"What will people think?"

Caring about their opinions

Is it not true that we fall prey to people’s opinions of us more often than we’d like to admit?

I’m certain that everyone begins to care about what the third person thinks of them at some point in life. And even though it’s a bit of a taboo, I think it’s important to acknowledge that it’s only natural for us to feel like this. We would all like to be above such ‘petty’ thoughts, but that’s only because we are made to feel guilty for caring about someone’s perception.

We all feel the need to act nonchalant like we couldn’t care less about what ‘they’ think, but at times it’s completely normal if you do care. When we are young, we see the world from our own eyes only, and so it seems simple and innocent. As we grow up, it so happens that the more exposure we get the more we begin to see ourselves from different people’s perspectives. This is daunting because we want to put up our best face for people to see, but it’s not possible to never falter and sustain that kind of perfect image.

I’m all for normalizing insecurities and not making them into the huge ‘shameful’ taboos that they can become. But in the same breath, perception management can also be really harmful if it goes out of bounds. After all, it’s a fact that we can’t control or influence what people think of us after a certain point, so why make all the futile effort and head towards inevitable failure?

Perception management

You will never be able to read someone else’s mind and alter their opinions of you. Nor will you be able to control whether their opinion of you changes or not. Whether someone ‘likes’ you or not does not arise from ‘making that person like us’. The truth is that everyone views everyone with individualized lenses. Even if you are the ‘perfect’ person, if someone decides to not like you, your being perfect won’t change that. So trying to be someone you’re not so that people like you will leave you with 100 different personalities, none of which are your own.

Another common mistake we all make is that when someone’s opinion of us changes, it throws us completely off. Think about it, if someone seems to really like you one day, it would obviously make anyone happy. But if that same person eventually comes to not like you much for whatever reason, it’s easy enough to get stuck in a loophole of ‘hows’ and ‘whys’. Then you try and change yourself,be it consciously or subconsciously, and that too is a form of perception management.

This whole mess of perceptions, management, opinions, and lenses can get exhausting, don’t you think? This can make our daily lives hell if we have to manage the opinion of everyone we speak to, from your Uber driver to your teacher to, of course, your friends. In my experience, as cheesy as it sounds, being normal and relatable is the easiest way to not spend your days like so. Everyone goes through this whole loop of perception management, but if people find someone who is honestly fallible and imperfect, they get comfort from the idea of not being the only one. And then of course, if it comes down to your auto or Uber driver, well the odds are that you will probably never see them again, and even if you do you guys may not even recognize each other, so their opinion should not even come in consideration so as to not drive yourself crazy.

Conclusion

It’s great if you want to be your best for people, and if you want them to like you that too can be healthy and push you to better yourself. Being adaptive is encouraged and compromising is a quality that can go a long way. But just make sure that the changes you make in yourself are on your own terms and not because someone will like it. Looking back on your life, if you don’t recognize who you became, it won’t be because of anyone else but you’ll only have yourself to blame. People come and go, but once you’ve gone out of your way and adapted to them, you’ll be left being someone you yourself don’t like.