
Overcome Anxiety And Feel Authentically Confident
by Mark Stevens
Embark on an enlightening journey with this thought-provoking track that challenges the conventional anxieties of social perception. Discover the liberating truth behind the "spotlight effect" and contemplate how we overestimate the attention our actions receive from others. This talk promises to unravel the pressures of external validation, encouraging a more authentic and less self-conscious way of living. Tune in to redefine your understanding of freedom and self-expression, and perhaps, in doing so, find the courage to be unapologetically you.
Transcript
Hello to everyone tuning into this track.
I hope these words find you in a moment of peace or perhaps provide a bit of solace if they don't.
Today I want to talk about revelation that has the potential to shift how you navigate the world.
So if you picture this scenario,
You're in a public place,
You slip and for a brief moment it feels as if the world has paused to witness your fall.
We've all been in that situation,
You know,
In some way or another.
You're suddenly self-conscious and feeling flushed with embarrassment.
But have you ever stopped to wonder if you're giving those kinds of moments more attention than they deserve?
A lot of us can worry about how others perceive us,
You know,
We are after all a social species and many of our ancestors,
How they were perceived by the tribe really was of the utmost importance.
In terms of your biological makeup,
You're still running on that same software,
Right?
But the rules in the modern world are different.
There's still that same tribal fixation on your social standing,
It's hardwired into you in some sense.
But the utility of that fixation,
Which served your distant ancestors,
Is partially outdated in the modern world.
I'm not saying that how others perceive you is of no consequence.
Of course it matters how others perceive you.
What I am saying is that it's highly likely you overestimate how much it matters.
Often people can have their entire decision-making process,
As well as what they can and can't do,
Dictated by what they anticipate others will think of them.
And this sort of begs the question,
Does this ancient aspect of our cognition still serve us in the way it originally did?
Our fixation with this kind of social evaluation is now competing with a world brimming with diverse interactions and individual expressions.
So let's dig deeper into this.
When your decision-making is hijacked by how you think others will perceive you,
You're not living authentically.
You become like an actor in your own life.
You're playing roles that cater to the audience's expectations.
But this audience is actually more likely concerned with their own performance and playing their own roles than they are with reviewing yours.
So living under the weight of this perceived judgment is not just exhausting,
But it's actually profoundly anxiety-inducing.
Why is that?
The reason for that is that you're trying to solve an unsolvable puzzle in a certain sense,
Because you're trying to discern others' opinions about you.
But in reality,
You don't actually have access to other people's thoughts.
And yet you still,
Or we still,
Base our happiness sometimes on their approval.
And trying to alleviate this anxiety through further externalization is much akin to trying to quench your thirst with salt water,
Right?
To elaborate on what I mean by that,
Just in the same way as drinking salt water doesn't solve the problem because you'll end up just thirsty or needing,
You know,
More actual water.
In exactly that same way,
Trying to quench your anxiety with external validation is only gonna cause you to feel increasingly anxious,
Not less.
But here's the liberating twist.
Psychological research has consistently shown that people overestimate the extent to which their actions and appearance are noted by others.
This is known as the spotlight effect,
And studies indicate that while you might think everyone notices your faux pas,
The truth is they're actually much more likely to be engrossed in their own experience.
So if you consider for a moment the implications of this,
If the spotlight isn't as bright as you think,
What does this mean for your freedom of expression?
Think of how ludicrous our behavior can be in light of this revelation.
Sometimes we can twist ourselves in knots over what others think of us,
Which we can't ever really know anyway.
And irrespective of that,
The truth remains that whatever view they might have of us,
They have their own lives to live,
And in reality they actually don't think about us that much.
Or as much as we think they do.
You know,
Of course your close friends and family care how you're doing and so on,
But the truth remains that you likely overestimate how much people think about you at all.
Now this can sound kind of negative or potentially disquieting.
There's that sense people might care less about you than you thought,
Or that this idea is in danger of diminishing your importance in some way.
But you know,
I'd like to assure you this is actually a liberating concept.
When you place less importance on what others think,
You start to gain a felt sense that it's really okay to do what you want with your life.
Why would you fear the judgment of others when you realize they are for the most part preoccupied with their own lives,
Their own conquests and challenges and dramas?
When you appreciate that others think of you less than you realized,
You're now free to give yourself full permission to go ahead and be radically you.
And again,
One of the strange things about this is that when you start living outside of that cage of your perception of the perception others have about you,
You're not going to need that validation and approval.
Counterintuitively enough,
People actually start to think much better of you,
Which is,
You know,
Nice,
But of course of little concern to you.
So to wrap up this short talk,
People think less about you than you think.
So go forth and give yourself permission to turn up the volume on being who you are.
So thanks for listening to this short talk,
And I hope you have a lovely rest of your day.
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