Do you often walk away from people thinking, “Did I say the right
thing”; did I offend someone”; “should I have said or asked …”?
Do you frequently hear that “little voice” in your head saying: “What will they think?”?
Do you often feel you need to be a certain way to be accepted by others and you can’t just be yourself?
Most people are concerned about what others think about them and many
say and do things just to get the approval of others. These thoughts
and behaviors seem to be so much a part of who we are and are so common
in others that we assume that they are just part of being human.
In fact, however, you can eradicate these thoughts and behaviors forever.
How? By eliminating the beliefs that cause them. Although this
problem can be caused by different beliefs in different people, there
is one specific belief that anyone with this problem almost certainly
has: “What makes me good enough is having people think well of me.”
Today, I’m going to tell you how this belief is formed, why so many
people have it (maybe even you) and how getting rid of this belief will
transform your life.
Early in life many of us form negative beliefs about ourselves like
“I’m not good enough.” (Almost every one of the 13,000 clients we’ve
had from 60 countries around the world has had this belief.) Because
most parents expect children to do things that are unrealistic for their
age (such as be neat and quiet and come when called at the age of three
or four), and because most parents get frustrated, annoyed or angry
when their children don’t do what they’re told, most children conclude
“there must be something wrong with me” if mom and dad are upset with me
so often, or “I’m not good enough.”
Because our beliefs about ourselves are usually formed during the
first six years of life, most of us already have this belief when we
leave our homes and go out into the world of teachers, other kids,
school, etc. Obviously a belief like this would make us think as we
start school: “How will I get people to like me and how will I make it
in the world if I’m not good enough?”
And those thoughts, in turn, would lead to us feeling “not okay” about ourselves and anxious to some extent.
And then one day a solution appears. We do something that our
parents (or perhaps a teacher or coach) like and they give us a very
positive response. How does that make us feel? Happy and very good
about ourselves.
The first few times that happens we feel good but don’t make anything
of it. And then after this progression of events occurs a few times we
conclude: If I didn’t feel good about myself, and then after getting
praise and/or positive attention I do feel good about myself, what that
means is: “What makes me good enough or important is having people think
well of me.”
This is a very special type of belief. It is a belief that tells us what needs to happen in order to experience being okay. And when it doesn’t happen we don’t feel very good about ourselves.
Well, if we don’t experience being good enough the way we are and we
need something outside ourselves to become good enough, how often would
we want that outside something to occur? All the time! Anytime
anyone doesn’t like us, rejects us, or thinks poorly of us, we have
lost our “survival strategy,” our method for making us feel good about
ourselves. At that point the underlying belief: “I’m not good enough,”
is uncovered and stares us in the face, leaving us feeling not good
enough and producing some level of anxiety.
As a result, the need to have others think well of us is
experienced like a drug addiction by many people. When they achieve it
they feel good for the moment, but it’s only a matter of time before
they need another “fix.” At that point they become obsessed about
getting it.
There are other “survival strategy” beliefs, such as What makes me
good enough is doing things perfectly; what makes me good enough is
being successful/wealthy (can you see now see why some people are
obsessed with this?); and what makes me good enough is taking care of
others. And it’s possible to have more than one. But based on our
experience in our private practice, “having people think well of me” is
the most common.
It now should be clear why so many people are obsessed about what
others think about them: Most people have the belief “I’m not good
enough” (or some variation of it) and “having people think well of me”
is the remedy most of us have found to cover up the anxiety that stems
from having that belief.
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