How do you refrain from caring about other peoples opinions of you?

I live alone and keep to myself.

You learn to accept that you can’t change other people’s opinions, that you are not responsible for those opinions and you do not have to live your life to suit others.

Live your life in a way that is right for you. That meets your expectations in terms of your values, morals, goals and achievements. A life that is true to your needs and values. If you do this, other people’s views will not matter so much to you.

Evaluating your own value based on external opinions of you, whether they be positive or negative, is guaranteed to leave you feeling unhappy. You can’t possibly meet everyone else’s expectations of what is appropriate. You will always disappoint someone. And trying to fulfil everyone else’s view of who you should be will quite likely mean you aren’t becoming the person you want to be.

@RedDeerGuy1 I don’t think Price is trying to become a hermit. Based on the other post, sounds like they enjoy socializing. And while reclusive behaviors might help you, they’re detrimental to some. Using avoidance as a method of coping with anxiety doesn’t actually help with the anxiety, just gives your anxiety something else to build on. Think that’s why it gets so out of control for some people. Additional perspective.

@PriceisRightx26 Curious to see where this conversation goes. Hope you get some good answers. You might also want to check out that link.

When I did socialize a lot and with genuine friends or colleagues etc., it was certainly not all about praise. I could trust my friends to tell me when they feel I was wrong, support me through tough times and give me feedback whether I asked for it or not.

I had one friend who would listen patiently to a person’s problem only once. After that, and she had given her opinion or advice, if they brought it up again, she’d tell them she was not interested and that she had already commented on that particular problem.

I could also, from time to time receive compliments, be told my hair colour looked horrible, or great and this gave me a sense of belonging and acceptance, no matter who I was or where I went wrong. This I think builds confidence. However, I agree one should be able to nurture oneself, decide for oneself if this is wrong or right in any situation and not rely on the outside world totally. Being human normally entails feeling a sense of belonging somewhere.

Most humans are programmable. Hear something over and over again and you will start to believe it or at the very lease, give up on trying to prove the opposite and become what we hear. Sometimes those closest to you contribute to your insecurities. Not because they wish to be mean but because they notice something about you that is a minor flaw that they feel may be a thorn in your side because you are unaware. Unknown to them, they have now created another flaw. Insecurity.
But we get a fresh start with people who do not know us well. So we can re-invent who we are with them. And with each praise, we see ourselves through new lens. So our confident builds. Especially since people who are new in our lives choose to be in our lives. Not something we feel with family.
With family, you never truly know how sincere there compliments are and you are aware that so long as you don’t steal from them or behave extremely badly towards them that they will stick by you, or the opposite is true. They never liked you and think your a turd. But strangers are different. They either accept you as you are or don’t and stay or go depending on what they perceive of you. So I can see where other people opinions matter.

Now can people not care. Yes. You would already have to have a strong belief in yourself. But I think it varies. And life comes into play. At different stages of ones life, people will feel certain vulnerabilities that they didn’t feel at 20 or 50 that will come to play. Illness, unemployment, marriages, aging, hormonal changes, all make us feel vulnerable at one time or another and we need others to convince us that we can come through it stronger than before. With family, it just feels like they are placating us. But others who do not know our troubles or doubts can point to our strengths and remind us what we are capable of and so without knowing it, they give us the confidence that we need to endure.

I will add that it is only dangerous when you bend to others wishes that you normally would not simply to gain their approval. When you go against your own character. Which means that you are not truly confident in the first place, because a truly confident person isn’t really frighten to be themselves. As for narcissist, I don’t think they are really confident. I believe they act the way they do because they feel very small inside and feel they have to love themselves best and they try hard to convince others they are worthy of being loved.

Two things are necessary. It requires the realization that those who know and appreciate you accept you in spite of your flaws. The tougher task is to understand that those you believe critical of you aren’t worth bothering about. Who cares what they think?

Okay, so if I don’t know you that well, then your opinion of me is entirely irrelevant.
Also, it would be out of my control & therefore a complete waste of my time & energy, their problem.

Well, narcissism is self-love. My brother has actually been diagnosed with narcissistic tendencies, and believe me, posting selfies is not a symptom one should worry about. Narcissism is delusional behaviour: Believing you’re the greatest writer you’ve ever read (even when you objectively aren’t even good), the best musician that’s ever played an instrument (even though you’ve never taken a lesson or composed a song), or that you’re the person best capable of choosing a potential mate for your ex-partner, and get violently angry when they don’t take your advice.

A narcissist doesn’t give one shit about how much other people like them, because their opinion is the most important one, and they like themselves just fine.

Any normal person wants to be accepted by their social group. They want to be seen as attractive and capable. It’s our animal gregarious behaviour conflicting with the expectations of modern society. “Be perfect and acceptable, but don’t let anyone think you’re trying to be perfect or hoping for acceptance” “If you have to ask whether you’re cool you never will be” “Be thin and pretty but if you’re fat at the gym or wearing too much makeup we’ll ridicule you”.

Flattery is important, to an extent. Because of all the negative stuff that’s out there, it’s really important to hear something positive from people you care about. If I’m feeling really good about the way I look one day, I’ll snap a selfie, and post it as my profile picture (the one here is a fairly recent-ish one). Now, I was only feeling good about my makeup application skills when I took this picture. My hair hadn’t been dyed in months and my roots were showing, hadn’t done my eyebrows in ages… but that contouring was on point. After putting it on Facebook I got a ton of comments – not about my makeup, but about how clear and pretty my eyes were, the softness of my expression, that it was even a bit sexy. Considering it’s literally just my face, the same too-young-for-my-age, oily-but-dry, weird-forehead-wrinkled face with adult acne issues that I stare at every day, it felt really good to hear/read/whatever someone appreciate my face just for being my face.

We give ourselves so much shit all the time. Our friends are there to remind us of what we should like about ourselves and that it’s ok to like yourself.

“What others think of you is none of your business.”

Unfortunately, being true to one’s self and releasing concern of what others think of you cannot be taught. One can only learn it themselves.

Achieving it feels like a gorilla being removed your back. Your confidence will grow by orders of magnitude.

Self consciousness is as visible to others as a stain on one’s lapel.

Free yourself of it and society will look like one opportunity after another.

How do you know what they are? Do you ask? I don’t care; I don’t ask.

Caring about other people’s opinion of you is an important part of normal function in human society. Not caring is as much of a pathology as caring too much.

Unfortunately, there’s an ethos in modern culture that idealizes the person who doesn’t give a shit what anyone else thinks of them. It has become quite fashionable to claim this kind of imperviousness to social feedback. Ironically, this is often not because it’s actually the case, but because one wants others to think of them in this way: The Supremely Self-confident Individual.

While realistically it is important what others think about you, it’s not the most important thing. The truth of the matter—reality—is the most important thing. The truth isn’t served by clinging to an unrealistic self-image any more than it’s served by unquestioning reliance on others’ opinions of us.

Truth and opinion have an uneasy relationship. They’re very easily confused, and it’s this confusion that creates the problems we’re talking about here. We tend to forget that self-image, just like the opinions others have of us, are inevitably crude estimations of an incredibly nuanced reality. All opinions have, at best, limited reliability, and none are beyond question. Social feed back that’s at variance with one’s own self-image may be a good reason to examine anew one’s opinion of oneself in the light of actual evidence, and vice-versa: how does that feedback hold up to the actual evidence?

My point is that opinion untethered to evidence is worthless, and evidence has to be the “dog” that wags the “tail” of opinion. That means holding opinion lightly.

Thanks for the responses! I’ve gotta work on some assignments and go to class, and then I’ll be back to actually read these :3

I think caring about peoples opinions are not all bad. It is useful in some situations. I think the truth lies in knowing how and when to listen to peoples opinions. Constructive criticism can help you a lot in this world, rather than negative criticism which can cripple you.

@Eggie , this is true, but sometimes people get tripped up on what positive or negative criticism might be. If someone says you should not smoke embalming fluids because it will kill you, that is not negative criticism. It sounds negative, because it involves “don’t” and “death”. It is positive criticism, because it is in favor of keeping you alive and healthy. Negative criticism would be more like, “You should be a brick layer, because someone as ugly as you could never be accepted as an actor.” That is just demeaning, and not helpful.
Me, I care less about what people think than most. It comes from achieving many things in my life, knowing what I can and cannot do, and being perfectly satisfied with that.

I need to point out that narcissism doesn’t always correlate with boosting self-confidence. People who are narcissistic could do that for their own pleasure, relating to only their own perception of satisfaction.

Rationality and ignorance are the only ways to filter external stimuli, including opinions from others.

A good thing to remember: We wouldn’t worry so much about what others think of us IF we knew how seldom they did.

And “what you think of me is none of my business”.