Nobody cares what you do.. Why are our fears of other people's opinions just an exaggeration?

A friend of mine once told me a saying that I took as genuine wisdom: “If I didn’t invite someone to my house in the first place, why would I let them infiltrate my thoughts!” But it's easy to say and hard to put into practice.

Social media has made room for what's going on in our heads, so that any sneaky passerby can roam.

If you tweeted what you think of a celebrity, you could potentially reach for his phone in his hands while he's on his couch at home.

The actual problem is not technology, but human nature.

It is part of our instinct to care about others' opinions of us, just as the Roman Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius wrote nearly two thousand years ago: "

," whether they be friends, strangers, or enemies.

This tendency may be perfectly normal, but it can drive us crazy, angry and upset if we let it slip.

If we are rational creatures in every sense of the word, we would understand that our fears of people's opinions are exaggerated, and that they are insignificant that they rarely provoke our anger, but many of us have indulged in this bad habit for a long time, so we need to take deliberate steps to change our views around.

Intellectual Confidence in Yourself and Others by Richard Foley.

Paying attention to the opinions of others is understandable and logical to some extent. The philosopher Richard Foley asserts in his book (Intellectual Confidence in Yourself and in Others) that you trust your own opinions, and your opinions are saturated with your likenesses and were formed through them, so you trust their opinions as well, whether you like it or not. Accordingly, if one of your co-workers says "The Squid Game is a great series," your opinion of the series will probably increase, at least a little.

The influence other people have on your views of the world pales in comparison to the influence that other people have on your opinion of yourself. Evolution brilliantly explains why. Throughout human history, human survival has depended on his joining closely related clans and tribes, and before modern forms of civilization, such as police systems or grocery stores, exclusion from the group meant an inevitable death from cold, starvation, or between the teeth of predators. This might easily explain why our sense of nurturing includes the approval of others, as well as why our brains evolved to activate the same neural substrate when we experience physical pain or face social rejection.

Unfortunately, the instinct to please others has been unfortunately adapted to modern life.

Whereas one day a person felt justifiably terrified that he would be expelled and go to live in the ice of the mountains, today one may suffer from acute anxiety that strangers will “exclude” him from the Internet because of a reckless comment, or because a passerby will take a picture of him in clothes Shabby and mocked on Instagram in front of everyone.

“Research indicates that being preoccupied with the opinions of others keeps the inhibition system active, impairing a person’s ability to act and perform.”

In the worst cases, anxiety may swell to gain approval and explode into an all-consuming fear, a psychological condition diagnosed as "allodoxaphobia" (a irrational fear of others' opinions). Even if the condition does not develop into a mental illness, worrying about other people's opinions may impair your basic, simple competence to perform normal tasks, such as making decisions. When you think about what you are going to do in a given situation—say, say, you're going to speak in front of a group of people—a network in your brain that psychologists call the "behavioral inhibition system" automatically activates. Through this network, you estimate the situation and decide what action to take (with a primary focus on losses misconduct). Once you are familiar with the situation enough, the "inhibition system" ceases to be active, and the "behavioral activation system" that focuses on gains is activated. But research from 2013 showed that preoccupation with other people's opinions keeps the inhibition system active, hampering your ability to act.If you are constantly knocking yourself out of discussions about what you should have said - but you didn't - this may indicate that you are preoccupied and worried about what others think unwarrantedly.

not that our concern for others’ opinions of us is a natural thing, that we are bound by it, is not the desired end of one’s prosperity to be entirely indifferent to the opinions of those around him, for it would be an odd and dangerous thing;

This tendency may lead to "hubris syndrome", or be evidence of antisocial personality disorder.

But many of us would be better off if we learned to care less about the opinions of others.

Therefore, I recommend following these three steps:

• First: Remind yourself that no one really cares

The ironic thing about feeling bad about ourselves because people think of us is that those around us have far fewer opinions about us than we think, positive or negative.

Research shows that we often overestimate what others think of us or our failures, which leads to our unduly repressed voices and worse lives.

Your followers or neighbors may have disdainful opinions of you if they think about you, but you probably don't quite mind them.

The next time you feel ashamed of yourself or are too self-conscious about your actions, remember that you are self-centered, and you can safely assume that everyone around you is doing exactly the same to varying degrees.

• Second: Revolt against your feelings of humiliation

Because the fear of humiliation lurks behind excessive concern for the opinions of others, we should confront this feeling directly rather than avoid it. A little of it helps us sometimes and warns us in certain situations, when we say hurtful words to someone to detest him or because our patience has run out, for example. But it is usually a feeling that arises from ridiculous situations that are not your fault, such as feeling ashamed or humiliated by yourself when you forgot to unzip your pants.

It happened several years ago that I was at the end of my first lecture, it extended for an hour and a half, I threw it all with my pants open, there's no way that one person didn't notice, then I realized something strange, I felt liberated, not free to do it again, of course, but I let go of my fear of what might happen if I accidentally did something so embarrassing in class.

After the open-zip incident, I could not imagine anything worse, and as a result I was calm, and the semester passed wonderfully.

Of course I will not command you to walk about with an open zipper on purpose, but ask yourself: “What am I hiding so much that I am a little embarrassed about it?” Make up your mind not to hide it any longer, and to put an end to the sterile feeling of humiliation that binds you.

• Third: Don't judge others

It came in the Gospel of Matthew: "Do not judge, lest you be judged. As you judge, you will be judged, and what you measure will be measured for you." And the Buddha said: "He who judges others digs a pit for himself." You may think that God will punish you or take karma from you for your harsh opinions about some people around you, but these sermons bear the same importance in our worldly lives. Implicit in other people's judgments of you personally.

Your way to free yourself from this conviction is to refrain from judging others and to remind yourself, when you do this wrongly, that it is possible that your judgment is wrong. Try this experiment: Set a day next week where you don't judge anything, just watch your surroundings. Replace your saying, "It's raining awful today," with "It's raining." Instead of saying, "That guy who crossed the road for me is an idiot," say, "The guy was definitely in a hurry." It will be difficult, but strangely comforting, and you will relieve yourself of the burden of criticizing everything, so that you will lessen your anxiety about others criticizing you. Luo Tsou said in the book "The Tao and Virtue" that "

." No doubt he meant this as a serious warning, but as the years went by, I came to understand what he said as a promise and an opportunity.

I learned that the prison of approval of others is a prison that I built myself, I keep and guard it, and this leads me to complete Luo Tzu’s original saying that “Ignore the thoughts of others and the prison door will be opened wide.”

If you are imprisoned in the prison of criticism, judgments, feelings of humiliation and shame, remember that only you have the keys to your freedom.

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margin:

• Arthur C.

  Brooks, an American sociologist and contributing writer for The Atlantic, is a professor at the Kennedy School and Harvard Business School.

Translation: Maryam Nagy

This report is translated from The Atlantic, from the "How to Build Your Life" column.