People Pleasing #4: How to Stop Caring What Other People Think

Ever stop yourself from saying what you really think because you're worried people will judge you? Maybe you don't apply for the job, start the business, go to the networking event, or post about your handmade dog sweaters because you're convinced everyone is watching... and silently deciding you're a disaster. If that sounds familiar, this episode is for you.

Today we're talking about why your brain cares so much about other people's opinions, why that fear feels so intense in your body, and why a surprising amount of the judgment you think you're getting is actually coming from inside your own head. I'll also teach you a simple three-step tool called Stop, Drop, Choose to help you move through the fear instead of letting it run your life. If you're ready to stop living in the world's tiniest prison, built entirely out of imagined opinions from Aunt Sally and that one woman from high school you haven't seen in 20 years, hit play.

Coach With Sarah

Sarah offers a 6-month nervous system coaching program for humans who are neurodivergent, sensitive, and highly creative. Learn to rewire your brain for calm, load up your stress toolkit, and address the root causes of overwhelm . To learn more and get started, schedule your free consult or email sarah@sarahmaurercoaching.com.

Transcript

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Welcome to Climb Your Mountain, the only podcast that teaches you how to use coaching, neuroscience, and mindfulness to overcome life's challenges. I'm Sarah Mauer, a certified life and performance coach, frontwork facilitator, and trance geek. Each week I show you how to change your brain fast for good and without struggle. Whether you're training to climb an actual mountain, building a business, dating, or claiming a fucking rebellion, these tools will help. Listen and learn so you can enjoy more of what you want. Happiness, fun, connection, creativity, courage, and the occasional mountaintop moment. Ready? Let's do this. They say that everything you want in life is on the other side of fear. And if you're like most people, your biggest fear, it isn't spiders, it isn't flying on planes, it isn't getting struck by lightning. It's the fear of being judged by other people. You think I'm exaggerating? Well, research shows that people are actually more afraid of public speaking than they are of death. Because talking in front of other people, if you think about it, it's extremely vulnerable. What if you forget your speech? What if you accidentally say something offensive? What if you're boring? What if you get passed over for your next promotion because your presentation was so awful? These thoughts can be absolutely paralyzing. Well, friend, if you're nodding along because you sometimes feel like a prisoner of other people's opinions and you're tired of that fear holding you back, today is your lucky day. In today's podcast, I'm gonna help you understand exactly why your body has such a primal response to other people's disapproval. Even if you're just imagining their disapproval. We'll also talk about how often that disapproval that we imagine other people are giving us isn't even real. Because we actually tend to project our own insecurities onto others. Did you know that often when you feel judged, that call is actually coming from inside the house? You're gonna learn how to catch yourself when you're judging yourself and blaming it on other people right here in this episode. And finally, I'm gonna teach you a ridiculously simple technique called stop, drop, choose that you can use to shake off that fear of judgment so you can take more bold action. After listening to this episode, you'll feel more confident because you'll be less worried about what other people think. And for some of you, it will feel like a get out of jail free card. It will allow you to finally take bold, brave action toward what you really want in life. That might look like talking to a stranger at a party, going to a networking event, going to speed dating, posting about your new Etsy shop on Instagram. Even if your Aunt Sally sees your post and tells you that no one is gonna buy your hand-knit dog sweaters. You're just gonna do it anyway. In other words, this episode is going to empower you to live a bigger, bolder, braver, and more fulfilling life that gets you more of what you want. Ready? Let's do this. So, first, before we do anything else, first let's talk about why you're so worried about other people's opinions. A lot of people beat themselves up for having this exact fear. When I'm coaching my clients, so many of them say things like, I should be better at this, I'm smart, I'm a high achiever, I'm a high flyer in my job, and I know on an intellectual level that other people's opinions can't hurt me. But whenever I think about someone judging me, I still feel absolute paralysis in my body. It's like I freeze on the spot. And I know this fear is holding me back in my career, my relationships, and my life, and I just wish I could stop caring so much about what other people think, but it seems impossible. It seems like it would take brainwashing or hypnosis or magic. So, friend, it's so important that you know this. You're not freezing because you're weak or there's something wrong with you. The reason this fear is so visceral and hits you at a gut level is because you're hardwired by evolution to care about other people's opinions. And because your brain, neurons, and biology are designed to keep you seeking approval, it's gonna be really hard to stop caring completely what other people think. No matter how much personal development you do, you're always gonna care a little. So, a couple of the ways your body and brain are hardwired to seek approval. One, I want you to think about your survival brain. And this is created by evolution over tens of thousands of years. It's natural and normal to care what other people think from an evolutionary standpoint, because if you think about the long, long ago when our ancestors were living in caves, their survival depended on being part of a tribe. Your ancestors are the ones who were easy enough to get along with that they never got kicked out of the tribe and banished. How do we know? Because you're sitting here today. If your great-great-great 10 times great-grandma had gotten too big for her bridges and pissed off the wrong people, she might have been exiled from her tribe. And then she wouldn't have been able to depend on others for food, shelter, water, protection, or medical care. And she probably would have died, and she never would have lived to reproduce, and she never would have become your great, great, great 10 times grandma. I also want you to think about the social programming aspect of this. This need to please, it didn't necessarily change even after life became safer. And especially for women who didn't have political or economic power until recently, we really continued to depend on others to get by. One thing that's so wild to me, I'm 50 years old, and up until the year before I was born, in 1974, a woman could be denied a credit card unless a man co-signed on it for her. That is nuts to me. That is some Civil War era shit. This is my mom and my grandma's reality. This is practically in my lifetime. So until fairly recently, it was really hard to make it alone as a single woman. So it's understandable that people socialized as women still try really hard to fit in, be pleasing, not rock the boat, be attractive and desirable, and not be too much. So all of this is wired into the neurons of your brain, creating what we call cognitive distortions. And what a distortion is, it means you don't see the world as it is. Because of these cognitive distortions, you see life kind of through a glass darkly. And you can think of it almost as a negative lens. And here are some of the distortions that your brain creates that have actually been demonstrated experimentally. So the first thing we know from research is that our perceptions and your perceptions, they tend to skew negative. One exercise I often have my clients do is called a thought download. And all it is is you sit down and you write down just all your thoughts as they move through your head. You just write them down as fast as you can without judging. And this can be really helpful for figuring out kind of what your brain is up to and how it's creating your emotional state. But a lot of people, when they start doing regular thought downloads, come back to me feeling ashamed or worried because they're realizing that all their thoughts are negative. And I always explain, yes, that's true. And that is also completely normal. That is actually a sign of your brain operating correctly. It's doing exactly what it was designed to do. It's just trying to keep you alive. And it does that by always offering you these negative thoughts. In fact, your brain, when it's functioning well, it really kind of tries to keep you in a constant state of mild anxiety. It always wants you to be a little on edge, because it's afraid if you're not anxious, if you relax, if you're too calm, if you're too happy in the moment, something bad might happen because you weren't looking out for it. And even though you now live in a very safe world, a beautiful home with a safe way down the street, your brain is still stuck in the cave, chewing little scraps of meat off a bone. That's one way I love to think of it. So, in other words, don't worry too much about these negative thoughts. They will always be there, they're supposed to be there. Just don't start believing them and letting them run the show. Other ways this negative distortion can look. When we sense a threat, our minds will often go to the worst case scenario, and almost never to the best case scenario. So see if you can relate to this. Last month I had a big credit card bill due due to an unexpected repair I had to do on my car. So for the first time in ages, I actually didn't have enough money in my bank account to actually pay my credit card bill when it was due. So I do have a home equity loan, and I took some money out of that just to pay the entire credit card bill. So I took out maybe $700. And you should have seen me losing my shit. I was having thoughts like, this is where it all ends. Soon I'm gonna be living in a cardboard box on the street, walking through Safeway and snatching grapes out of the case and just eating them, shoving them in my mouth while I walk, because I can't afford to buy food. And when you think about it, this is such a silly thought in reality. Because overall, I'm a pretty prosperous woman. I have lots of savings, I have great investments. It would take one hell of a hit, more than a $700 credit card bill, for me to end up on the street eating grapes that I stole. But that's what the survival brain does. Even my brain, which is really well trained at this stuff, tends to go to the worst case scenario. It just naturally does that. Another distortion to be aware of. We humans are also extremely self-conscious. We tend to hugely overestimate how much time other people spend thinking about us. We think that they notice when we mess up. So for example, I run an online business, and so many of my colleagues who are also running online businesses are so afraid to post about what they sell on Instagram because they're so afraid that stuck up Stacy from high school will see their post and think it's stupid and comment something snotty. And the truth is, Stacy probably, first of all, doesn't even see your stuff, even if she's following you. Did you know only 6% of your followers actually see your content, by the way? And also, even if Stacy does see your post, and even if she has thoughts about it, you gotta remember that Stacy also has problems, just like you. So in 10 minutes, she's not even gonna remember your hand-knitted dog sweaters on Etsy and judge them and think they're silly. She is just on to the next thing. That might even happen in like 10 seconds. So don't let your brain use Stacy as an excuse not to post your stuff and make money. We also, and this is demonstrated by science, we actually tend to underestimate how much people actually like us. I was listening to a podcast about an actual experiment where they had a test subject, go to a party and meet new people. And the experimenter asked that subject to rate on a scale of one to ten, how much do you think Christy, whom you met at the party, liked you? How much do you think Sandy liked you? How much do you think Matt liked you? And then the experimenter also had all the people at the party rate on a scale of one to ten how much they actually did like the subject. And you know what happened? The subject would always say, Well, I don't think they liked me. They probably gave me a two or a three. This was incredibly common. And here, the other people were giving them eights and nines. They were like, Yeah, I think subject is pretty rad. So it was crazy. It's a total cognitive distortion, it's brought on by evolution. We all do it. And I hope for you this underscores the importance of just having compassion for yourself when this shit is coming up for you in your brain. Your brain is already being mean to you by having these cognitive distortions from the survival brain. So don't throw more meanness on the dog pile by shaming yourself or beating yourself up. Some helpful thoughts when you catch yourself worrying about your fear of other people's opinions are these. I want you to think this is me just having a normal human experience. This is my brain trying to keep me alive. Of course I feel this way. Anyone else in the exact same situation would feel the exact same way. That's how people are, that's how I am. The next thing I want you to consider is I feel like people are judging me. But are they actually judging me? This judgment feels really, really real, but is it really? So here's a story to illustrate. During my coaching certification, I had to do this really scary thing where I had to coach my mentor coach. It was a really nerve-wracking experience because I was a beginner and I'm coaching this person who is an expert and getting feedback from her. So I did this session with Megan, my mentor coach, and she asked me at the end how I thought it went. And I said, terrible. And she said, Why? And I said, Well, I feel like I bored you to death. I feel like my coaching was kind of clunky and slow. It was probably really annoying. You probably suffered through this whole session because I did it so bad. And then she said something to me that changed my life. To paraphrase, she said, I think that call is coming from inside the house. I think you're really hard on yourself. You have a lot of judgments about yourself, you have a lot of perfectionism, and you project that onto other people. You believe the other people are judging you, but really you're the one judging you. And I was mind-blown. That little coaching moment actually changed my life because I could see myself doing this projecting thing, projecting all my self-judgments everywhere in all kinds of situations onto everyone. And I suspect a lot of you are doing the same. So let's talk about it. What's projection? It's an unconscious defense mechanism where you attribute your own unacceptable or uncomfortable thoughts, feelings, or traits to someone else. So, if you believe you're annoying, for example, that's a really uncomfortable belief for your brain to live with. So unconsciously, you might protect yourself by deciding that it's other people who think you're annoying. And then you kind of just get to be the victim. Poor you. It's not your fault. You're just surrounded by all these judgy McJudgersons when the real judgy mcjudgerson is you. And notice the word unconscious does a lot of work here. A lot of times projections feel extremely true to us because they're operating kind of in the background. The process that's happening in our brain, it's completely invisible to us. Which is probably why I was so mind-blown when Megan pointed it out to me, even though it made total sense. And if you're listening this far, you might be thinking, Sarah, all this stuff about projections and cognitive distortions, that's nice to know. But for me, it's real that sometimes people do disapprove of me, and I know it's real because sometimes they say so. And if that's the case, here's what I also need you to know about projection. Anytime someone else has a negative thought about you, it's not because it's true. Very often, it's because they are also projecting. In this case, they're projecting their shit onto you. You've probably heard this said before. When someone criticizes you, they're actually saying way more about themselves than about you. For example, let's say someone judges you for sending your kid to school in secondhand clothes. Are they right? Are you a bad parent? Do you not care about your kid? No. They're just looking at you through their lens and projecting their insecurities onto you. They might be very insecure about their own parenting decisions. They might have been criticized for the same thing, for not dressing their kids right. They might have been teased growing up for wearing old clothes to school. They might be extremely materialistic because they grew up with nothing. So notice again that their criticism says way more about them than about you. And interestingly, this cuts two ways. So even when people like you, it's not because you're actually awesome, even though you are. But in that case, it's because they're projecting good thoughts, beliefs, and stories onto you. And to be honest, that can become its own kind of pressure, where you feel like you have to perform a certain role in order to be liked. In human design, if you're into that, profile lines two and five exist in the projection field where others have really high expectations of them and almost always eventually feel let down by them. So as a profile two five, I can tell you that this is no fun either. So a final thought on projection. Because people relate to you based on their own projections, there's really no such thing as being objectively likable because everyone will like different things. So I got this example from life coach Brooke Castillo. She talks about going to a party and talking to 10 different people. And if you do that, probably one or two people will think you're awesome. One or two might really not like or connect to you at all, and the other six might be shades of indifferent. So, if other people's opinions of you are factual, this could never ever ever happen. All the people would either agree that you're good or bad, but they don't agree because the version of you that they see is 100% colored by their own programming, experiences, preferences, and personalities. And here's another example that's kind of fun. I have a friend who moved to Colorado, where I live, from Texas, and when she first moved here, she and I climbed Mount Princeton, which is this beautiful, stunning 14,000-foot peak with amazing views on top. And when we were down, when we were driving home in the car, she was looking at the reviews of the hike on all trails, and she saw a review of Mount Princeton that was one star. And the person that posted that just hated it because, get ready for it, it had too many rocks. So she read that to me and we kind of died laughing. And it's a good reminder that even Mount Princeton has haters. Same is true for Disney, sushi, Taylor Swift. Personally, you couldn't pay me to eat sushi. I gag on that shit, but so many people insanely love it. Just because something has haters doesn't mean it deserves hate. And this includes you. So by now you're probably like, yeah, Sarah, I hear you, but what do I do when I run up against this paralyzing fear of being judged? It's so real in my body. I have a really hard time moving past it. Well, let me tell you exactly what to do in three steps. So to set this up, let's say you've signed up for speed dating and you're feeling really self-conscious about it. You want to cancel, you promise yourself you'll sign up for it again after you lose 10 pounds and get your teeth whitened. And as you notice this fear coming up, you might be tempted to, first of all, resist the feeling and pretend it's not there. You might also be tempted to judge this fear and tell yourself you shouldn't be feeling it. You might try to distract yourself with scrolling, Netflix, booze, food, whatever. And you also might try to just bulldoze through the fear and leap right into action. Just drive yourself, whip yourself right into that speed dating experience. And I want to encourage you not to do that because the emotion with which you do things, it actually matters way more than what you're actually saying or doing. You don't want to show up to speed dating and then be totally paralyzed by fear or overcompensate by being really loud and talkative in a way that's not you. So, what do you do instead when this fear of other people's Opinions or of their judgment comes up. I want you to use a simple process called stop, drop, choose to help you feel the fear and do it anyway. It's just three steps, and it will help you break that paralysis so you can act even while you're holding a lot of big scary discomfort in your body. So here's the three steps. Stop. Pause whatever you're doing. Put down the phone. Stop scrolling. If you're watching a movie and the fear comes up, you pause the movie. If it comes up at work, you close your laptop. Next, you're gonna drop. And by drop, I mean drop into your body. And I know the first time someone told me to drop into my body, I was just so like confounded. I'm like, I'm already in here. What are you talking about? So another way you can think of it is you're just gonna really tune into your body's sensations and observe them. Where in your body do you feel the fear and anxiety? In which parts and what sensations are present to tell you that this is fear. What would you actually call this feeling? I'm calling it fear, but maybe it's anxiety. Maybe you're worried, maybe it's terror. And actually, here's a cool neuroscience hack. Simply naming the feeling actually lessens it. Just doing that alone makes a difference. And observing yourself in this way is what we call a pattern interrupt. It momentarily stops that fear pathway of neurons in your brain from firing. And when that happens, you might still be aware of some fear, but instead of being up in your face screaming at you, your fear backs up a bit. It's somewhere that you can actually look at it, see it for what it is, and make decisions about it. And step three, choose. You're gonna make a conscious choice about whether or not you want to give in to this fear. The fear sensations in your body may be very big, but in this moment, it's so important to remember that everything you want in life is on the other side of fear. So ask yourself: by giving into my fear, by not going on speed dating, what might I be giving up? Let's make a list of all the potential costs, the things you could be missing out on. You could meet some people and go on some fun dates. You could meet some people you maybe don't want to date, but they'd be great to have in your professional network. You could meet someone who's a good fit for you romantically and get into a long-term relationship. You could end up having a great romance with that person. They could end up being your soulmate. They could end up being the person you marry and have kids with if those are things that you want. You could travel the world together. They might care for you in your old age. And even if none of these things come true, at this particular speed dating event, absolute worst case scenario, you're still gonna go to the event, you're going to get some practice talking to strangers so that it won't feel so scary the next time. And that's actually gonna increase your chances of meeting and recognizing your person when they show up. So, now what do you choose? Are you gonna give in to the short-term discomfort, or are you going to feel the fear, the awkwardness, the ickiness in your body, and go to speed dating anyway? And if you're thinking that you don't want to show up to speed dating until you feel completely confident, consider this. Sometimes when you're a little bit vulnerable, a little bit scared, that is actually when you're at your most magnetic. Humans love real humans. And here's a real life example. This is not speed dating, this is a business example. When I first started marketing my coaching business, I used to give online workshops. And in one of the first workshops I held, only one person showed up. And we were both live on the calls. It wasn't like I was giving a webinar. She could see that it was just me and her. And I was mortified. It felt so awkward. And I was just imagining that she would be thinking all kinds of thoughts about me. She would think I was a loser, that I must be a bad coach, that, you know, I turned people off somehow. But then I decided, hey, this is also an opportunity. So I said to her, hey, let's do the workshop. It's gonna be really cool because it's just the two of us. It's gonna almost feel like a one-to-one coaching session. So we did the workshop, and then at the end, I did the same pitch I always do about my coaching, and she signed up. And she not only signed up, she ended up being a really awesome client. We worked together for over a year. She referred several other people to me. She was just great. So I really think that is true that when you're a little low, other people actually might warm to you because of it. So don't let being tired or emotional or anxious keep you from doing your thing and from meeting other people. So, two final bonus tips for getting yourself to do the thing, even when it's scary. My coaching colleague Olivia, she loves to say that when you're scared, just gag and go. And I love this mantra. So make of that what you will. You could also make a conscious decision to let other people be wrong about you. This is another one I'm stealing from Brooke Castillo. I say you can even take that one a step further and even decide to let them be right about you. They could also be judging you for something that's true. But either way, just allow them their own thoughts and feelings. Because A, they're gonna have them anyway, so you might as well allow them to have them. And B, when you put yourself in the position of allowing, that's a very empowering place to be. It feels good, it tends to take the fear away a little. So, friend, I hope this episode helped you breathe a little easier. More than anything, I hope you have a lot more compassion for yourself than next time you catch yourself worrying about what other people think. Because now you know this tendency isn't a personal flaw, it's part of being human. Your brain is wired to care and belong. You're probably not gonna stop having these thoughts altogether, but you could absolutely change the way you respond to them. And I also hope you'll remember that so many of the stories we tell ourselves about what other people are thinking are just that stories. They're often projections from your own fears and insecurities, not objective truth. And when you can recognize them for what they are, they lose a lot of their power. And next time that fear of being judged, that fear of other people's opinions shows up, I hope you remember to stop drop and choose, stop and notice what's happening, drop into your body instead of getting trapped in your head, and then choose the next small, brave action. Not because the fear has disappeared, but because you're learning that you don't have to wait until you feel totally fearless to live your life. That really is the goal, to feel the fear and do it anyway. Because every time you do, you teach your nervous system, hey, we've got this, and little by little you build evidence that you're capable of doing hard things. And that's when life starts getting really interesting. That's when you speak up, take chances, stop sitting on the sidelines and waiting until you're ready, and suddenly the things that once felt impossible start becoming normal. Now, if you're listening to this and thinking, yep, this is me, this fear has been running my life for years. I would love to help. Fear of other people's opinions is one of the biggest reasons people come to one-to-one life coaching with me. And the good news is it really can change. It takes practice, it takes some repetition, but you don't have to figure it out alone. Even in our very first session, we're gonna start teaching your nervous system that it's safe to be seen, safe to take up space, safe to go after what you want. And if you'd like to explore one-to-one coaching, the first step is to book a free coaching consult. We'll hop on the Zoom, talk about what's keeping you stuck, and I'll walk you through exactly how I'd help you move forward. You'll have plenty of time to ask questions, and then you can decide if coaching feels like the right fit for you. If that sounds good, just click the link in the show notes. And thanks so much for spending this time with me today. I'll see you right here next week. Until then, go get it.