“Just stop caring what people think” is useless advice, because you cannot. Caring what other people think is not a character flaw. It is a survival instinct, wired in over a few hundred thousand years when being cast out of the group actually killed you. You are not weak for feeling it. You are just running very old software in a world it was not built for.
The good news about the audience
Here is the first thing that helps, and it is backed by how attention actually works. People are thinking about you far less than you fear, because they are busy doing the exact same anxious maths about themselves. Everyone in the room is the star of their own worry. Nobody has the spare attention to run the full-time commentary on you that you imagine they are running. The audience you are performing for is mostly empty seats.
Whose opinion actually counts
You do not need to stop caring about everyone. You need to get ruthless about whose opinion you have handed a vote to. Right now you are probably letting near-strangers, people you do not even like, and a vague imagined jury cast votes on your decisions. Shrink the panel. A handful of people who actually know you and want good things for you get a real vote. Everyone else gets an opinion, which they are welcome to, and which changes nothing.
Do the embarrassing thing on purpose
The fear grows in the dark. The way to shrink it is exposure, in small doses. Wear the thing. Say the unpopular opinion, kindly. Post the thing. Ask the question in the meeting. Each time you do the mildly uncomfortable thing and the sky does not fall, your nervous system updates its estimate of the danger. You cannot think your way out of this one. You have to collect evidence, and the only way to collect it is to act slightly braver than you feel.
What is left when the noise drops
When you turn the volume down on the crowd, a quieter question gets audible: what do you actually want. That question has been drowned out for years under the noise of managing everyone else’s approval. It is still there. Caring less what people think is not about becoming hard or not giving a stuff about anyone. It is about clearing enough space to hear yourself again, and then having the nerve to act on it.
Hold My Ducks
When you are carrying everyone else’s emergencies.
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