WHAT DO THEY THINK ABOUT ME?
Do you worry about how others judge you?
For example, when you are presenting at work or meeting with friends, what you wear, whether you are suitable for the occasion, did you talk too much or laugh out loud? What did they think of you? What did they say behind your back?
Intensely preoccupying your mind with these questions can lead to problems such as distraction in the work environment and not being able to focus on the topic being discussed.
Because an inner monologue begins to spin in one’s head. You try to make sense of people’s facial expressions, laughing among themselves. That’s why your focus at work begins to move beyond business matters.
If such thoughts are gnawing at your mind from time to time, please continue with this article.
First of all, know that no one thinks about you as much as you do. In fact, just like you do, everyone thinks for themselves.
Studies have proven that people think more about themselves than other people. I mean, your thoughts are actually everyone’s. But the intensity levels are different. You may be more focused on these thoughts, while someone else is less focused. But each individual thinks more of himself than other people.
And there is scientific evidence that we think mostly about ourselves.
In the research conducted by M.Dunbar and A.Marriott in 1997, the subject and content of human speech were examined. It turned out that 78% of the conversations were about people themselves and their perception of the world. In fact, it has been observed that the main purpose of speeches, its main function in the social field, is to convey the speaker’s own knowledge to other individuals.
In 2013, Harvard’s Tamir and Mitchell showed that most people do something called “anchoring.” This is a kind of cognitive bias:
That is, taking the experiences of others as a guide and defending the correctness of one’s own actions or thoughts.
For example, you do not like very crowded environments, but you had to attend such a meeting for your job. During the meeting, someone began to tell you about their past experience of similar meetings. You come to the conclusion that that person doesn’t like large gatherings and you start making negative comments about the crowd of the meeting. In fact, this person may enjoy large meetings. This is called anchoring. You seek the justification of your own thoughts in the experiences or words of others. People have a perception to prove the accuracy of their own thoughts and the experiences of other people who do not agree with them. Thus, we see that people distort the opinions of others in order to defend their own opinions.
In 2018, Meyer and Lieberman theorized that people think of themselves unless there is an outside influence on their minds.
In their neuroimaging studies, it was determined that the front part of the brain works in the external effects of people. In contrast, different parts of the brain were found to work in situations unrelated to them, such as a politician’s visit to a foreign country or watching a documentary about how ants work.
However, when the brain was resting, that is, when there was no external stimulant effect, the anterior region of the brain continued to work. Feedback from the participants revealed that during rest, they thought about past memories, concerns about their bodies, or planned the tasks they needed to do that day.
This shows us that our brain is programmed to think about ourselves even in its emptiest state.
All this research proves that we are mostly self-thinking beings.
If we go back to the beginning of our subject, what people think about you when you wear a dress or what people talk about you in the business environment are actually concerns caused by your judgment of yourself.
Please remember that when you feel judged by others, you are actually judging yourself.
There are three main conclusions from these studies;
1- Do not prevent yourself from procrastinating or doing things because of what other people will think of you. As long as you don’t pose a threat or challenge to people, their thinking time about you is very short. People always think more of themselves than other people.
2- Nobody should think that she is in the center of the world. Each individual is an external factor for another individual. Every person puts herself in the center first.
3- “I always live for others.” sentence is false. Everyone lives for herself first.
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