We’re All Worried What Other People Think, The Trick Is Learning to Ignore Yourself

How to disregard your own opinion

I have a secret.

Every time I talk in a meeting, I worry that someone is going to think I’m stupid. Every time I answer the phone, I worry I’m going say something that makes people think twice about my ability. Every time I present, I worry that people will tell me I’ve done it all wrong.

This pre-worry behaviour has plagued me my whole life. But here’s the other secret. I continue on anyway.

I continue anyway because I’ve always felt this way. I’ve always felt like my ideas were rubbish, my thoughts were not worth communicating, my capabilities were below standard. Of course, that’s just my silly brain talking.

And somehow, over the years, I’ve learned to ignore it.

The 2 minute rule: “Here we go again, go on, get it out.”

It happened again today. 10 minutes before an important meeting I began to worry. What if I don’t know what I’m talking about? What if I don’t sound intelligent? What if the person on the other end thinks I’m stupid?

2 minutes before the call. My mind racing.

I should just hang up now. I should run away and hide. I don’t need to do this call anyway. But a reliable voice comes back: I’ve been here before. A million times. At first I thought it was useful; fight or flight is incredible useful in certain situations, but of course, not all situations. Especially not this one. I didn’t need to run away. I needed to stay — there was no fight to be had.

How do I know?

I’ve had this feeling and I know what this means. It means I care, it means this is important, it means I need to pay attention. It doesn’t matter about the person on the other end. It doesn’t matter if they think I’m a plonker. What I must not do is give up. So instead I’ve give myself 2 minutes. 2 minutes to worry, overthink and wind myself up. Ideally this wouldn’t be immediately before the event but hey, I’ve not honed the approach just yet.

Admittedly, I could be better at this, but that’s just the voice again.

Learning to live with the voice in your head

“Impostor syndrome is a paradox: -Others believe in you -You don’t believe in yourself -Yet you believe yourself instead of them If you doubt yourself, shouldn’t you also doubt your judgment of yourself? When multiple people believe in you, it might be time to believe them.” — Adam Grant

In my life, worrying has never done me any good. I can’t name a time I’ve ever found worrying to be useful. Still I worry every single time.

Over the last few years, I’ve learnt to live with this voice quite comfortably. I’ve learnt to listen, for a moment, let her get it over and done with. Then we can all move on with our lives. I know it sounds odd right, letting yourself talk to yourself, at what point do you decide that something isn’t quite right? But it seems to work.

I tell myself ‘you’ve got 2 minutes’. And then no more. I can worry all I want in that 2 minutes, after the 2 minutes I can’t. Simple. I’d learnt over the years that not allowing myself to worry never worked. Every time I would still worry. In fact, I’d worry about worrying. Is this just me? I’d worry that because I’d always worried, no I wasn’t worrying, something would go wrong.

But then, slowly, I realise that worrying was part of me. I’ve always worried. Since I was a kid. 20 odd years of reinforcement learning isn’t going away over night. So I learnt to reduce the time frame in which I worry and I’ve learnt to reframe my worrying.

The noodle soup won’t help you

“It never ceases to amaze me: we all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinion than our own.” — Marcus Aurelius

The other day I was so worried about a call I couldn’t eat my lunch. I cooked it, well if you can call cooking adding hot water to a noodle pot. As it sat there for 4 minutes, the noodles soaking up the chicken broth, my mind was soaking up everything that could go wrong in the next hour.

What if I don’t come across like I know what I’m talking about? What if I stumble over my words? What if I forget what I’m mean to say? What if someone interrupts me and makes me look like a plonker? What if I don’t know the answer to a question?

When the 4 minutes was up, I dug my fork into the noodle glupe. As I staring at it, my hungry disappeared. 5 minutes ago my stomach was rumbling, post-worry it felt full. I tried a mouthful but I felt my stomach quilch in retaliation. It was not happy with my brain’s choice. Here I sat, pushing the noodle gulp around, wondering whether anyone noticed I’d just gone off my dinner in 4 minutes flat.

There’s always those days. When worry takes over and you can’t eat your noodles. It happens to the best of us. The trick is to carry on. It’s to stay. It’s to stick with it and not run away. It’s to lean into your fears.

Final thoughts: It’s a work in progress

“If you want to have a better relationship with other people, work on yourself.” — Steven Bartlett

I’ve learnt that it’s a process. It’s a process of learning what works for you. For me the 2 minute rule works. It allows me time to get the worrying out the way so I can focus on doing. For me that works. And sometimes it doesn’t. It’s by no means a full proof plan, not even close. Some days I get so worked up I can’t eat my noodles. But most of the time that’s not the case.

Most of the time I lean into my fears and stick around long enough to realise there was nothing to worry about in the first place. Most of the time.

Somewhere along the way you’ll realise that the noise in your head is just noise. Most people have similar noise. They can’t stop themselves from worrying either. Maybe even they have a 2 minute rule.