It’s OK To Care What Other People Think

There’s this idea that gets thrown around a lot, especially in self-help spaces, that if you really want to feel confident, you have to stop caring what other people think.

And on the surface, that sounds great. Who wouldn’t want that? If you didn’t care, you wouldn’t feel anxious, you wouldn’t second guess yourself, and you’d probably feel a lot more free in social situations.

But the problem is, that advice doesn’t really hold up in real life.

Not only is it unclear how you’re even supposed to do that, but if you take it seriously, it actually pushes you in a direction that doesn’t make much sense.

The issue with “just don’t care”

The first problem is that it’s not actionable.

Telling someone to stop caring about what other people think is kind of like telling someone to relax when they’re anxious. It sounds nice, but it doesn’t actually give them anything to work with. There’s no real process behind it, no way to apply it when you’re actually in a moment where you feel judged.

So people try to force it, it doesn’t work, and then they assume something is wrong with them.

The second problem is that if you really think about it, not caring at all about what anyone thinks isn’t even a good goal.

If you truly didn’t care what anyone thought, you’d be completely disconnected from other people. You wouldn’t take feedback, you wouldn’t consider how your actions affect others, and you’d lose a lot of what makes relationships meaningful in the first place.

You’re supposed to care

The reality is, caring what other people think is normal.

We’re social beings. We’re wired to pay attention to how we’re perceived. That’s not something you’re supposed to eliminate.

The issue isn’t that you care. The issue is that you’re trying to care about everyone’s opinion and all at the same time.

If this constant awareness of other people’s opinions is something you struggle with, it’s often closely tied to social anxiety—something I break down more in detail on my social anxiety page.

When everyone’s opinion matters, you lose your direction

If every opinion carries equal weight, you end up stuck.

Different people want different things. One person values ambition, another values balance. One person thinks you should speak up more, another thinks you should tone it down.

If you try to adjust yourself based on all of that, you don’t actually develop a sense of who you are. You just keep shifting depending on who you’re around.

A lot of what people call social anxiety is tied up in this. It’s not just fear of being judged, it’s not knowing which judgments actually matter.

What happens when you try to “not care”

When people try to force themselves not to care, they usually don’t become more grounded. They just become more performative.

They start doing things to prove that they don’t care. Saying things just to be different, acting in ways that stand out, trying to show other people that they’re unaffected.

I can relate to this. There was a time when I leaned into that mindset. I would say things just to get a reaction, just to signal that I wasn’t concerned with how I was being perceived.

But underneath that, I still cared. I was just trying to get approval in a different way.

And that’s the trap. When your goal is to not care, you’re still orienting yourself around other people—you’re just reacting to them instead of understanding yourself.

A better place to start

If trying to shut off caring doesn’t work, then what should you do instead?

The first step isn’t outward, it’s inward.

Before you worry about anyone else’s opinion, you have to get a sense of your own.

What actually matters to you? What kind of life do you want to live? What kind of person do you want to be?

Because a lot of the time, we’re chasing things we were never really interested in to begin with. We absorb what other people value—money, status, a certain kind of lifestyle—and we assume that’s what we’re supposed to want too.

And for some people, those things genuinely matter. But for others, they don’t. And if you don’t question that, you can spend a lot of time working toward something that doesn’t actually feel meaningful to you.

If you’re not sure what your values are, it can help to look at who you admire. Not in a surface-level way, but really ask yourself what it is about them that stands out to you. That usually points to something you care about.

Then decide whose opinions matter

Once you have a better sense of your own direction, then you can start to filter whose opinions are actually relevant.

Not everyone gets a vote.

The people whose opinions matter are the ones who share your values, or at least understand the direction you’re trying to go in.

If you care about creativity and living a certain kind of life, comparing yourself to someone who is focused entirely on making money is just going to leave you feeling like you’re falling short. But it’s not a fair comparison—they’re operating with a different set of priorities.

That doesn’t make them wrong, and it doesn’t make you right. It just means you’re not playing the same game.

How this changes the way you handle criticism

When you narrow down whose opinions matter, feedback becomes a lot easier to deal with.

If someone close to you—someone you respect, someone who shares your values—gives you feedback, that’s worth paying attention to. Not because you’re trying to please them, but because they’re aligned with the kind of person you want to be.

On the other hand, if someone criticizes you from a completely different value system, you don’t have to internalize that in the same way.

You can hear it, but you don’t have to carry it.

What confidence actually looks like

Confidence isn’t about becoming someone who is unaffected by everything.

It’s about having enough clarity that you’re not pulled in every direction by every opinion.

You still care. You just care selectively.

You’re open to feedback, but not from everyone. You’re aware of how you come across, but you’re not trying to shape yourself to fit every situation.

Bringing it back

So if you’ve been telling yourself that the goal is to stop caring what other people think, it might be worth reconsidering that.

You don’t need to shut that part of yourself off.

You just need to be more intentional about where you place it.

Not everyone’s opinion deserves equal weight. And once you start to sort that out, things tend to feel a lot less overwhelming.