People’s Opinions Are None of Your Business

Someone’s opinion may have nothing to do with you

From the day we are born, we have been taught to value the way other people view us. This isn’t just in an explicit sense, like when your teachers tell you to make a good impression on the school trip; or when your parents judge your career choice. It’s also implied implicitly within our societal structures.

We live in communities where we have to interact with other people daily. We have to work with each other. We enjoy leisure with others, play sports together, and rely on each other in many life facets. The way people view you is largely going to affect the way those interactions take place.

To get the things we want in life, it’s often important to be viewed well by others: getting a job, receiving a promotion, being allowed into particular advantageous groups, striking deals that you need to achieve your goals. And even down to your ability to maintain a good relationship, at some point, they all require someone else to have a positive impression of you.

These factors, compounded with the innate human desire to be accepted, lead to most people deriving their sense of self-worth and happiness from the way others perceive them.

But there's a big problem with this. As most books and articles on this topic will tell you: you have no control over other people’s opinions. This makes it a poor method for validation of self-worth and happiness. This lack of control means you end up being up and down all the time, with no sustained level of joy.

Another reason for not placing so much value on what other people think about you is that it’s a secondary source of joy. When you derive anything from someone else’s opinion, it’s not direct. You aren’t getting that feeling directly from the source. For example, someone who loves driving gets direct joy from the act of driving, or someone who enjoys mountain climbing gets direct joy from the act of mountain climbing.

But when you’re deriving a feeling from someone else’s opinion, you’re having to get it through them rather than directly through yourself. This will never give you the same pure, rich joy that you get from directly enjoying something.

Again, this is not some hidden secret, most people already know this, at the intellectual level. The issue is, you can realise these things and it’s still a struggle to stop caring so much about what people think of you. This shouldn’t come as a surprise when you think about just how pervasive and deep-rooted the need for validation from others is in our society.

It’s easy to tell someone, “stop caring what people think about you, you have no control over it.” But at the same time when almost every societal interaction implicitly emphasises the importance of these opinions, it’s hard not to care.

Letting go of people’s opinions

One thing that’s massively helped me to care a lot less about how people view me was a quote from Alex Becker — CEO of HYROS — in a youtube video talking about the mindset necessary for success:

“Most unsuccessful people, define themselves by what they think that other people think that they are.”

This quote got me thinking deeper into the mechanics of how opinions shape our lives. A lot of the time we don’t even know what someone else thinks about us. We will speculate about what they think — which is often negative. Our minds tend to focus on worst-case scenarios, as a survival mechanism — then get down or upset about our speculation, not what the other person actually thinks. You don’t actually know what is going on in a person's mind a lot of the time.

Alex also says, “What you think that other people think you are, actually has nothing to do with you.”

This got me thinking even further about the difference between reality and opinion. According to Wikipedia, “An opinion is a judgment, viewpoint, or statement that is not conclusive, rather than facts which are true statements.”

So, depending on their point of view, different people will have different opinions on the same thing. When we perceive something, our minds interpret the data and we experience a projection of that interpretation, not what is actually there as it is.

Imagine 5 people were wearing tinted glasses, all of in different colors. If they were to look at the same object, they would each see something different. So what they see wouldn’t be indicative of what’s actually there, but rather the color tint of their glasses.

Similarly, if we look at human beings, why is it that someone can love a particular thing whereas someone else will hate that same thing? For example, someone may have a trait that one person finds funny, while another person might find it irritating. Is that person irritating or funny? The answer is, it depends on who is perceiving them. And so naturally you could conclude that a person’s opinion of you is really more of a reflection of themselves than it is of you.

Because everyone is so different, the same things one person loves about you, someone else will interpret differently and hate. If you tried to change that thing to please one person, there will just be another person who now hates it. In this way, you can never win and be perceived well by everyone.

The thoughts and interpretations that go on in another person’s head are dependent on how their mind works; those thoughts are for them to experience and feel, for their own lives. Often, they have nothing to do with you, and really, they are none of your business.

As Becker says: “You’re never going to hear another person’s thoughts in your entire life, you’re never going to experience their reality, so frankly what’s going on in their reality has nothing to do with you.”

This isn’t an excuse to start being a bad person, to be lazy, immoral, or shirk your responsibilities. As human beings, we still have collectively agreed-upon standards for what constitutes a good person, a good life, and how to properly behave around others.

Like most things in life, it’s important to take a balanced approach. We still have to live with each other, we still have shared experiences, we still need to interact with each other daily. So, we must respect and appreciate each other’s perspectives and opinions.

Where appropriate it will be necessary to consider someone else’s opinion of you: In the workplace, in particular situations with friends and family, if you are looking for advice on something you don’t know much about, etc.

However, it is important not to derive your sense of joy and self-worth from these opinions. And in certain circumstances, when the opinion is not necessary or adding any value to your life, disregard it completely. Leave it for the person it belongs to.

If you liked this article, every week I unpack the deeper meaning behind one commonly misunderstood principle.

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