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Hey there,
We all have an ego problem.
It’s easy to see why. We experience life through a single lens and filter every thought through our unique perspectives. The world revolves around us - or at least, it can feel like it sometimes.
And it’s a seductive belief. Who doesn’t want to believe they're the main character?
But thinking you’re the star of the show makes life real complicated. You can even become paralyzed by stage fright, convinced people are watching your every move.
This manifests itself in different ways:
📱 “I need to post on social media and check my emails constantly.” You’re afraid that if you vanish from the interwebs, chaos will ensue. People need you, after all. But the reality is that most people won’t even notice if you’re offline for a few days. They have their own lives (where they’re the star!).
🗣 “I can’t post that online. People are going to make fun of me.” We talk ourselves out of posting that TikTok/YouTube video/Tweet because we’re embarrassed of what people will think. But according to Frontier Science News people consume up to 74GB worth of info a day. That's about 16 movies. Your post is just another drop in that swimming pool-sized bucket.
😓 “I got such negative feedback. I never want to put myself out there again.” Criticism isn’t personal (even if it feels that way). It’s usually a way for someone to reconfirm their beliefs, release pent-up frustration, or project their worldview. It’s easier said than done, but try not to take it personally, because odds are the person who said it doesn’t know the first thing about you.
Realizing people don’t actually care about you can be both depressing and weirdly liberating. But we’d strongly encourage you to focus on the latter perspective. Realizing that you’re not the most important person in the world (or even in the room) is how you can live the life you want, and not the life others expect from you.
Or as Meryl Streep puts it,
“The minute you start caring about what other people think, is the minute you stop being yourself.”
Do your thing. No one’s watching. Promise.
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