in life has to face.
In this article, I will not offer 35 miraculous ways to stop worrying about someone else's opinion, which you will forget within 10 minutes after reading. I will not tell you that you do not always control the opinions of others about your person. I will not write whole paragraphs that other people's impression of you may be biased, prone to instant addiction. I'm not going to convince you that most people are fixated on themselves, and they often don’t care. Some of these tips are too obvious, despite being true, while others have repeatedly understood my articles, for example, how to learn to say no, how to become confident in themselves, how to react to criticism.
Many people already know that you need to strive to be yourself, scoring on what others think. They are well aware that other people can think anything, projecting their personal complexes and fears into the outside world, evaluating everyone through their muddy prism. Nevertheless, all this knowledge is broken about the first acts of social interaction: a business meeting, a friendly party - whatever. "Suddenly I am an uninteresting interlocutor?", "And if she decided that I was stupid?", "Probably everyone thought that I was a boring bore." The 100 psychologists' tips that you read in the books prove ineffective in cases of social stress.
Therefore, in this article, without unnecessary prefaces, I will give just one single simple technique that you can immediately try to stop worrying because of the opinion of another person. You will be able to apply it at any time when you encounter social anxiety. Someone this technique will help him overcome. And thanks to her, someone will learn a lot about themselves, resolve their long-standing fears and contradictions, learn to accept themselves as they are. This is pure practice, not theory. And it will take you a little more time than it takes to accumulate saliva in your mouth and spit.
Description of technology
It means so. Imagine a standard scenario of anxiety due to someone else's opinion. In a conversation with that pretty girl, you were crumpled and worried, without interest in fascinating conversations and intelligent reasoning. And now you are worried that she might think that you are a bore, and you have an idea only about trivial things.
What do most people start doing in this situation? To act intuitively, which in fact does not lead to any result. They meticulously sifted through all the events in the head, the dialogues, trying to remember those moments when they were in a favorable light before others: "Perhaps, not everything is so bad, and I managed to seem smart and educated?" But this tactic failed initially. All these endless disputes with oneself, attempts at complacency only increase anxiety. And to get rid of it, you must do something directly opposite to this.
So, select at least five minutes of free time. Try it now. Put your thoughts in order. You can take a few full and slow breaths. Or meditate a couple of minutes.
And after that, to do what you least want to do: to imagine in your mind that the person, because of whose opinions you are experiencing, has already thought the worst of you. Moreover, to present it as if it really happened.
"She has already decided that I am a complete stupid," "They all realized that I was absolutely not an interesting and boring interlocutor." It is important not to feel sorry for yourself, bring it to the extreme: "These people now think that I am just an utter idiot."
Here you probably read and were horrified. Many of you have decided that this is the most terrible advice that can be given to a person in such a situation. And so "lame" self-esteem, and we finish it even further, trampling deep into the dirt. But no, friends, do not rush to close the article, now I will explain why and how it works.
Please exert a little attention and watch the train of thought. Information will be a little "revealing", but I do not want to lose you.
Swan song of our self-conceit
Where does this plaintive song of offended self-conceit come from? The superficial observer will say: "This concern occurs when our expectations about how we should look in other people's views (which is Freud called the Super-I, the ideas of the" ideal self ") do not correspond to reality."
I will answer the following superficial observer: "Well, I see that you are very clever, but did not take into account one simple thing: this concern arises if our expectations of what we should be do not correspond to our ideas about the opinions of other people. And this opinion is again based on their personal subjective ideas about us. "
Everyone understands so well that other people's thoughts about us do not always correspond to reality. But our understanding of their opinions also does not correspond to what they actually think. And their view of us, in turn, is also not true!
Probably already confused. But now I will explain.
It turns out that anxiety due to the opinions of those around it is a discrepancy between one illusion (Super-I, the illusion of the “idealized self” and the image in society that we are trying to create) of another illusion, which is based on another illusion! In short, friends, these are devils! The illusion on the illusion and the illusion chases!
We imagined how we should look in the eyes of other people and we are upset when it seems to us that others refuse to believe in our personal fantasies!
Moreover, this heap of illusions gives rise to quite real anxiety, because of which people choose professions they dislike, communicate with personalities they dislike, live a life they don’t like! The scale of this disaster is colossal. And all because of some kind of illusion, moreover, an illusion in a cube!
Exercise, which I taught you, is not intended to drown you in the pool of self-criticism. His task is to destroy in one fell swoop this house of anxiety, which you have erected in your mind. It is like cold water that spills over your head and makes you wake up. I called this technique “lightning,” because it, like an instantaneous bright flash, accelerates the darkness of illusion, like a lightning bolt, it hits the very heart of your anxiety.
All these wonderful tips about being self-centered, that the opinions of other people about you are concentrated only in their minds and is only their personal business, are no longer a theory for you. They become a pure experience, an immediate experience of the heart, and not of the mind!
And how does this work?
One of my biggest discoveries in the field of combating fears and anxiety is the fact that we are afraid, as a rule, of some probabilistic event that could happen, and could not happen. Usually such experiences begin with the words: "What if?" But when we perceive an event as something that has already happened with a 100% probability, this greatly sobers us. Because our consciousness is moving from the mode of fantasy about a non-existent phenomenon (or existing only potentially) into a mode of constructive planning of actions about what happened after the fact. "It has already happened, what will I do with it?" This, you see, tunes in a constructive way.
And when, reluctantly, you decided that some people had already thought the worst of you, you start to think of it as a realized phenomenon: “What next?”
You notice that it was only cold to accept this fact, as everything appeared in a completely different light! You observe that your reaction to this bitter thought was not as terrible as you initially imagined. "Well, thought and thought, so what's next?" - you think more calmly.
The fear and anxiety that you experienced just a couple of minutes ago may seem ridiculous from the height of that exaggerated extreme that you consciously created in your mind. You didn’t feel sorry for yourself trying to soften the tones, but immediately slashed your shoulders, “Yes, she decided 100% that I’m just a complete moron.” Such a method immediately shows that others think of you is not at all the same as what you think of yourself ("Of course, I do not consider myself a complete jerk").
(A painful dependence on someone else’s opinion comes from the fact that we begin to identify the opinion of us with what we are for ourselves. We, as Nietzsche used to say, try to convince people that we are good, intelligent, noble, so that then we ourselves believe this opinion! Therefore, when people think about us badly, we may feel that we are really bad. The trick I described above helps us to sharply distinguish between these two things. It is like a hammer that breaks an illusory identity .)
Moreover, this approach helps to immediately see the apparent limited subjectivity of someone else's assessment of your person. Let's say you admit that someone could think about you the most terrible things, for example, that you are the lowest and meanest person in the world and deserve Hell fire. But you understand: no matter how terrible the thoughts of others are about you, it’s just someone else’s thoughts, a fantasy of others. Yes, that's understandable. But thanks to this exercise, you understand it on a deep, emotional level, on a level that allows you to make this truth your experience and practice.
Yes, someone thought horrible things about you.
So what? Indeed, so what? You never know what people think about you! You will not please everyone! That's right, you will not please everyone. But only now your mind is ready to soak up this truth like a sponge and dissolve it in yourself.
Self-esteem is nonsense
The goal and purpose of this approach is neither self-humiliation nor self-praise. His goal is to learn to accept what is. I was always a little stupid with the question "How to raise my self-esteem?"
Much more important questions for me are "how to become better" and "how to learn to accept yourself." Each of us is a person with a set of advantages and disadvantages. We can remove some weaknesses, and develop some merits. With other qualities, alas, we can do nothing, it remains to accept it. What does it have to do with how we evaluate ourselves? We are what we have. And a person who does not know how to accept himself must learn this, that's all. His self-esteem has nothing to do with it.
Self-esteem can be the lever that other people push on to control you through criticism or flattery. It can become a thorn that causes burning shame and nervous anxiety about the opinions of others.
The exercise in this article teaches you to accept yourself. Why? Because mentally you have already allowed the worst that a man could think of you. Therefore, you can easily accept something not so terrible, but more realistic. "That man thought of me that I am very boring." Either this is true, or not true, or both. Most often it is both. "Yes, of course, I am not the most boring person. There are people who are not bored with me. But I must admit that I do not have the skill to communicate on topics that are not interesting for me." So what? Great tragedy? I think people in their lives face far greater problems than understanding their inability to participate in small talk.
Self-criticism and self-praise deprive you of the possibility of any maneuver. You either focus on nibbling yourself, or revel in your brilliance in society. I do not want to do anything. But acceptance opens room for action, oddly enough. Let's say you accepted the thought that you are not the most brilliant conversationalist. What's next? Then you can either develop communication skills if they are important to you, or score on them if they are not important. What an experience to worry about.
Often, in pursuit of recognizing other people, we forget what is really important to us. We can stubbornly seek the respect and friendship of those people who do not play and are not able to play any role in our life. Why do we do this? Sometimes for the notorious blow-up of self-esteem. Sometimes striving for universal admiration for us becomes something of a competition, victories in which should remind us of our dignity and brilliance. And sometimes we just do it by inertia: once we started to seek someone's friendship, we continue to do it, despite all the failures.
But it is worth us, in the end, to achieve this, as we cease to appreciate it, although sudden failures on the social front, acts of someone else’s disapproving attitude are still capable of demoralizing us greatly. We cease to cherish the love and respect of those people who value us the way we are, whose location we don’t need to achieve by all means: our close friends, relatives, while desperately seeking a friendly assessment of some random colleagues at work.
This magical exercise allows you to stop and ask yourself: "Hey, wait, is this opinion really important to me?"
But what if it turned out to be really important? A person who is very important to you, does not reciprocate your affinity for him, your claims of friendship with him? If this really upsets you, then this is absolutely normal. We are human and tend to get upset about such things. Take this pain with all your heart with gratitude, because it will make you stronger. Do not try to deny it and drive away from you. Let her be. Carry it in yourself for a while, if necessary. But not sadly bowed his head, but solemnly and proudly - as a banner, as a noble sign of distinction. And then it will pass. After all, everything passes. People who will hurt you will surely be disappointed; you cannot get away from it. But let such people be as small as possible in your life.
