Sneak Peek: Stop Caring What People Think - Fear Of Judgement: Simon Alexander Ong

0:00And I think one of the most common fears people have is the fear of what other people think. Whatever fear you have, I think we can boil it down to the fear of what other people think. This is why many of us are afraid to begin again. You know, we may have spent 20 years in one career. We start questioning that career. But then what stops us pivoting, what stops us going back to school or learning from scratch again is what will people think of this? Will people think I'm a failure? Or people think I'm crazy. People think I'm stupid. And so I think a lot of the time we sabotage ourselves when we're overthinking the judgment of other people.

0:39And so if we can put that to one side and trust more our intuition and our inner guide, we feel so much lighter. We'll focus more on just becoming who we were, but also becoming better than who we were yesterday. Focus on becoming better than who you were yesterday, one day at a time, and the results will come. The results will come your way. But if you overthink about what people will think when you do this, when you're worried about judgment, it's hard to be focused on being productive. So why, I guess, is there anything tribal that comes to mind where you think, why do people worry about that judgment?

1:15I think that's because we're brought up in a culture where we're always seeking approval. When you're a child, you're seeking approval from your parents. When you're a teenager, you're seeking approval from your peer group. when you're an adult you're seeking approval from your boss your colleagues to get that promotion to be seen we all want to be seen and heard and and this is why you know i'm a parent now and one of the things i've been working on is i'm seeing a lot of children when they grow up they're so reliant on their parents so when they face an obstacle or a challenge or they feel nervous or they they feel some fear instead of trying to battle it themselves they go straight to the parents and say well what do i do what's your advice but instead as parents i think we can try and teach them to manage these circumstances and these challenges themselves and i remember one of the things i did to my child is i i shared with a bit of vulnerability i said to you know i'm feeling a little nervous uh for my next talk it's uh biggest audience i've ever spoken at and you know there's a there's a bit of nerves in me and i'm just trying to think if i can do as well as I've done in my previous events.

2:26And by opening up to my daughter and asking her for advice, you know, they just come up with some of the purest answers in helping you. But what that does is at a subconscious level, it shows them they actually know the answer themselves as well. So when they go through the same thing again, they're like, well, I told my dad to do this. Actually, maybe that's what I should be doing. So you're kind of building up this resilience inside of them rather than constantly seeking approval rather than constantly seeking somebody else's opinion advice because more often than not we know the answer we know the answers deep down we just don't have the courage to follow through with the answers or to believe we know the answer and so the first thing we do is go out seek approval seek advice seek insight from others apart from myself