What do they REALLY think about you?

One of the things that people often worry about is how they are viewed by others.

It can affect what we say, what we wear, the places we go and the people we choose to spend time with.

In a lot of cases it can start to affect the way we live our lives and damage self esteem and confidence.

One of the common themes I encounter when working with someone to increase self esteem or build confidence is that they worry excessively about what people think.

For example, Dr. Ran Rubinstein of Your Face MD says that one of the reasons people seek plastic surgery is because of what other people think about them.

It’s also common that we never know what people REALLY think about us.

The people that we worry about can often be strangers.

Take for example a shy person who doesn’t want to go shopping or socialising because “people might think I’m boring”.

Strangers will very rarely actually come out with “I’m sorry, I’m leaving now because you’re boring!”

 

 

Instead, we tend to mind-read what everyone else is thinking and generally mind-read the worst.

So how do we start to deal with this and what do people REALLY think of us?

Well, there are two simple ways to start to combat our own thought processes.

Firstly, let’s deal with our mind-reading.

If we are going to take all that time and effort to imagine what other people think of us, let’s use it to our advantage.

We can have some real fun with this too.

Instead of mindreading that strangers may be thinking “You’re fat/boring/miserable/shy” etc simply change the script in your mind.

Try imagining that they are thinking nice thoughts “Have you lost weight? I bet you’re interesting/fun to be around/mysterious!”

What would the difference be in how you felt?

Think how much netter it would be to be in control of your mind-reading.

Alternatively, decide on how you would like people to think of you.

Would you like them to think that you are funny, generous, kind hearted or something else?

Once you’ve decided on an answer think about how you would need to be/act so that they would have no choice but to think that about you.

Once you live like the thing you want to be known for, how can anyone think any different?

Choose who you want to be today and go out and have fun experimenting.