¶ Intro
We all just want to be loved and liked by people. We want to feel close to other people. We want to relate to others, and that's what relationships are, relating to one another. We just want to be accepted, and so when we feel part of us won't be we lock them up and we create this new version that we believe will be an easier version to like or to love. But you know the problem with that is you end up becoming a person that you're actually not.
I'm Rady Wukah and on my podcast A Really Good Cry, we embrace the messy and the beautiful, providing a space for raw, unfiltered conversations that celebrate vulnerability and allow you to tune in to learn, connect and find comfort together.
¶ Let's start with an affirmation
I want to start this episode off with an affirmation. So put your hands on your heart right now unless you're driving, of course, and keep your hands exactly where they are, and just say this in your mind or out loud at the top of your voice. Say I am worthy, and I release the need to control what others think of me. Again with me, I am worthy, and I release the need to control what others think
of me. Say one more time, like you mean it, I am worthy, and I release the need to control what others think of me.
Take a deep breath in exhale.
¶ Are you living in your own life?
Now, I assume if you've clicked on this episode, do you struggle with caring about what others think a little too much?
Just like I do?
And honestly, it's something that I've struggled with for as long as I can remember, to be quite honest.
But it's gone in ebbs and flows.
There's times are I'm really like solid in how I feel about it and I'm not as bothered, and other times where I feel like I'm feeling the world's judgment of me, and I find it really difficult not to let it absorb into myself and let it affect everything that I do, everything that I say, from the moment that I walk out of the door. And you know what, it has been something that I've struggled with, like I said,
my whole life pretty much. It's something that has defined me, made me do things I don't actually want to, created a persona that isn't really me, and made me feel like a stranger in my own body because I had moved so far away from who I actually was. And I heard Gaba Marte recently say this on a podcast, and Oh, by the way, I've been obsessed with him lately.
I don't know whether you guys have heard his podcasts or heard him speak, but he is eighty years old and he has just really absorbed life and churned out so much wisdom from it, Like you know when you hear people speak and you feel like they've really been present in their life to be able to observe people, observe their own life and observe the lessons that they need to learn from it, and really reflected on life
in that way. He definitely has that energy about him, and he said, the problem with worrying about what others think of you is that you're living in their.
Mind and not yours. I can control my words.
My actions, my thoughts, but I can't control how someone perceives my words, my actions, and my thoughts.
That's not on me.
If you keep living through the eyes of others, are you really living your life? And as soon as I heard that, I was like, oh, my goodness, I have lived in someone else's mind for so much of my life, not in my own life, and so it made me realize I actually had him in present in my life because I was living in the minds of others, thinking about what they might think about me, what they might be seeing me as, what they might be perceiving me as.
And so really, you're not living your own life. You're constantly living your life from the perception of somebody else. And you know, I realized the more time I was spending trying to convince someone of who I was, the less time I was actually spending on becoming that person.
¶ Embracing how we're always changing
And you know what, this is.
So embarrassing, but I swear I still think about people from ten years ago and I think, oh, I really hope they still don't hate me for when for what I did to them back then, Or the boys I might have broken up with when I was like sixteen over MSN before we had even met, or the girls who were my best friends and then they weren't the people that I maybe wasn't so nice to when I wasn't going you know, when I wasn't having a good day.
Just so many interactions that randomly pop to my mind, and I'm like, oh, my god, could they still hate me like at this time? Could they still have this negative view of me? As I was ten years ago, fifteen years ago, whoever I was back then. And the fact is we all just change and grow so much every single second, so people see and experience all these different versions of you, even on a cellular level.
You become a whole new person every seven years.
If I think about who I was seven years ago or seventeen years ago, oh my goodness, I was all over the place, And always wonder do those people from back in the day see who I am now and think she cannot be this person now because of who they've experienced me as or who I was back then. And then I realized sometimes the experience of me to them was and they may have had a really good
reason to dislike me. Then well maybe they didn't. But the only part of it I can control is how I changed for the better, change myself to become a better person after those experiences, and that I continue to do so daily. That is a choice that I make every single day to wake up and be better every single day. There's also this immediate feeling of judgment where
¶ Focus on being in the present
sometimes you're at a party or you're around people and you're having a conversation with them, but you're thinking about their judgment in real time rather than being in the moment. I could be in front of someone thinking about whether they're looking at my creasetlines on my face when I'm laughing, or judging my outfit, or wondering whether they like my outfit or not. You can be so in your head that you end up just not being present in the
conversation at all. It's like, I see your mouth moving, but all I hear is what's in my head, and it would honestly strip me from being in the moment or actually having a decent human connection, or actually having an interaction that was meaningful. And I actually used to get that a lot in big parties or events whenever I felt more self conscious. And I still have to really try to control that when I do go out to big events or when I meet people that I
don't necessarily feel comfortable around. To really make sure that I'm present in that conversation, I have to stop thinking about how they might be perceiving me in that moment.
¶ The danger of losing yourself to fit in
And you know, in reality, it comes from a very primal place, even though in theory we know we do not want to be ruled or controlled by the opinions of other people. Telling yourself not to care is like telling yourself not to be hungry when your stomach is telling you it's hungry. We're all wired to want community and to connect with people, and someone not liking you
in some way does threaten that. There's actually this study that showed that the same parts of your brain that are activated when you feel physical pain are also the same places that are activated when you feel socihort rejection. God, we all just want to be loved and liked by people. We want to feel close to other. People relate to others, and that's what relationships are, relating to one another, and
connections come naturally from similarities. We just want to be accepted, and so when we feel part of us won't be we lock them up and we create this new version that we believe will be an easier version.
To like or to love.
But you know the problem with that is you end up becoming a person that you're actually not.
You end up creating this.
New version of yourself, which actually the more you create this new version, the further away you're getting from the real version of you. And the thing is people feel it. They feel the misalignment between you and who you really are.
Like They may not know it's that, but.
They definitely feel there's something off when they're around you.
And even if people don't, you do.
Every single word, every single action that you do against who you really are just takes you a step further away from the real version of you. And that's actually sad because you're turning your back on the person that you actually are. We actually live in this world where fitting in is encouraged more than creating a unique.
Version of yourself.
Instead of being encouraged to settle into who you are, whether it's your own body, your own mind, or your own thoughts, you're told to become a duplicate of the people around you, of the person that came before you, never really embracing the fact that we are all so unique and different and how magical and.
Beautiful that really is.
You can completely end up losing who you are just in the pursuit of fitting in. Whether it's wearing the same things, looking the same way, having the same body shape, the same thoughts, the same beliefs. It's like you'll get canceled just for being yourself. So we end up suppressing and hiding who we really are, or we just end up creating a facade of who we are or who we think we should be for people to like us, or love us or want to spend time with us.
And the more time that we spend trying to be who others want us to be, the less time you end up spending trying to figure out who you really are. And the fact is, the more you figure out who you really are and start to appreciate it, the more in alignment you are, and the more people will feel connected to you you the deeper your connections can be, because if you don't know who you are, how can
others truly get to know you. You can be friends with someone for years, or have so many friends but still feel so lonely because they're not friends with the real version of you. We end up spending more time trying to convince someone we're kind rather than actually doing things that make us kind humans, because we're so bothered and so focused and obsessed with how people perceive us, rather than actually being or becoming that.
¶ Approval addiction
You know.
I actually heard this term called approve of addiction.
It's a real thing. It's where someone is causing themselves excessive stress or changing their entire identity to fit in socially.
¶ Signs that you care too much about what others think
So I'm going to share.
Some signs with you to decipher whether the opinions of others impact you too much, or that you care too much about what others think. Really, these are based on reflections of my own life and being in that place far too often. So the first one is that you change yourself in response to criticism, regardless of what it is and who it comes from.
Let me give an example of that.
I get DMS after DMS after DMS telling me so many things that I need to change, judging me based on so many different things, and when I'm in weaker moments, I'll weed them and I'll be like, maybe I am this, maybe I should change this. Suddenly I'll go to Jay or go to some of my friends, and I'll be like, I think I have to change this, or my behavior will start changing. All the things I'll start posting will automatically shift and change because I've allowed that judgment into
my consciousness to become my judgment of myself. So now I'm acting in accordance to that judgment. I'm changing the words that I use, the way that I'm acting such subtle things. But I realized I've actually absorbed it into me, and now I'm reacting and acting based on that judgment. The second one is you let other people make decisions for you. This was something I struggled with for a lot of my younger life before I moved to New York About what is it like seven years ago?
I never made.
A decision for myself, my sister, my mum, I was a youngest child, lived my life making decisions through them. I wouldn't pick a knife without them, I wouldn't do anything without them. They chose what career I should go into. You know, anything they'd say about me, it would become me, Oh, you're this type of person.
I'd be like, yeah, I am this type of person.
And so when you allow other people, you turn to other people to make decisions for you, there's definitely another sign you don't set or maintain boundaries. It's like, once you have a boundary, a boundary is there to be kept.
But if it keeps shifting or keeps being pushed further and further away from what that original boundary was, it could be because you're allowing other people's opinions to shift or move those boundaries, even though they were really important to you at the beginning, you hold your tongue if
your opinion differs from everyone else's. Have you ever been in that situation where you really fundamentally don't agree with what someone is saying, whether it's about another person or about a topic, but just in case or cause their mind to change about your, just in case it will cause some sort of conflict or rift between you.
You end up keeping your mouth shut. Most of the time.
You end up regretting it afterwards, but in the moment, just because you care about what they think about you, or you think your opinion is not worth more than theirs, you end up keeping your mouth shut. Your peace of mind relies on approval from others. Boy, have I been there, especially when I started online. Honestly, just even now, constantly thinking, oh, when other people like something, or when other people give me positive affirmations online.
Sorry, that's the sound of my glass straw as I'm drinking it. Yeah.
Every time you're like, it's like your mind feels at ease, and every time you're not or someone says something about you, your whole your whole mind feels like it's in turmoil. You're constantly apologizing, even when you did nothing wrong that can be you know what I say sorry ray too much. And one thing I love my training gift says is all time, every time I would do something wrong, when I am you know, throwing a punch or get a
combination wrong, he'll say, You're not sorry, You're amazing. You're not sorry, You're amazing.
It's you know, when he says that, I'm like, oh, yeah, I'm amazing. I'm not sorry.
But on a deeper level, you end up saying sorry a lot because you just constantly want someone to think that you are passive. And just in case, I'm saying sorry because I want to make sure that you know whatever you say is more important. And lastly, you rarely say no, but then you resent it afterwards. So again I guess that's kind of like the boundaries thing, but essentially keep saying yes to things, but actually internally it's
really annoying you or you're resenting saying yes afterwards. And I always say, it's never really a good thing you've done for another person if you're resenting it afterwards, like you're not really helping the person. You're not really doing good for that person. If actually you're resenting helping them after that's not real help. So I wanted to share
¶ Ask yourself this when you start worrying about what others think
these four questions that I started going through in my mind that I would ask myself whenever I would start spiraling and thinking about what others think about me and stay in that spiral.
So the first one is why do I care? Why do you care?
Why do you care? Think about something that you were overthinking about. Think about something where you're worried about their opinion for why did you care? Why do you care what that person thinks about you? And it's not like a blase why do you care? It's breaking it down.
I care. Let's say it's your mom.
I care what my mom thinks about me because when she says something like that, it makes me feel like this, And when I feel like this, it makes me think I am not a good person, I am not worthy. When she speaks to me like that, it reminds me of a time when she did this, this, and this whatever.
It is really break down the root in your mind of how did you get to the point of worrying about what she's thinking about you or that person's thinking about you, and what does it then en up making you feel to cause you to keep thinking about it over and over again, and then that kind of leads on to why do I want them to like me? You know, there's a very valid reason I want my mum to like me, because I love her and I want her to respect me and love me and think what I'm.
Doing is right.
And then does their opinion of me trigger me because it's something I need to work on? That was a big one for me. And notice that I would get triggered most like of strangers DMS, I would get really upset, And first of all, i'd be like, I'm just upset because I don't want people, you.
Know, people to think bad of me.
And then I realized, oh, sometimes it's actually because it's a trigger and a reminder to me.
Of the things that I actually need to work on. And so I actually feel.
More defensive and more upset about it because I also deep down think that about myself. And there could be a difference between it being something that's true, or it could be something where it's pushing on your insecurities.
And so actually it's not that it's true, it's that you have.
To work on your self worth because it's pushing on your insecure authorities and making you feel worse about yourself.
And the last one is are they someone whose opinion I value in that area of my life.
The value of someone's opinion is directly correlated to the value of their relationship in your life, and so a throwaway comment from a stranger should not matter as much as a truthful input from a trusted friend or a loved one. And that's how you really filter judgment and help from other people.
And that's something I've.
Really had to filter literally in my DMS and in my inbox. It's like if someone tells me that they now dislike me because of something I've posted, or that they used to like me but now I'm posting things about I don't know pair brands and now they think I'm just trying to sell them something.
It's like, okay, well that's how you feel like.
I really am not going to I don't know how much I can spend my time trying to change that. By the way I used to try and change it, I would send them voice notes to be like explain to them why I took on that partnership or why I did this, or explaining myself of why I haven't posted about this, why I haven't done this, and it's
just exhausting. Why not invest more time in the relationships and cultivate the relationships that do mean something to me and make sure those relationships are good rather than sending someone a random voice oot to a stranger that makes no difference in my life. And you know, I realized
¶ The real reason we're obsessed with being liked
that nowadays, more people have the opportunity to have opinions about you because of how social media is. It's like back in the day, maybe the people in your village might have an opinion about you your family, but it was never to this scale. Now you have more judgment and more opinion on you than ever before because we're constantly showing people our lives and also more people are seeing our lives than they would have ever been able
to before. And so we're kind of welcoming that judgment into our life as well, and welcoming those opinions by obviously sharing our.
Life more and more online.
It's literally like having someone in your DMS is like having someone knocking on your door and being like, I just want you to know I hate you, slams the door shut. Honestly, how are we taking that?
Seriously? Do?
Because I don't know why why do we do it. It's because we just want to be loved and liked. That's the essence of everything, And because we have to start to appreciate ourself more. The more you appreciate yourself and the more confident you are, the less the opinions of strangers or other people will shake you. The more insecure I feel, the more I care what others think, and that has been a regular pattern in my life.
I feel insecure the words of other people. I almost see as like the more self worth you have, it acts as a shield. That shield will.
Deflect off and reflect off all of that negative energy. The negative comments, the opinions of other people don't hit you as hard because you have this shield that's fighting them off. As soon as I become insecure and I start questioning myself slowly, it creates these holes in this shield that I'd created to allow those opinions in, to allow the thoughts of other people and how they perceive me. It start seeping into me and I start absorbing it
because that shield has been broken. So unfortunately it's a you thing or it's an us thing. We have to work on that foundational acceptance of yourself and building those strong foundations means there's no cracks for others words or opinions.
To enter and affect you. Or you may hear it, it just won't affect you as much or balance off. You'd be like, thank you so much for your opinion.
You're not paying my bills, you're not somebody I love, And for that reason, your opinion means a balance of zero to me, Thank you very much. And you know, I would doubt myself and my character and who I was so easily because I actually had no clue who
I was. And the first step to self worth and self acceptance is understanding yourself first, Because how are you going to accept yourself or notice your worth if you're not starting to learn about who you actually are and what you do have to offer in this Well, then, by the way, before you say I've got nothing to offer, every single person has so much to offer just by taking the time, like you were trying to date the guy that you're obsessed with, take that time to be obsessed with yourself for.
¶ Get to know yourself
A little bit. So let's talk about a few.
Actions and practices that can start you on the path to caring less about what others think and caring more about what you think.
First of all, like I said, is self awareness.
Get to know you listen to what your body and you're in a voice are telling you that you should be doing. Start making choices and decisions for yourself. Follow through with your decisions. The more you listen to you, the louder your voice will get and others voices will get quieter.
The lower your self esteem is, the more you'll care about what others think.
And low esteem really boils down to just not knowing your worth or knowing the magic that you have in you. You have to see it, look for it to remember it's even there in those hard moments. So I actually don't like the term finding yourself because you're not lost. It's actually just returning back to yourself.
You have to.
Unlearn, excavate all those things to remember who you are before the world got its hands on you, before other people's opinions started changing who you are, before the view of or the perception of others start to affect the way that you acted.
And so what does that take?
It means spending more time with yourself, not trying to feel the moments of silence, writing, hearing your thoughts.
What do you like what do you dislike? Can you answer those questions right now? What do you like? What do you dislike?
What kind of things really upset you in a friendship? What opinions matter to you the most? What are the hardest things for you to hear about yourself? What are your non negotiables? What are the things that you value the most like? All of these questions are questions that will help you to understand you and then help you to almost build a good trunk for yourself where you can't be pushed around. When you think about a tree, the trunk is so solid that.
No matter what element comes at at rain wind snow.
Like not element but season, same thing, but no matter what comes at it, it still stands strong because their roots are so deep and their trunk is so strong. And so that's really what we're trying to build for ourselves, that no matter what the externals come to towards us, we still stay solid and.
Who we are.
¶ Identify your purpose and value in life
And that leads me on to the second action or practice that you can do. Sit down and think about what your personal purpose and values are. You're deeper why when you have that thread or that trunk. As I spoke about it before. Even if others don't understand it, at least you see the connection.
I've had to keep.
Reminding myself of that, honestly, of my why all the time, because you know, like I said, I do get a
lot of judgment in my life. And I'm not saying that for sympathy, because I also understand that it is part and parcel of choosing to be seen online, but for me not to constantly be eaten up by all these judgments and change who I am every five seconds, and it affects my self worth constantly because, by the way, it has for a really long time, I've had to constantly remind myself or what my thread is, what my value is, what my trunk is, because even if they
don't see it or understand why I'm doing anything I'm doing, at least I do.
At least I have this constant focus.
I have these branches that are coming off that people may not see are linked to this trunk.
But I do. I know it's linked.
And I've had so many times where people have said something and it's really made me realize, I don't know why I did it, and I don't know why I ended up doing this thing and or why I didn't do it, and it became a point of reflection for me too that I need to constantly keep coming back to my core, my thread, that I need to know what that is, what is this route purpose that I am doing all of this for. So if someone else doesn't see it, at least I do. At least I
have that constant point to come back to. The Next
¶ Setting boundaries
exercise I want you to do is write down three things that you really wouldn't let's slide to show yourself that there are things that you don't actually care about what others thing. So, for example, what I mean by that is when I did this exercise, I know that there are a few things when no matter what, I will not change my opinion about. So for example, if someone spoke about my family, it's a no go. There's not me buying my tongue. I'm not going to be polite,
no matter who is. No matter what happens, I don't care what the person thinks of me or what their perception of me is. In that moment, I'm defending them till the better end. And you will not be saying anything about my family, especially my grandma. Or if someone pusses me for being vegan. That is a deep value that I have a strong whiy for. So if someone says something dumb about that, or someone says something rude, I will never hold back why because they are deep
rooted values of mine. And so when I thought about it in that way, I was like, that showed me that I am capable of standing my ground and my beliefs, and I appreciate those part of me.
So the mix of those two things.
A strong belief and appreciating that belief would allow me to stand my ground more and care less about the thoughts of other people in those areas. So if I apply that same concept to everything else, then I'll really not be affected so much by what other people think about any area of my life. The next thing is
¶ Practice perspective
practice perspective. When you're next worrying about what other people think, take yourself and go ask yourself those four questions we just spoke about before, though, Why do I care?
Why do I want them to like me?
Does their opinion of me trigger me because it's something I need to work on? And are they someone whose opinion I value in that area of my life?
So go back through and ask yourself those four questions to really gain perspective.
And also think about this, when you're gaining perspective, how much will what they think of me matter in a week, in a month, in a year, in a decade, at the end of time, when I'm sitting on my deathbed, is am I really going to be worried about what they think about me? That they unfollowed me because I posted something or didn't post something.
No, I probably won't be. And that one really.
Helps me to snap out of worrying about what others think of me. I'm like, in my dying moments, will their opinion of me really matter? It may right now, but will it then? And the last thing is experiment
¶ Sit in that discomfort of not being liked
what it feels like to experience disapproval, to really sit with it, to not explain yourself. Oh my goodness, that's such a hard one for me. I want to like just explain myself to everybody. Every time someone has like a view of me that I'm like, why do they think that of me? There's trying to write out a full message or a voice note, trying to understand or explain myself of why I did what they think I did, whatever it is, But try and sit through it once.
Sit in that discomfort of not being liked, or sit in that discomfort of someone's opinion of you being completely wrong, of someone having the wrong perception of you? How does that feel after a day, after a week, after a month, And you might just realize it's not that bad, Or you might find yourself sending out a whole lot of voice notes and a whole lot of text messages. Either way, at least you'll find out whether it actually is something that matters to you.
¶ Finding freedom in being yourself
So, actually, you.
Don't need to focus on how to stop caring about what people think of you. I think that's a very natural thought, So we're.
Not really trying to do that.
What we need to focus on is building foundations and values and understanding you so what others say about you doesn't shake you as much.
I read this and I thought it was really beautiful.
It says, your fear of criticism is an unchecked need for love and approval from all the wrong places. If we don't love and approve ourself, we will first look for it from others, whilst second simultaneously believing we don't deserve it and fearing that they are going to see us for who.
We really are.
So I hope that this podcast helps you to reflect on how incredible you are, the worst that you should have in yourself, how wonderful you are, and how there are very few people whose opinions should really matter to you, and think about that deeply, and whenever the next time someone's opinion really gets to you, go through those four questions, go through those exercises and those practices, even just pick one that you think would help you the most.
And try and utilize that.
Because I'm telling you, as someone who has experienced being and living in the perception of others, it is exhausting. It's not fun. You constantly feel like you don't know who you are. You'll constantly have moments of feeling lonely even when you have friends. Because all we want to be is not accept We want to be accepted for who we actually are, not who people think we are. And so even if you do get accepted as this other version of yourself, it will never feel fulfilling at all.
When we get to be authentic and then be accepted, that's all we're really looking for. And so build those foundations, figure out those values that you have, like go through all of these things, because not only will it help with the opinions of others, it will also help with you loving yourself a little bit more and valuing yourself a little bit more. And you know, I think sometimes we can feel like that sounds so egotistical too, that oh my gosh, I just want you just telling us.
To start like bigging ourselves up.
But actually I love to see myself as an instrument of God, as an instrument of the universe. And so everything that we have been given is a gift from God, and so how can we not appreciate it, How can we not find worth in it?
Because we are here for a reason.
God has given us these gifts, these skills, these attributes for a reason.
And so how dare we not appreciate them.
How dare we not see them and notice them and recognize them and see the worth in them? And you have to remember, the opinions of others are based on this tiny, little minuscule crumb that they get to see of you, the tiniest crumb, And so we can either live our life trying to let them see the full version of ourself, or if there's someone who makes perceptions based on a tiny crumb, then they may not be worth having in your life. This came from I'm going
to leave you guys with this. It says it's from just Talp's prayer, and I'm not sure what that is, but it was lovely. I do my thing and you do your thing. I'm not in this world to live up to your expectations, and you're not in this world to live up to mine.
You are you, and I am I, And if.
Our true versions of ourselves happen to connect, then magic will happen.
I did that last line, but that's really the essence.
I do my thing, You do your thing. I'm not in this world to live up to your expectations, and you are not in this world to live up to a mine.
You are you and I am I, and.
If our true versions of ourselves happen to connect, then magic will happen.
I hope you will have such.
A wonderful, wonderful day and don let the opinions of others ruin what could be a wonderful, wonderful life.
Thanks guys, and I'll see you next time.