speech on a subject I’m familiar with, though I do not consider myself much of a public speaker, I can still walk through the fear and give the speech because I’m familiar with the subject matter. Once I’ve given the speech, I will have a new level of expectation for myself when it comes to public speaking: I will expect that I can do it again next time. However, if I’m asked to speak again, the subject matter may be something I’m not familiar with. What will I do then? This is fear of failure mixed with fear of what other people will think of me—and I haven’t even been asked to give the second speech yet. This fear can affect my first speech, since my mind will likely preoccupy itself with what others may think at some time before I give the speech, and this fear of what other people will think of me can paralyze me. Yet I don’t even have an idea what those people really think.
In the end, I’m the one doing the thinking. When it comes to thinking, it’s important for me to remember that I’m the only one doing my thinking. This is the main reason my sponsor told me, “It’s none of your business what other people think of you.”
I’ll never be able to please everyone, so I need to stop worrying about it. There is a great sense of freedom in knowing that.
The sense of freedom I gain lets me see that it isn’t what other people think about me, it’s what I think they think of me that has the power to hurt me. After all, most people don’t come up and tell me what they think of me, especially if it is negative. Nearly all the negative things people think of me are not my reality, but exist only in my own vivid imagination. I make these thoughts and fears up as I go along. And I make up other fears that accompany the original fears I imagined. Then, I project these fears onto the other person or people, even though there is a strong possibility these people weren’t thinking of me at all. It is only logical. Many people practice “projection,” or the attribution of their own thoughts, feelings, and conclusions to others.
To prove my point, let’s look at an example of what other people thought of me, or so I thought, when I took on the job of establishing a volunteer helpline. The only people who ever told me what they thought of what I did with the helpline were the people who thought I did something positive. While there were probably people who thought I did it for a selfish or some other negative reason, they never told me their thoughts on the subject. Truth be told, most people—even the ones who knew I was behind the revamping of the system (and there weren’t that many of them to begin with)—probably never gave it much thought at all. If they did, they kept their thoughts to themselves, because I never heard about it.
Therefore, if I thought they harbored ill feeling toward me, it was my own thoughts I was battling, not theirs. If I look at this situation under the spotlight of reason, as opposed to the darkness of my irrationality, I will see it for what it is. When I say, “I think Sam doesn’t like me,” all I have to do is stop after the first two words in the sentence to know who is doing the thinking. I am. “I think Sam doesn’t like me.” Sam hasn’t made a comment regarding the matter, but I have assigned him the role of not liking me because it fits into my fearful way of thinking.
Even if I happen to be right, and Sam doesn’t like me, what should that matter? Sam is one person. I know I can’t please everyone, so Sam now falls into the category of people I couldn’t or didn’t please this time around. Maybe Sam has a good reason for not liking me, but that shouldn’t matter since Sam’s reasons are just that—his reasons. If Sam doesn’t like the idea that I revamped the helpline, maybe it is because he secretly wishes he had done so himself. The reason shouldn’t matter, and I need to get to where it doesn’t matter to me.
If Sam doesn’t like it, that is his problem, not mine. If at some point Sam makes it known to me that he doesn’t like what I did, I need to let him own his problem. Even though fear tells me I need to fix it, I don’t need to take on Sam’s problem or problems. Yet I’ve been known to do just that. If I have a problem with the way people treat me or the things they tell me, I sometimes allow fear to tell me that I need to fix the problem even though it may be outside my control to do so. Somewhere in the mess, I take my problem of wanting them to like me and twist it in such a way so that I think it is the other person’s responsibility to fix it, when it is still my problem. My problem is still with Sam. I want Sam to like me, even though he probably won’t. I can’t change Sam. I can only change myself and how I allow my perceptions to affect me.
I change the way I perceive things by changing the way I talk to myself.
Have you ever said something like “I have a problem with Sam,” either out loud or to yourself? I’ll bet you have. I know I have. When I say something like that, my tendency is to think that Sam is the one with the problem or that Sam is the one who needs to change. However, if I look at what I’m saying, I’ll see the truth. “I have a problem with Sam” really means that I’m the one with the problem.
If I reverse this perception, which is what I need to do if Sam has a problem with me, I find that Sam is the one with the problem.
You can look at this in two ways: “Sam has a problem with me,” or “I think Sam doesn’t like me.” The first way of looking at the situation is that the problem is Sam’s, not mine. The second way of looking at the situation is that I think Sam doesn’t like me. I may be wrong, but even if I am right, it’s still Sam’s problem. There may or may not be something I can do to help Sam; however, unless he comes to me with this problem, there is very little I can do to be of assistance.
Yet fear tells me I need to fix something that I can’t fix. In some cases, where I am aware of the issue, I may choose to change for Sam’s benefit. In other cases I may choose not to. Either way, it’s still up to Sam to handle his end of the bargain, just as it’s up to me to handle my end when I have a problem with Sam. The point is that I need to take care of me and let Sam take care of Sam, and I need to let go of the fear around the issue; I can’t be everybody’s friend anyway.
By taking a careful look at how I think about things, I can change my level of fear right off the bat. I can usually downgrade my fear by changing the way I see things or by asking a couple of discerning questions of myself, such as: “Is this something real, or is it something I think is real?” or “Is this really my problem, my issue, or should I let the other person own it?” By taking ownership of what’s mine and allowing other people to do the same, I can overcome a lot of my fears before they get a chance to overwhelm me. I can begin to look at things more clearly and learn to identify what I need to change about myself.
As I’ve learned to apply this practice of assigning ownership, I’ve found that my self-esteem has grown. I no longer worry so much about what other people think of me because most of it isn’t real anyway; it’s only what I think they think. On the other hand, if someone wants to tell me what he or she thinks of me and I consider it to be negative, then I can accept it without taking it personally. I can allow this person to have his or her opinion, and I can have mine. Sometimes, because I have learned to remain calm about their opinion of me, we can have a conversation and reveal our disagreements. Then we can make a more informed choice about how important it is to maintain the relationship. I can do so without all the anxiety I used to have regarding things like this. In order to do so, though, I need to make conscious decisions. I can’t just react to life, or to fear; I have to think about what’s going on in my own head. In working through this process I have come to see life as a series of individual choices and consequences, and this has helped me to deal with my fear as well. I used to be afraid to conquer my fear because I thought I would lose the excuses I had for all my future mistakes. After all, if I am afraid to do something, I have an excuse not to try it; if I do try it, I have an excuse for failing. I can blame failure on my fear, even if I only do this in the privacy of my own head. I’ve come to see this way of thinking as reactionary living, and I choose to live a proactive life now. Reaction results in distraction. I want a life where I take action based upon my own thoughts and ideas of how things should be. Since I changed the way I look at how life works, I’ve changed
