How to Stop Caring What People Think

The way to stop caring what people think isn't to stop caring about everyone. It's to decide on purpose whose opinion counts. Most people never make that decision, so every comment from a coworker, relative, or stranger gets the same vote. Run each opinion through two quick tests and most of the noise falls away.

One word

When I told someone I looked up to that I was writing a book, their whole response was one word: "Interesting." No "tell me more." No "why." Then we talked about something else.

Earlier in my life, that would have bothered me for a week. This time, it bothered me for about a minute, because I'd learned to ask two questions about whoever's opinion is getting to me.

Two tests for any opinion

1. Have they built anything like what you're trying to build?

The question isn't whether they're smart or whether they love you. It's whether they've ever tried something the people around them hadn't done, and gotten somewhere with it. If they have, their questions come from experience. If they haven't, their questions come from fear, even when the fear is for you.

2. Do they gain anything from you staying where you are?

This one is uncomfortable. When I told my business partner I wanted to leave pest control to sell solar, he said I wouldn't make any money there, and that if I stuck with pest control for four years I'd make six figures. My manager gave me a list of everything wrong with solar. Neither of them had ever sold solar, and both of them benefited from me staying. They weren't really advising me about solar. They were advising me about their own situation.

I went anyway, and I doubled my income within a year.

When someone fails both tests, you don't have to cut them out of your life. Just don't hand them your plans. Talk about the game, the weather, the kids. Keep loving them, and keep the vision to yourself, because they can't do anything useful with it.

When someone passes both tests, tell them everything. Those people are rare.

The approval usually isn't coming first

A lot of caring what people think is waiting for permission. You want the people who doubted you to look at what you're doing and say, "Okay, you were right."

Here's the hard part: that usually doesn't come before you start. Sometimes it comes after, when the results are impossible to argue with. Sometimes it never comes. Either way, if you're building for their approval, you'll be waiting a long time. Build it for yourself. Show them later if you want to.

For the moment-to-moment version, when you're about to do something and can feel people watching, see how to overcome the fear of rejection. It covers the two-word question I use for that.

What the research says

Low expectations change performance. In a 1982 study, researchers found that when teachers held low expectations for certain students, those students did worse, and the teachers treated them differently. Psychologists call this the Golem effect, the flip side of the better-known Pygmalion effect. When someone with influence over you expects you to fail, it doesn't just sting. It can change what you do. (Babad, Inbar & Rosenthal, 1982)

That's why the two tests matter. Choosing whose opinion counts is also choosing whose expectations get into your head.

This week

1. Write down the one opinion that's been bothering you most lately, and whose it is.
2. Run that person through both tests. Have they built anything like this? Do they gain anything from you staying put? Write down your answers.
3. Name one person who passes both tests, and tell them what you're working on this week.