Afraid of what others think? Here’s how to regain your freedom!

Why are people more afraid of public speaking than death? It’s a confluence of factors, and they are all instinctive, going back many thousands of years of existence.

First, is in the early days of humanity, slaying beasts to feed your loved ones with primitive weapons required teamwork—as did not having marauders eat that food, not being eaten, and surviving without sanitation. You were part of a tribe, or you died. Should you do (or say) something the tribe didn’t like, you could be banished. Public speaking is a one-way conveyance of ideas and opinions to get you banished any second.

Next, how do you feel when someone is watching you? During the Radical Sabbatical in Costa Rica, we went on early jungle group hikes. Occasionally, a flower or impressive tree caught my eye, and I would wander off. As I separated from the group, I would feel like things were watching me. And, I mean, it’s the jungle! There were probably at least a hundred eyes watching me. This is primally scary stuff. Imagine spear hunting way back when and turning around to a wall of eyeballs behind a mural of foliage. If you weren’t programmed to freak out and run, you got eaten.

Speaking of staring, the vast majority of communication is nonverbal. When someone engages with you, your primal subconscious’ first order of business is to find out if that person might harm you. Ever at a café, and someone stares at you? It drives you nuts, doesn’t it, because until you do, your subconscious thinks you might be toast. While public speaking, that intuition needs to size up 10, 100, 20,000 interested gazes.

Now, all that said, not too long ago, you’d take the kids to school, go to work, and come home to three TV channels. You kept to yourself. Now you have social media—this wacky phenomenon where you show your life and opinions to the world (15,429,153,846 eyeballs) all day long! And you get banished—for some, many times a day—terrifying your subconscious and killing your self-esteem.

And while you think you are showing bold “look at me” steps to the world, the stigma of banishment unknowingly makes you play it safe. Would-be life adventurers and “life-preneurs” turn into voyeurs of a select few brave internet sensations. Duck lips and Disney World (and I love, love, love Disney) are not life-changers.

Under these new circumstances, it is more important than ever to impart tools for thwarting the effects of what people think of you.

Positive Influences

Right before we left for Costa Rica, one of Glen’s co-workers sent him a picture of a fer de lance, the most venomous snake in the western hemisphere. The note said, “Don’t run into one of these.” Glen brushed it off. I was furious—at the coworker for sending it and at Glen for showing it to me—because such activity is useless. If you read my first episode with one of these snakes, an email didn’t help me survive it. Three experienced Canadians with machetes did. The email merely planted doubt in my mind about our Radical Sabbatical. And it was my fault for harboring that thought. I am responsible for what is in my mind.

Nonetheless, in a world of feeds of click-bait and shock, surround yourself with positive people, both on and offline. And the solution is not to give up social media. That cultural train has left the station. But, for example, you can do something like what Glen did to curate Radical Sabbatical on Facebook. Facebook algorithms allow you to control the tone of what you see over time. First, scroll quickly through negativity, and dwell on the uplifting and funny because the algorithm times what you watch. Second, unfollow pages/groups that seed your feed with negativity. And third, subscribe to more uplifting feeds.

When all else fails, remember that people have 50,000 thoughts per day. So if someone judges you negatively even 10 times a day, that’s only .02% of their thoughts. Remember Eleanor Roosevelt. “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”

Choose the Best-Case Scenario

Ongoing investment in your personal development equips you to make the right real-time choices. But beyond that, you largely don’t have control over your environment.

When pursuing a crazy goal or moving into a new space in life, educating yourself about the circumstances is secondary. it is most important to maintain the excitement to keep you going. Why would you continue to do things you fear unless you can see that glow at the end of the tunnel? You wouldn’t.

The science shows it. You use two different parts of the brain when focusing on the negative (amygdala fear center) vs. positive (pre-frontal cortex with increased oxytocin, which creates good feelings and propels you forward). So instead of thinking, “what is the worst that could happen”, find the best-case scenario. Visualize it when you go to bed. Journal on it when you wake. Put it on a vision board. Keep a positive, warm feeling about it to see it to the end.

The Obstacle Is the Way

The book by this same name is a fantastic read about surmounting challenges being the key to a fulfilling life. Earl Miller, a leading MIT neuroplasticity researcher, found the brain only changes in the face of success and can’t develop from failures. More specifically, “Neurons in the prefrontal cortex and striatum, where the brain tracks success and failure, sharpened their tuning after success.”

And what is life than one big series of challenges–work, relationships, or just setting a stage for daily survival. Life is free college! When you’ve stepped on a rock, you ease the pain by stepping off of it, in any direction. So when you get that pit of doubt in your stomach, either from within or some nasty comment on Twitter, make that your trigger for progress.

Choose to step forward.

This article originally appeared on Psychology Today Jun 20, 2019