You propose a new idea in a meeting, and then watch everyone’s faces anxiously to see if they think you sound dumb.
You raise your rates and spend the next 24 hours convinced every client who doesn’t respond immediately is ghosting you forever — and brace yourself for the angry comments on Instagram.
You say you don’t want to attend that late birthday dinner across town, and then you worry that your friends are mad and think you’re selfish.
You leave work a little early to get to the school recital a little late and you worry your boss is mad AND the rest of the parents are looking down on you for tardiness.
(If your mom still thinks you should go to graduate school …
And your best friend wants you to start an art commune with her …
You can’t do both, at least not at one time.)
The bad news is that making everyone happy and controlling what they think about you is literally impossible to accomplish and you will die trying! Sorry, but it’s true.
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I’m paying so much more attention to my thoughts and how they affect my feelings. I’ll catch myself making assumptions about how other people think or feel about me and I’ll stop and really analyze it and curiously look at where it’s coming from. This has defused many situations.
– Patty
My business is growing. I am more empowered with my money and the decisions I make with my money. I am so much more out there on social media! (Huge for me). I care less about what people think and more about what I think.
– Maxine
I still have the same job. I live in the same house. I look the same. I have roughly the same amount of money in the bank. I experience all the same emotions. There is no big achievement unlocked here.
BUT
It’s different now. I’m not overwhelmingly anxious.
I am fantasizing less and less about how I would feel if I was thin. I don’t second guess my husband’s attraction to me nearly as much.
I am less offended at work and at home.
– Vicky
I’m Kara Loewentheil. Apart from being an Ivy League-educated Master Certified Coach and the author of the New York Times-bestselling book “Take Back Your Brain,” I’m also a former could-be-certified-in-worrying-about-other-people’s-opinions-if-that-was-a-thing.
I spent literal decades holding myself back based on my fears about other people’s opinions.
I stayed in a career I didn’t love because it was prestigious and I thought my parents and colleagues would think I was nuts if I left it.
I stayed in dead-end relationships because I worried that people would judge me if I were single — though I also worried they judged me based on my partners.
I wasted thousands of hours of my life on diets and calorie counting and binging and purging because I was so worried about what other people thought about my body and my weight.
I worried about what people were thinking about what I wore, how my hair looked, what I ate, what I didn’t eat, how I sat in chairs, what I said in meetings, what I didn’t say, how much money I made or didn’t make, what my friends said or did, who my family was, whether I had kids or not, what I read, what I listened to, what I watched — the list was truly endless.
It was all-consuming, and I did not grow out of it.
It didn’t get better when I got older.
It didn’t get better when I got more successful.
It didn’t get better when I hit my life milestones.
It only got better when I learned how to change it on purpose.
— Bessie