How not to care what people think of you

By MiNDFOOD

Bullied illustration
We all know we shouldn’t devote our precious time to wondering what people think of us, or say when we’re not around. Despite this, so many people - even outwardly confident ones - still struggle to brush off the comments or perceived opinions of others.

Sylvia Puentes was one of those people, until she discovered the tools needed to overcome the worry of being judged by others. Now she teaches people all over the world in her Being You classes to be genuinely happy being themselves, and not care what anyone else thinks.

Puentes is an international speaker and author with a passion for transformational coaching and empowered education. Her career as an educator spans over 20 years and has taken her from elementary school classrooms to corporate training.

Here are some of the concepts Puentes teaches in her classes on how not to be shackled by the thoughts of others:

    1. Get busy: When you’re busy and have a great life filled with lots of things you love to do, you have much less time to think and obsess about what so-and-so said or the look your friend gave you when you gave your opinion on something. Get busy creating your own life, and you’ll worry less about others. Add more to your life so there’s less room for rumination.
    2. Give up judging: Judgement of others and yourself makes your life so tiring. When you get caught up in ‘right and wrong’ and ‘good and bad’ behaviour you stop seeing others – or yourself – for who you actually are. It totally drains your energy. Understand who you are and be okay with that; be willing to be different and it won’t matter what anyone says or thinks. When you give up judging yourself, no one else’s opinion can affect you. The only thing that matters is actually being true to you.
    3. Understand the reality behind what others think: We often get so caught up over what other people think, but don’t stop to understand that those thoughts are often not even theirs. So many people absorb the thoughts and opinions of their parents, workmates, friends, what they see on TV. Why get upset over opinions that might not even belong to those people?
    4. Live in ten second increments: People get really stuck going down one track and don’t realise that at any point they can change their mind and choose something else. When you realise your choice can change every 10 seconds, you know that even if you go down a dark hole of self judgement or worry about others comments or regret of what you said or didn’t say, you can make another choice. Knowing you have the power to make a choice, and then another and then another, every 10 seconds, can free you from feeling helpless.
    5. Get out of your head: Learn to feel and be, more than think and analyse and you won’t head trip so much. If you don’t get hooked into over analysing situations you can ask questions and actually solve any issues. If you get caught up in getting upset, you can’t be constructive. Learn to see the things that people say as neutral – just an interesting point of view.

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