How to Not Care What People Think

After I learned to stop caring, life got really awesome

When I was younger, I was concerned with everyone’s viewpoint of me. I was terrified that people would look down on me. I was terrified that people would view me as incompetent. If I was harshly criticized for anything, I would completely collapse. I was fearful of performing. Not like performing on a stage, but performing period. Playing a game of basketball with kids I didn’t know at school. Standing up in front of the class and giving a book report. All these things terrified me.

What made things so tough though is that I always wanted to perform. I was always learning new things that I wanted to show people. When I learned to make music, I wanted to share my music with my friends. When I started playing an instrument, I wanted to perform in front of others. When I started learning a language, I wanted to speak with people. And honestly, I often would muster up the courage and do it. But then as soon as the negative criticism came, I was done. I was just so affected by how other people viewed me.

It was so frustrating. I felt that the only thing keeping me from achieving what I wanted was my fear of what people would think of me.

As I got older, I realized that I’m not the only person who feels this way. It’s a common problem. It’s a problem largely because people can be so brutal. Humans can say some crazy messed up stuff to you, and not even think twice about it.

Finally, I personally had enough. I was so fed up with dealing with negative people, and allowing them to affect me emotionally, and mentally. I decided that it was time to make a change. It was time to learn to be more mentally tough. It was time to not give a crap what other people thought of me. And having that mindset became one of my main goals in life.

Why did I care in the first place?

First I had to answer an important question. Why do I care in the first place? Why am I even bothered by what other people say? That’s a difficult question to answer. It requires a lot of deep thought to come to a conclusion.

For me, what I discovered, is that I judge my abilities and skills off of other people’s perceptions. Often times I felt that I was good at something until someone made a vicious comment about my lack of ability. Then I would feel like crap. I took their negative comment and viewed it as truth. But that way of thinking is so flawed it's ridiculous.

People have all kinds of thoughts and opinions. Are they all true? Of course not!

I remember at one time in my life I was learning guitar, learning Chinese, playing basketball about 3 times a week, working on my programming skills, and doing volunteer education work 20 hours a week. One of my friends at that time said I was lazy…What! I was doing all that, and he thought I was lazy. Well, why did he feel that way? He was learning Chinese at the same time as me and he assumed that because he was learning faster than I was, that I was just lazy.

Ridiculous. I wasn’t lazy. I was working my butt off in every area of life that I could imagine. But, from that foolish comment, I learned a valuable lesson. I learned that people are going to judge you based on whatever criteria they feel like setting. In his eyes, I was lazy solely because I wasn’t learning Chinese as fast as he was. According to his criteria, I was lazy. But was I lazy? Uh, no. He didn’t have all the facts, and even if he did, he was basing his assumption on some arbitrary standard.

Now don’t get me wrong, he was a very good friend of mine, and I don’t have any hard feelings towards him. But, I can’t take what he says as truth just because he’s my friend. I can’t believe that statement just because he said it. No, he came to his own biased conclusion, and that’s fine. He can think I’m lazy all day. Doesn’t have any bearing on whether or not I actually am.

Understanding this truth was big for me. Once I realized that people’s opinions have no true bearing on reality, my viewpoint changed. I began to look more deeply at celebrities and the criticism that they face. I mean think about it, how often do we criticize celebrities. We call great musicians “terrible”. We call great athletes “trash”. Celebrities receive so much criticism, but oftentimes these people are extremely talented.

I’ve mentioned this story in one of my previous articles about looking at basketball videos of Lebron James and Kobe Bryant before he passed. There were so many comments about how they were “trash”, or they were “complainers”, or “ball-hogs”. I mean, just a sea of negative criticism. But I guarantee Lebron James and Kobe Bryant in a basketball game would destroy each and every person making those negative comments. So if you were Lebron James or Kobe Bryant, and you heard people make those comments, would you care? Well, you shouldn’t.

The thoughts of a few don’t represent the thoughts of the majority

Understanding why I was so bothered by negative criticism was the first step to me learning to not care about what people think of me. The second was realizing that the viewpoint of a group of people doesn’t represent all humanity.

Before, if a few people said negative remarks towards me about something I was doing, I was crushed. Especially if they were friends or people whom I trusted. But then I realized, there’s a lot of people on this planet. For every 1 person who has a negative opinion of me, there’s like 10 who don’t.

It’s so easy to be focused on the opinions of a few negative people and then ignore all the positivity. For whatever reason, our minds and memories gravitate towards the negative and filter out the positive.

Once I realized this, it got so much easier to ignore other people’s negativity or less than stellar responses. Who cares what 10, 20, 100 people think? There’s never going to be a point where everyone feels that you suck at something. There’s never going to be a moment where every person watching you is thinking only terrible thoughts. It’s not realistic.

Now, I focus on the positive. I still listen to criticism in the sense that I want to see if there are any improvements I can make. But I don’t dwell on the negative. If you think I’m lazy. That’s cool. You think I’m not a good writer. Alright, whatever. You think I’m not successful. Well good for you. There are people out there who would disagree with you, and I’ll focus on them instead.

Everyone is only human

No human is better than the next. I’m sorry. I know that this will burst some people’s ego, but it’s reality. We’re all humans. Just because someone has money doesn’t mean I’m going to worship them at the altar. Just because someone is “successful” doesn’t mean I’m going to be fearful of how they view me. I don’t care. We’re all humans.

“You ain’t Jesus. You’re just another person.”

We all poop every day. We all have to eat to survive. We all need to breathe to live. We all need to sleep. And then we all die. I don’t know anybody who doesn’t age. I don’t know anyone who hasn’t made mistakes.

A millionaire could be a couple of bad investments away from being a homeless person on the street. The homeless person on the street could be a couple of good decisions away from being a millionaire. People come, they go. They make money, they lose money. The gain respect, they lose respect. At the end of the day, people are people.

So why should I care what another person thinks? When people come up to me now thinking they’re all high and mighty I just think to myself: “You ain’t Jesus. You’re just another person.”

How have I benefited from not caring

There are so many things that I do now that I wouldn’t be doing if I cared about people’s viewpoints.

I would not be writing on Medium so much if I cared what people thought of me. One of the first articles that I wrote, I just submitted to the largest active publication to see if they’d publish it. And they did. I wouldn’t have done that before. I would have been scared of what they’d think of me. Who am I to be a part of such a lofty publication? Please don’t look upon me, a lowly peasant. That’s how I used to feel. But now. Please.

I try everything. I reach out to people who are madly successful. I email people who others would think I have no business contacting. But when you don’t care, you just do it. I mean what’s the worst they’re going to do? Belittle me. Tell me I have no business contacting a being as great as them. That would be ridiculous. But even if that is how they responded…whatever. I don’t care. They may think they’re epic, but they’re still only human.

It’s amazing the responses that I’ve gotten from doing this. Most people are very down to earth. But I was just too afraid to contact them because of the occasional jerk. But if I run into the occasional jerk now. Fine. That’s not going to stop me from contacting the next big shot.

I have so much more confidence now. I perform better. I’m not a perfectionist anymore. As a developer, I just ship apps now. Before, I would be so afraid of what people’s response to my products would be. Would they view me as an incompetent programmer? Would they laugh at my app? Well, no one will do anything if I never ship it. So I just ship stuff now. I put it out there for the world to see.

One of the biggest benefits of this is that I find myself improving a lot more in certain skills. When I put stuff out there, I get to see how people are reacting to my content or products. From people’s reactions, I learn what to improve upon. What articles do better? What advertisements did better? What content had the most positive reactions? Which articles weren’t accepted to a publication?

By putting my stuff out there, I’m getting constant feedback. I take this feedback and I use it to improve on myself. It’s great.

Final Thoughts

In many ways, I’m happy that I was so sensitive when I younger. It led to a lot of deep questions which has shaped the person I am today. I believe that if I wasn’t so sensitive when I was younger, I wouldn’t have the mindset that I have now.

Not caring what people think about me has done wonders for my emotional and mental well-being. It’s made me more successful, and I’m able to help people more now. I have better relationships with people because their unintentional negative remarks don’t affect me as deeply as they used to. Since adopting this attitude, life’s challenges have been easier to cope with. Every minute that I put into not caring what people think of me, has been time well spent.