I AM NOT PARALYZED BY THE FEAR OF WHAT OTHERS THINK: Podcast Script from Week 1 of REFRESH!
30-Week Life Rediscovery Course To Regain, Restore, and Reignite Your Life Because There is Life After COVID!
With Debra R. Thomas of livelifered.com
30-Day Refresh! — Life Refreshment Course
Regain, Restore, & Reignite Your Life With Certified Life & Health Coach from Livelifered.com
There is life after COVID!
“When ‘I’ overcome the fear of what others think, I take ownership of my life.” -Debra.
HOW TO OVERCOME MY FEAR OF DISAPPOINTING OTHERS
GUIDING THOUGHT 1: Examine your patterns of thinking. Being conscious of your thought patterns is the initial step to overcoming the fear of disappointing others.
We exist in a reality where we base our worth upon whether or not other people approve of us. This fear can cause paralysis and keep us from the things we love to do. This kind of fear can be most damaging when:
- In our hearts, we are not living as we genuinely feel we should live.
- We are permitting this fear to deter us from our dreams.
- We concentrate our efforts on minimizing ourselves into the individual we believe will bring satisfaction to those around us.
- We cannot recognize how caught up in this process we have become.
I found this especially true in serving as an advocate for my youngest daughter. It preoccupied my mind. It was my prominent mode of operation when it came time to finalize any decisions in my life.
A “ stuckness “ obstructed me from being truthful with myself and pushing forward with what I felt compelled to do concerning serving as an advocate in her life. I inwardly desired to fulfill my responsibilities as her advocate in a significant, extraordinary, and passionate way, but I couldn’t.
We cannot work creatively and feel inspired through vivid vision if our first and foremost focus is on impressing people or trying to get them to like us.
We must take time to go through the personal journey of ridding ourselves of the fear of pleasing others.
Many opinions about ourselves and our need to please others spring from how we comprehend our past experiences.
GUIDING THOUGHT 2: It’s time to change the course of your thinking
Anxiety stems from concentrating on something “other” than the main thing, and in the meantime, you are missing the big picture. This doubt and apprehension drive your feelings of fear concerning what others might be thinking about you.
The fear of others’ opinions is essentially a mindset pattern where you concentrate intently on yourself. By changing the emphasis of your thinking, you can center your focus on the here and now.
Switching your focus from yourself to the needs of others is a simple strategy. It allows you to become more aware of the world around you. It inspires you to provide service and help for those around you in the meantime.
This change of focus can also be beneficial during presentations, performances, or public speaking. When you become preoccupied with what everyone’s thinking about you, this can result in you experiencing high-performance anxiety.
In these circumstances, it is more beneficial to consider the exceptional service you might want to provide for your audience by asking yourself, “what do I have to offer this community that would enrich the quality of their lives?” Giving service to the audience is a much healthier emphasis because you shift from an inner focus to an external one.
Another suggestion for shifting your thinking is concentrating on something that results in a more significant fear than what you currently encounter. This elevated fear is varied for everyone. The higher fear was that I would not be an effective advocate for my daughter.
I learned to shift my focus from fearing my co-workers’ views to becoming a credible advocate for my daughter. Unfortunately, this inadvertently caused conflict between my colleagues when my daughter transferred to the school where I serve in an administrative position.
My more significant fear was that my daughter would not achieve her life mission if I were not proactive on her behalf. Being confronted with that truth caused me more anxiety than my preoccupation with my colleagues’ opinions.
I found myself inquiring, “what if she couldn’t attain her dream because I was too afraid to confront my colleagues on her behalf? “What if my actions caused the demise of her life mission? Despite my initial fears, I had to embark upon this challenging journey.
In this situation, my distress over the possible results of not taking action caused me more concern than the fear of my peer’s views.
GUIDING THOUGHT 3: Don’t attach the “approval of others” to the actualization of your dreams
If you are reliant upon the approval of others, you will forever be reliant upon others for your success.
If you choose to be reliant upon the success of others, inquire of yourself, “where does the power of my dreams lie?”
Do you want to place the power of your dreams in the hands of others? Abandoning one dream can cause increased “fear-paralysis” with a future goal. If you choose only to take bold action after you have obtained everyone’s stamp of approval, you will remain frozen in your tracks many times. Those who reside in fear of the viewpoints of others prove to miss out on their dreams because they forfeit their momentum and desire to succeed.
If you are obsessed with winning the approval of others, you are transferring the power over your success to others.
It is essential to confront reality; you are the only one who can authorize yourself to go after your dreams.
Numerous people live their lives on pause, waiting to be fully acknowledged by others for their capabilities. Yet, unfortunately, waiting for recognition from others is usually short-lived because things rarely work this way in the real world.
That is why the authority to move forward must come from within oneself. That way, you will always rely upon yourself; this is where your approval should come.
Give yourself a “stamp of approval”; the authorization to be who you are, to learn and grow, to meet your “potential,” to take on your dream, to establish your “uniqueness,” and perhaps even seize those chances to fail before you realize your dreams.
Guiding thought 4: Who do you fear? What is it about what you believe “they” are thinking that frightens you so extensively?
The significant truth is we are most often concerned about the viewpoints of only a “few people.” We are not fearful of the judgments of “everybody.”
Can you imagine who those “few people” might be for you? Perhaps, some names of specific people instantly pop up in your mind.
If you have trouble creating a list of the people who affect you negatively, think about those who have caused you to feel frustrated about something you were trying to accomplish.
Perhaps they are the people who have an unfavorable effect on you.
Perhaps they are the “few people” you have allowed to block you from your dreams!
You could think of the last time you thought, “I would have accomplished that if it weren’t for _________ (name/names of “those people”) judging me and causing me to fail in my life.” They are also the “few people” you have allowed to block you from your dreams!
From a psychology 101 perspective, most people cultivate their habits of responding to others based on their prior interactions with their close friends and loved ones. Later, they assume that their own opinions and responses to circumstances are similar to everyone else’s in the world when this is not a realistic assumption.
Presuming that everyone has the same point of view is what leads us to say things such as “I’m afraid that “everyone” will think ____________ about me.”
(Here is the snag right here), the reality is you are fearful that the” few people” will view you negatively.
And guess what, they probably already do.
You have perhaps known this all along; the “few people” already negatively view you, so you encounter fear.
Continually, you are afraid to move forward in your life, but you don’t know how to get out of the box you have authorized the “few people” to place you in.
How do you win against this? First, you must acknowledge that the “few people” will presumably always think that about you.
When you can comprehend this, the power you bestowed to the “few people” will evaporate with your fear!
When you can acknowledge the apparent opinions of the “few people” in a “matter-of-fact” way, you are removing yourself from the “unstuck” fear you have positioned yourself in. The worst thing has already happened to you, and you have survived!
You have just freed yourself and, in the process, regained your capacity to move forward.
Guiding thought 5: It’s time to specify who the “few people” are. After completing this task, determine the judgments you think they are making about you. Then write down then down; be as detailed as you possibly can.
So, the “few people” you have listed are the people you think possess opposing viewpoints and opinions about you.
Now ask yourself this question; “Because the “few people” say and think judgmental things about me, does that make them accurate?”
Are they the experts on you? Are they right about you?
Think about this, the judgments of the “few people” more than likely reflect the quirks and unresolved problems they encounter in their own lives.
It is entirely feasible that the “few people,” because of their own life experiences, have acquired some extraordinarily hurtful and potentially toxic viewpoints in their lives.
It’s time to wake up and stop condemning yourself, searching for justifications to take responsibility for the opposing viewpoints of others. It’s time to leave this limiting mindset behind you and adopt self-empowerment to move forward. It’s critical to remember that the negativity within the “few people” is not always about you; it’s about them.
The key. The element in “moving forward” is to stop taking responsibility for the adverse reactions of others towards you. That is their responsibility.
Suppose the “few people” have demonstrated in the past that they consistently react negatively towards you. Why would you believe it will be any different “the next time” or “anytime ever”?
As you take action to move forward in your life and begin to disclose who you are to the world, it would be a reasonable idea for you to have a plan of action set in place for those times when you have to handle the “few people”; those people who immobilize you by fear.
Start by asking yourself, “what strategies can I apply to feel emotionally safeguarded if the ‘few people’ begin to respond in an adverse way towards me?”
Your action strategy might include building a team of trusted friends to turn to for moral backing when you feel overwhelmed by the negative vibes you pick up on the “fear of disappointing others” radar.
Or you might have to establish with the “few people” that some topics of discussion are prohibited.
You might have to stop sharing every detail of your plan with the” few people” who are excessively opinionated.
It is valuable to learn that you are wasting much of your efforts on seeking the approval of the “few people” who are not reasonably prepared or willing to offer it.
You can trap yourself in the day-to-day practice of seeking the approval of others, and in the process of it, you will ultimately wear yourself out. Sadly, you have nothing, in the end, to show for all of your efforts but the chronic anxiety of disappointing others.
Living with “the fear of what others are thinking about you” has many possible effects:
You might cease to become present in your own life
You might feel incapable of living your life with integrity
You might place your uniqueness on pause
You might give up on your dreams
You might Stop standing up for what you believe in
It is true that the paralyzing fear of what others think can stop you from standing up for the things that matter to you the most.
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