Struggling to care less about what other people think? Care more instead.
My whole life, and especially my whole career, I have been given the well-intentioned but horribly unhelpful advice to just care less.
Maybe you have received this advice. Perhaps you’ve even said it to yourself. “Care less about what other people do and care less about what other people think. Stop worrying so much about others and just don’t let any of it get to you.”
If you are like me, you have wanted to scream back at the person delivering this advice, “Don’t you think that if it was that easy I would be doing that already?! Don’t you think that if I could just shut it off, I would, rather than remain in this miserable state?”
Instead of screaming back, I spent years of my life feeling guilty for not being able to “just let it go,” and carried around the growing belief that I was too emotional, too insecure, too intense, and too much.
I even crafted a well-practiced persona of aloofness that I successfully wore in the world most days. However, in the moments that I couldn’t keep up the facade anymore, everything always came tumbling down Humpty-Dumpty style.
But here’s the thing - for leaders, entrepreneurs, and people working in the creative industry - our work is deeply personal. We CARE. And this is not a bad thing. Passion is powerful. It’s the fuel behind inspirational work and meaningful change in the world. It drives greatness, and for many of us, it drives our careers and our lives forward.
Is it always helpful to care about what other people think? Absolutely not.
However, addressing the issue by taking away (or more typically, shoving down) the caring is not productive. What is productive is to take that caring and give it a new home.
If you feel like you care too much about what other people think, say, and do - here are some things to care more about instead…
Care more about the company you keep. Surround yourself with people who support you, lift you up, and foster your growth. Seek out people who inspire you, not only with their achievements but with their daily actions and how they show up in the world.
Care more about your physical environment. What do you need to give yourself today to have a better tomorrow? Is it more sleep, more food, more movement? Humans are complicated plants - the basics are more important than we like to believe.
Care more about your level of integrity. Are your thoughts aligned with your words aligned with your actions? Operating from a place of integrity doesn’t just benefit others, it is a turbo boost for our own self confidence.
By caring more about the factors that directly contribute to our own happiness, we can slowly and permanently turn down the volume on how much we care about what other people think, do and say.