Last Friday morning I opened my blog post email, just as I always do. It’s a weekly ritual for me because I like to view my finished product. I also believe one of the best ways to learn is by teaching, so believe it or not, I actually learn a lot from myself. As I was sipping my coffee and reading along, it jumped out at me…there was a typo, YIKES!!
Despite the fact that I had proofread the post more times than I could count, I somehow missed it. I typed the word ‘where’ instead of ‘wear.’ I panicked for a moment. The panic of course came from my thoughts, like all of our feelings do. What would people think? Will they think I’m stupid? Will they think I don’t know the difference between the two words? It’s already in my whole mailing list’s inboxes, and I can’t retrieve it, OMG, OMG, OMG!
Then I took a deep breath, and reminded myself there was nothing I could do about it, so instead of allowing myself to really get upset, I chose to let it go. It’s intriguing though to think about why I really cared in the first place.
Many people go through life spending way too much time worrying about what others think of them. Well guess what? Most of the time, they are not thinking about you at all. If you’ve been coached by me or followed my blog for a while, you’ve probably heard me say at some point, “you’re not so special.” I say that with the utmost sincerity, and simply mean people aren’t thinking about you as much as you assume they are. I had to remind myself of this last week after my post went out.
Another thing that I pondered, was even if all of you folks out there did notice the typo, and had negative thoughts about it, so what? It’s not that I don’t value all of your lovely opinions, but ultimately it doesn’t matter what others think of us. My life did not end, I didn’t have hundreds of people unsubscribing, no one tried to publically humiliate me on social media, and my guess is a large number of you didn’t even notice, or if you did, you didn’t care.
I share this with you because you are not alone. As humans, we tend to assume we know what’s on other people’s minds. When you feel ashamed or embarrassed about something, you assume everyone you know is thinking and talking about you. In most cases though, people are too busy worrying about the things they aren’t proud of in their own lives.
Do you try to act a certain way, say certain things, and dress a certain way in order to control what others think? It’s actually impossible. The only person’s thoughts you can control are your own. The great thing about that, is you get to choose how you want to feel since your thoughts create your feelings.
The things we worry others will think, almost always shine a spotlight on our own insecurities. If you spent half as much time working on changing the way you feel about yourself, that you do worrying about how others perceive you, you would be a much more confident and happier person. You have no control over other people’s perspectives, no matter how hard you try. It’s your opinion of yourself that really matters because if you felt more secure, you wouldn’t care so much about other people’s beliefs.
So, after my initial internal, “Nooooooooooo!” last week, I decided to think about the fact that I now had material for a new blog post. That thought made me chuckle and changed my mood entirely. Being able to let go of the need to control, fix, and care so much about what other people may or (in most cases) may not be thinking, frees up space to focus your attention on more important things like flowing through life with happiness and ease.
Happy day everyone!
