Who Would You Be IF No One Was Watching?

Most of us live our lives on a stage, constantly performing for an invisible audience of parents, peers, or society, terrified of hearing silence instead of applause. But what if the curtain came down, the lights went out, and there was no one left to impress but yourself?

In this episode, we will explore the radical freedom of taking off the mask and discovering the life you were actually meant to live, not the one you were told to perform.

Music by Aonescape from Pixabay

Transcript

Welcome to the Happiness Podcast.

I'm Dr.

Robert Puff.

Do you want to know a secret?

Most of us live lives very similar to superstars.

As a psychologist working in Newport Beach,

California,

I've had the privilege to work with some very successful people in the eyes of the public.

The public might call them superstars and you'd think their lives are great.

But there's one thing about being a superstar in the eyes of the public.

The public is very curious and comments on how your life is going.

I remember once working with one of these people who had put on some weight while she was part of a reality show and sadly it was so hard on her because social media just berated her for the excess weight she had put on.

I think we all know that people in the public eye often get very scrutinized by other people and it can be vicious sometimes.

But here's the part that's going to surprise you.

Is your life,

Is our life,

Any different than theirs?

We may not have people commenting on us in People Magazine about how our lives are going,

But there's definitely an invisible audience that very much can impact the decisions we make this week just to avoid judgment or gain approval.

The clothes we wear,

The career choices,

Social media posts.

This is called the spotlight effect and it can cause us to suffer.

Researchers have proven that we way overestimate how much people notice us by a huge margin.

Even though we're not superstars,

We edit our lives for an audience that isn't even watching.

Yes,

It's in our head,

But it matters.

So my question today is,

Who would we be if no one was watching?

I want to explore about how we can live an authentic life where we live a life that aligns with our deepest passions,

Our joys,

And so that we can find peace and happiness in our lives regardless if the whole world is watching or no one is watching.

As you can imagine,

There's a cost for living an inauthentic life.

It's called the regret argument.

There's a famous palliative care nurse named Bronnie Ware who recorded the top regrets of the dying.

Do you know what the number one regret was?

I wish I had had the courage to live a life true to myself,

Not a life others expected of me.

When our life comes to an end,

The fear of judgment vanishes,

But sadly,

The pain of self-betrayal remains.

We want to avoid this pain now while we still have time.

Let's explore next the psychology of the persona versus the self.

Carl Jung,

One of the founding fathers of modern day psychology,

Talked about the persona or the mask that we all wear.

This is the face we put on to meet the world,

The good doctor,

The nice mom,

The successful businessman.

It's necessary for survival,

But dangerous if it gets stuck.

If we wear one of these masks too long,

The face underneath begins to suffocate.

Depression might come up when the soul creates a symptom to wake you up and say,

I'm dying under here.

It's nice that you think I'm a nice mom,

But there's so much more to me.

Lao Tzu,

The very wise philosopher from China said,

Care about what other people think and you will always be their prisoner.

We so quickly identify ourselves and let other people identify us by what we've done or what we're doing,

But there's deeper levels inside of us,

Much deeper when we don't take on these labels so readily and we give ourselves room to breathe and say,

Who am I?

Then we can begin to live a far more authentic life.

The big question is,

Am I living the life that I want to live or living the life that other people want me to live?

Did you ever see the movie Dead Poets Society?

Do you remember how one of the main characters so desperately wanted to be an actor,

But his father wanted him to be a doctor?

So what did he do?

He chose to end his life instead of living his dream.

So to live an authentic life,

Not caring so much about what other people think of what we're doing or who we are,

We have to stop,

We have to pause and look inside and explore what's important to me when I really don't care about what other people think.

I know this can be so hard,

But the rewards it brings are astronomical because now when we're living the life that we want to live,

When we're doing the things that we want to do because we choose to,

That's truly a beautiful life.

There's a very famous physicist called Richard Feynman.

Before he passed,

He won a Nobel Prize for physics and was arguably a genius,

But he refused to act like a dignified professor.

He played the bongos,

He cracked safes,

He painted nude portraits,

And he hung out in the samba bands in Brazil.

He wrote a famous book entitled,

What Do You Care What Other People Think?

He believed his responsibility was to find out how the world works as a physicist,

Not to live up to other people's image of a scientist.

Because he didn't care about looking smart,

He asked the dumb questions that led to his great discoveries.

There's an ancient Greek philosopher named Diogenes of Senech who took not caring to an extreme.

He lived in a ceramic tub in the marketplace when Alexander the Great,

The most powerful man in the world,

Visited him and asked,

I'll give you anything you desire.

What do you want?

Diogenes replied,

Stand a little out of my son.

Of course,

To live an authentic life,

We don't have to live in a tub,

But notice a powerful dynamic that went on here.

The man who needs nothing,

Diogenes,

Was more powerful than the man who conquered the world,

Alexander.

Authenticity is power.

Have you ever seen the beautiful paintings by Grandma Moses?

Her actual name was Anna Mary Robinson Moses.

She spent her life as a farm wife,

Doing what was expected of her.

She didn't start painting seriously until she was 78 years old.

If you've seen her work,

She didn't paint for galleries or for critics.

She painted old timey scenes because they made her happy.

And when I look at them,

They make me happy too.

Because she chose to paint for pure,

Authentic joy rather than for the market,

The world fell in love with her work.

She proves it's never too late to take off the mask.

So if we do want to live a more authentic life,

How do we drop the mask and stop caring about the invisible audience all around us?

We have to start with the why audit.

We take a look at the three major areas of our life,

Our jobs,

Our relationships,

Our hobbies,

And we ask a very important question.

Am I doing this because I love it?

Or because it looks good on a resume or on Instagram?

This is probably one of the favorite things I love to do with my work,

Is help people shift from what they ought to do to what they want to do.

It's just such a joy to help people make little steps towards changing what they want to do with their lives and how they want to live it right now.

What people think of us,

What people expect of us,

Keeps us from living an authentic life.

It doesn't mean we're going to discount their thoughts and their advice,

It's just we're not going to make our final decisions based upon what other people think we ought to be doing.

After all,

It is called our life,

Not their life.

This is why I value so much quiet time,

Going on retreats,

Spending time alone,

Spending time in nature,

To check in.

Am I doing this because I want to do this?

Or am I doing this for the approval of others?

Self-discovery,

Though it can be scary,

Can be so much fun.

Carl Jung,

Who I mentioned before,

Had a split with Sigmund Freud and he needed to discover who he was.

So he spent large amounts of time at Lake Zurich and began gathering stones from the water and building entire miniature villages,

Complete with cottages,

A castle,

And even a church.

As a respected doctor in his 30s,

He felt humiliated and silly for doing this.

He had to battle his own ego to allow himself to simply play.

But as he played,

His inner world began to open up,

And many of his most important concepts,

Like archetypes and the collective unconscious,

Came from these experiences of play.

So would you be open to try this?

Small weirdness practices.

Do one thing this week that is you,

But it might be judged.

Wear a hat that you like,

But think it is too loud.

Listen to music that you love,

But is uncool.

When we do this,

We're building the muscles of surviving minor judgments.

I remember the pivotal point where this choice was made in my life.

I grew up in Iowa in a very conservative town in the Midwest of the United States,

Where one Christmas,

My family,

We went to Arizona for a vacation.

While I was there,

I fell in love with this hat.

Think of it like a cool woodstock hat.

It definitely didn't fit into the type of hats people wore at my high school.

But at the end of the vacation,

And when Monday came around when I went back to school,

I knew I had a choice.

I knew I could wear that hat because I liked it,

But people would comment.

But I also knew,

Even though it was just a little thing,

That if I didn't do it,

I would allow other people to dictate what was important to me for the rest of my life.

So I went to school,

I wore that hat,

I did get comments by a few people that weren't very nice,

But I wore that hat because I knew I liked it.

Let me ask you a hard question.

Imagine it's your funeral.

Would you rather have people say,

He was a reasonable man or woman who always did what his neighbors expected?

Or he was a little odd,

Followed his own star and was vividly alive.

The first one was perhaps boring or even tragic.

The second version was beautiful.

The world just doesn't need another copy.

It needs the original you.

Ralph Waldo Emerson,

Who lived a beautifully authentic life wrote,

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.

And when you're struggling to be the authentic you,

Repeat this affirmation,

I release the need for applause.

I live for the joy of the experience.

Or who would I be if no one was watching?

Thank you for joining me on the happiness podcast until next time,

Accept what is love what is.

Reviews

I related to this so much. Thank you.

Another great podcast!! Being yourself is so important! I actually dozed off on the middle of the podcast (it’s 3:50am here) but once I was over the sleep for a while I listened and this was pure gold! I also bookmarked so I can come back to this when needed!! Thank you so so much Dr puff for your wisdom, quotes, and using examples so we really understand. 🙏🏽♥️🩵🩶💛🧡✨