What other people might think

Here are some signs that your social self is acting as your master, rather than your servant: a. When you think about putting the solution into action, you find yourself laughing in embarrassment. b. You react to the proposed solution with thoughts like “I could never do that!” or “I can’t just …” or “But I have to …” These statements tend to refle

• Lacking the courage to try


• Trying to please everyone


• Imitating the desires of others


• Chasing status without questioning why


• Playing superhero and trying to do it all alone


• Dividing attention between too many projects"

But I was always cripplingly terrified of what people thought of me: my classmates, the boys I liked and even the ones I didn’t, random people on the street, the teachers whose approval I craved. That fear was so overwhelming that I allowed it to temper and otherwise silence the parts of myself that gave me joy.

So many high-achieving people get trapped into obsessing about the external world and neglecting their internal world. When you’ve been suppressing things for so long, you can’t just decide to stop all at once. Learning to listen to yourself takes a long time. I used to think that I always had to justify everything to myself—that I needed to be com

(Side Note: As a rule, people who are terrified of what others think about them are actually terrified of all the shitty things they think about themselves being reflected back at them.)