But let me ask, what do you have in your existential toolbox that helps you do this?
I realized that I occupy very little space in other people's minds. Not just me though, this is true of everyone.
I'm not exceptional or famous or rich. People may see me but they don't care. I don't mean that in a self-effacing "I wish they would care though!" way. I just mean that everyone is living their own life, fighting their own battles, and not really spending a lot of time thinking about other people. We think we're being judged harshly by those around us when we do things we perceive are bad, but the reality is that we're not. Other people aren't thinking about us at all.
Consider this - if you go to a bar and see 300 other people, you might notice half a dozen and think "Hot", "Fat", "Even hotter", "Ugly", "Drunk", "Slightly less hot than the first one". You don't really see the other 294 people. And after 5 minutes you've forgotten them all. Even the hottest one. Everyone is like that. Why put any stock in what they might be thinking when the probability is very high that you aren't in their thoughts at all?
I can live my life the way I want to because I don't really care about what other people think of me, because I realized that they just don't think about me.
I will add that I do care about what my partner and my close friends think, but I'm also able to accept that they'd tell me if they thought something about me was 'wrong'. I don't need to worry about their opinions because I can just wait until they share them if they want to.
I suspect the reason I'm able to think this way is that my partner is a therapist and talking to her for a decade has given me some useful tools for introspectively understanding what's going on in my head.
> I suspect the reason I'm able to think this way is that my partner is a therapist and talking to her for a decade has given me some useful tools for introspectively understanding what's going on in my head.
I realized that I occupy very little space in other people's minds. Not just me though, this is true of everyone.
I'm not exceptional or famous or rich. People may see me but they don't care. I don't mean that in a self-effacing "I wish they would care though!" way. I just mean that everyone is living their own life, fighting their own battles, and not really spending a lot of time thinking about other people. We think we're being judged harshly by those around us when we do things we perceive are bad, but the reality is that we're not. Other people aren't thinking about us at all.
Consider this - if you go to a bar and see 300 other people, you might notice half a dozen and think "Hot", "Fat", "Even hotter", "Ugly", "Drunk", "Slightly less hot than the first one". You don't really see the other 294 people. And after 5 minutes you've forgotten them all. Even the hottest one. Everyone is like that. Why put any stock in what they might be thinking when the probability is very high that you aren't in their thoughts at all?
I can live my life the way I want to because I don't really care about what other people think of me, because I realized that they just don't think about me.
I will add that I do care about what my partner and my close friends think, but I'm also able to accept that they'd tell me if they thought something about me was 'wrong'. I don't need to worry about their opinions because I can just wait until they share them if they want to.
I suspect the reason I'm able to think this way is that my partner is a therapist and talking to her for a decade has given me some useful tools for introspectively understanding what's going on in my head.