Hey friends,
I had a thought in the shower the other day while singing at the top of lungs to my favourite Hamilton song. Why is it so much easier for most of us to sing in the shower than in public? And why is this so even for my friends who are good at singing?
There’s something about doing things in front of others that triggers a warning signal in our brains: potential (negative) judgments from people. This fear of judgment makes us clam up and makes our vocal cords constrict. In the privacy of our showers, this fear of judgment goes away, we relax, and sing freely.
Simple realisation. Big implications.
✍️ What we worked on this week
This week, I thought about how fear of judgment holds us back from doing what we want to or need to do. A common misperception is that we struggle to be productive because we’re lazy or because the task is too difficult.
But a lot of the times, what holds us back from getting something done isn’t how difficult that task is but our fear about what other people will think about how we perform. This is pretty common among people who want to start YouTube channels. Usually, it’s not the difficulty of putting a video together that’s holding us back, but the fear of what other people would think if you publish a cringey video.
But here’s the thing: 99% of the time, nobody cares.
🧠 The No-One-Cares Mindset
I’ve been thinking about a strategy called the “NO-ONE-CARES MINDSET” (the NOC mindset). It’s a strategy that I (subconsciously) used quite a lot back in the early days of putting myself out on the world wide web. Here’s how it goes:
(1) When you’re struggling to get something done, ask yourself what’s stopping you. Is it because the task is too hard? Or is it because you’re worried about what other people would think?
(2) If it’s fear of judgment holding you back, remind yourself that “NO ONE CARES” and then ask yourself “What’s the worst that will happen if I did X? Can I survive if that worst thing happened?”
Here are some examples:
- No One Cares if my first few YouTube videos are terrible and cringey. The worst that will probably happen is that I don’t make a good impression and struggle to grow the YouTube channel, which is totally okay.
- No One Cares if I write blog posts that are a bit rambly because I haven’t had much experience of writing. The worst that will probably happen is that my Mum is my only reader, which I can deal with.
- No One Cares if the first 3 businesses I start never make any money. The worst that will probably happen is that I go broke or need to stick to a traditional day job, which I will make the best of.
❓Question of the week
I’d love it for you guys to give the NOC mindset a go and report your findings. Has fear of judgment stopped you from doing something that you want to or need to do? Has applying the NOC mindset helped you? If you’re up for sharing a story that might feature in the book, please reply here.
As usual, the form will ask you for your name and email (optional) so that we can give you credit for the story, or potentially reach out to you to ask for more details 🙂
📢 Answers from last week’s questions
Thanks to all of you who took part in our survey on The Energy Ledger last week. If you missed the Energy Ledger exercise last week and fancy having a go, check out this link here.
We collected all your responses and found that these are the TOP 3 activities that we found for each box:
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My takeaways?
- Learning, creating, and building relationships is an energy booster for most of us
- Social media seems to be an energy drainer for most of us…
That’s it from me this week!
Ali xx
