Stop Caring What Other People Think

How often do you think about what will other people think? How often do you make decisions more for others than for yourself? We all in one way or another really care what other people think about us. There is so much in our life that we do or don’t do solely because of what other people will think. And it’s natural because we are creatures of connection. But sometimes we care too much and it keeps us from making decisions that will improve our life. In today’s blog we’re going to talk about how to stop caring what other people think. 

Most people if not almost all, crave human connection. We want to belong. We want to be part of a group. This goes back to hunter gatherer times, if you were not part of a group, then you’d most likely die. Being part of a clan or group was critical back then. Our brains are still wired like that. Even though today you don’t need to belong to a big group to survive, our brain still thinks that it does. And so it’s natural to want to be part of a community and accepted. 

Growing up, my family was part of a big community. And till this day I still live in that community. I still see people that I saw growing up. Even though my mom has passed away and my dad doesn’t socialize with people like he used to before, I still see their friends from time to time. And I still find myself sometimes caring for their approval. They’re not even my friends. They’re my parents friends. They’re just adults in the community. 

And the same goes for even friends that I had growing up. Sometimes I still care what they’ll think about me. 

It’s honestly crazy how much we care about what other people will think of us. We crave the approvals of others so much. 

When I was going on a sabbatical from work to pursue my passions of writing, podcasting and coaching, I was honestly so afraid what people would think. I legitimately felt like at times I had to tell people I’m taking the sabbatical so I can travel and spend time with family. When in reality that was a very small piece of it. It was mainly so I could pursue passions of mines. 

When I was starting my coaching business, I was worried what other people would think. Thoughts like ‘who is she to think she can coach people’ would make me hesitate. 

There are so many decisions that people make that are highly impacted by what other people think. 

There are people who marry based on the criteria of the society they live in and based on the criteria of their family. They care more about what other people think about who and what their wife is, rather than themselves. 

Some men will choose a super model woman because when they walk around with her in public, people will think, wow, look who he got to marry. But they completely disregard how the woman actually is as a person. Of course that’s not to say that women who are beautiful are bad people or anything, but the point is that because of what other people think, men will get married to someone they’re not compatible with just because they look good together. And the same goes for women, some women will marry a man who is extremely handsome or rich but not look at the compatibility. 

There are so many women who don’t get divorced because they’re terrified of what their family and society will think. They would rather stay in a marriage that is not serving them rather than divorce and be presented to the world as a woman who couldn’t save her marriage. 

The phrase of ‘log kya kahenga’ (in urdu) or ‘what will people say’ is so prevalent in our homes. So many of us have been brought up with the fear and concern of what other will say and think. 

This was also prevalent in the time of the Prophet SAW. It’s been a problem for thousands of years. 

On the authority of Abu Hurayrah (may Allah be pleased with him) who said: The Prophet SAW said: “Part of the perfection of one’s Islam is his leaving that which does not concern him.”

We are literally advised by the Prophet SAW to not busy ourselves with other people’s concerns. So just like we shouldn’t be busying ourselves with other people’s lives we shouldn’t busy ourselves with what other people think about us. 

We cannot control other people. That is a fact. We can manipulate them, sure. Which obviously is unethical. But we definitely cannot control other people. People do what they want. The only person we can control our ourselves. We’re only responsible for ourselves, so shouldn’t we be making decisions that are for ourselves? 

Now when I say, ‘do not care what other people think,’ I mean don’t care what people who are not important to you think. This is not to say we shouldn’t care about what people who want the best for us think. We should definitely take that into consideration. 

Some people whom’s opinions we should maybe take into consideration are parents, siblings, spouse, kids, close family, close friends, mentors, etc. But even those people you need to filter through based on the circumstances. 

A great way to check whether you should care about a person’s thoughts is by asking yourself some questions like: Do you respect them? Do you value their opinion? Do they share similar values to you? Are you impressed by their accomplishments? Are they in a place in their life where you’d want to be? Does their opinion actually affect your life? 

We spend so much time trying to impress people who we don’t even respect or like. With the age of social media, so many of us will care so much about what random people on the internet will think of us. We give so much importance to a random hater who we know nothing about. They could be some lazy couch potato with no accomplishments of their own criticizing you for trying to make something of yourself. 

So honestly really ask yourself WHO’s opinion are you caring about. 

Also think about how much the other person is impacting your decision. Let’s use the example of marriage again. And again this is just an example, you can apply this to anything in your life. 

When you’re marrying someone, really think about how much of the decision is because of what other people think and what you truly want and is good for you. If 50% of your decision is because of what others think then that’s a problem. Ideally it should be 0% but 5% is acceptable because of the fact that we do live in society and so there is a part of us that does care about what others will think. 

But again, it should only be around 5%. Let’s say a man married a outwardly beautiful woman or a woman married a handsome buff man and they made that decision because of how they will be seen in public. You really have to ask yourself how much time do you spend in public. Because if it’s 10% and you made the decision of marrying this person because of that 10%, then the other 90% of time which is literally majority of your marriage, you’ve made a bad decision mathematically. 

So it’s extremely critical to be conscious of how much importance you’re giving to ‘what other people will think.’ A good way to test this is by really catching yourself everytime you think the thought, ‘what will other people say or think.’ That will give you a good understanding of how much that question impacts your decisions. 

Honestly, we have such limited bandwidth everyday that if you spend even 20% of your thinking time to what other people will think and say about you, you’re wasting your time. You’re losing focus. You’re not accomplishing the things you want to do. We only have one life on this earth, every minute that passes by will literally never come back. Every minute that you spend caring about what other people think will never come back. Every life improvement decision that you don’t make because of what other people will think, is causing only you harm. Literally other people could care less what’s happening to you because guess what, they’re also spending a bunch of time thinking about others are thinking about them. 

And the saddest part is that a lot of people actually get happy when something bad happens to you and they get sad or jealous when something good happens to you. That is part of life. People want others to suffer sometimes so they can feel good about themselves. That is one of the possible reasons why we have the hadith of not concerning ourselves with others. Also Allah warns us of this in the Qur’an in Surah Ali Imran, Ayah 120: