How to care less about what people think of you

If you’ve ever not gone for that pitch, posted that thought, shared that big idea, because you’re worried about what people might think, the first thing I want to say is, you're definitely not alone.

As a human (you are a human right?) belonging is one of your core needs. You’re wired to care about what other people think of you. So balancing the need to feel you fit in with being true to yourself will always be a tension. And this is OK.

But if you know that other’s opinions are having more of an impact on you than is healthy or helpful, the good news is that there are ways to move past this, ground yourself in what is true and take back control of how you feel.

Here’s five things you can do think about to get started:

1. Define your values - what’s important to you?

I think of values as something solid you can plant your feet on.

When you know what yours are, you can stand and say ’this is me and what matters to me’.

Being true to them builds trust in yourself, and when you continually choose your values first, your confidence builds just like a muscle.

My personal values that are important to me in all areas of my life are creativity, authenticity, fun, freedom and love. They help remember how to feel good about being, and showing up, as me.

The values I choose to act in alignment with as I build my business are:

• Belief - choosing to have faith in what’s possible for myself and my clients, because this is the foundation to defining a new story
• Bravery - choosing step by step to be courageous in my actions so that others feel inspired and empowered to do the same
• Balance - choosing to create and allow this with how I use my time, energy and skills to enable growth in a whole and sustainable way

Every time something feels out of kilter in how I am showing up or building my business, I can pretty much bet I’m not behaving in a way that honours these.

Do you know yours?

2. Discover your strengths - where do you shine?

How would it feel to be able to OWN what you’re great at and forget the rest?

Getting clear on your strengths means you can work with them - and ideally ditch or delegate the rest of your very long to-do list. Hoorah.

And you can start defining yourself by the value you DO bring, not someone else’s view of your value or contribution.

As an example, my top five strengths are:

• Strategic - this means I can see patterns easily and ‘a way through’ where others can’t. It enables me to help people define their brand and personal purpose, as well as spot a clear way forward for them. But it’s also about thinking differently, so it makes perfect sense that I support people with mindset work and becoming thought-leaders who challenge perspectives in their field
• Activator - I make shizzle happen. Always have. Always will. As a coach, this is about supporting and energising you to do the same and take action in your life, work and business in a way that’s right for you
• Communicator - this is where you can see my messaging skills fit in. I love to find a perfect phrase with my clients to help them position themselves. It’s also about captivating audiences and presenting effectively through storytelling
• Futuristic - this strength is about being able to look ahead and help others to do the same. Pretty handy when you’re working on brand vision or helping people create and step into new identities. If you can see it, you can create it I reckon. And sometimes that’s about me supporting people to see things they can’t yet.
• Relator - this strength is about how I like to work with people. I enjoy deep relationships - again, no surprise I love 1:1 work as coach.

When you are clear about your strengths, you can focus on dialling them up and owning them. This particular assessment has 34 strengths themes and the chances of you having the same top five and order as someone else is 1 in 33 million. Talk about people being unique!

3. Question your thoughts - what is true?

Your brain has a negativity bias because it wants to keep you safe. So it turns out, the things you think are not always factly true. They are just thoughts.

Because of this biased, you can easily think that things are worse than they are - especially if you feel threatened (or judged) by someone. So here the work is to start to unpick what is true.

Want to try it out?

Try spending even just an hour questioning the things you think. Write down what comes into your brain - perhaps in relation to what you think people think of you. Ask yourself, is this true? What else could be true? See what comes up for you.

4. Choose your tolerance - what do you want to feel?

The feeling of embarrassment or shame is rubbish. No-one wants it, so it’s no wonder you’ll want to avoid it.

But here’s a tip - you don’t HAVE to tolerate it. Even if you ‘mess up’ or don’t quite achieve or nail what you wanted to, you can choose to forgive yourself.

Once you’ve done that, it gets much easier to take on feedback from others as learning and choose how you want to feel in response (and yes, sometimes that takes time). In fact, I saw this in action with a client the other day. At the start of a session she was feeling massively stressed about an upcoming assessment.

‘When I think about it, I feel like I can’t breathe’, she told me.

Together we unpicked what was happening. The root of it was that she needed to forgive herself for an earlier ‘perceived’ failure she felt embarrassed about. This awareness led to her being able reframe how she wanted to feel about the upcoming assessment and she left the session feeling relieved and in control.

Coaching is awesome for helping you to change how you see things, release shame and take back control of how you feel.

5. Judge less, see more - what do you want to change?

So this tip is a reminder that most people don’t actually care that much. Even if they have an opinion, really that’s about them not you.

Let me give you an example. Someone says ’they look/sound like a [insert what you don’t want people to say about you here]'

Do you know why they care or have commented? It’s because they don’t want to look/sound like that. They want to feel better than the person they have commented on.

So, next time you catch yourself judging someone else (we all do it sometimes), ask yourself what is this telling me about how I want to be perceived?

This awareness around what you want people to think about you will help you to see new ways to shape your personal brand and where to focus on building your confidence next.

If you want support to identify your purpose, values, strengths or more so that you can find more confidence in being you, I can help. Find out about how to work with me here or jump straight to booking in a chat here .