Why do you care what others think?
My client was feeling massively let down because one of her clients (who she helps run a big business) had not appreciated all the hard work she had done in the past year, but only focused on a few smaller mistakes she had made.
It had been an incredibly hard year due to COVID, as my client did not have access to the usual resources, and so wasn’t able to do her work perfectly. As with so many other people, she was forced to just do her best within her possibilities, and she felt her client did not acknowledge this.
She was feeling really low, disappointed and let down. She struggled carrying on with her job, and had a lot of self doubt and also resentment towards the businessman. She felt super stuck and overwhelmed, with a knot in her stomach and her heart constricted.
There were two ways I helped her feel better and move on, and I want to break it down for you because many of us have been in the same situation these last couple of years, regardless of our professions.
First of all, we went through different conversations she’s had with this dude, and it came across that he has totally different values than her. So considering she actually thinks he’s a bit of a dick, why does she need his approval in the first place? And why are we giving him the power over our emotions? Giving people power over how we feel makes us feel hopeless and powerless. We cannot control how other people think about us.
If I say to you I don’t like the way you dance, you can crawl back to your bar stool in shame and drown your inadequacy in tequila, or you can tell me I’m an idiot because you never asked for my opinion AND your moves always attract the people you fancy. It’s in your power to decide what to do with my comment. You cannot make me like the way you dance. And why would you care?
There’s another aspect of this, and that is that during the pandemic a lot of us felt out of our depth, and often operated from a flight and fight mode. Stress and anxiety make us feel unsafe. The number one human need that comes just after literally surviving (water, food, shelter) is the need to feel safe and secure. When we’ve been in fight and flight mode and hence feeling unsafe for a longer period, it’s very hard to get a good perspective on things and differentiate friends from foes, and standing up to people. So if this is you, you want to sprinkle a good dose of self-compassion in there before you attempt to assess your own behaviour.
Secondly: Would she have acted any differently could she go back in time, just to please him? COULD she even have done anything differently?
If you run a restaurant during a war, and you can’t serve rice pudding because there is no rice available - are you going to beat yourself up when people complain about it? Or are you cool about it because you make the best with what you’ve got - the least imperfect solution, for example using oats? And considering you’ve been thrown into a situation no-one knew how to handle (be it a war or a pandemic), what’s the upside in beating yourself up for not handling it perfectly 100% of the time?
I would really like you to answer these questions for yourself, because they apply to all aspects of life, how we handle other’s opinion of us, and our own opinion of ourselves when we’re not able to perform at 100%.
My client left our session able to breathe more freely, and with the realisation she has more power than she thinks. It’s an ongoing process because like many of us she’s unproportionally hard on herself, but slowly she’s learning to have more compassion, and understands WHY her brain does what it does.
If you are going through something similar, I can help you. If you want to learn how to deal with these sorts of situations in a way you can stay neutral, happily let others be wrong about you, and not give a f***, reach out for a free consult :) It’s a process, but once you master this skill, you’ll only continue to get better at it, growing your confidence and ability to cope with ANYTHING.
Have a great weekend not caring about what ANYBODY thinks about you
In your corner,
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