May 20, 2024 • 13 mins
Ever felt crushed under the weight of what everyone else thinks? I've discovered that shedding the burden of external opinions can be liberating in ways you never imagined. Join me on Unscripted Mind as we unpack our emotional backpacks, revealing how the art of caring less can lead to a more fulfilling life. We'll navigate through the fog of anxiety and depression that often clouds our path when we place too much stock in external validation. With personal stories and expert wisdom, this episode offers actionable steps to diminish the power others' views have over our happiness and self-worth. It's a candid exploration of self-discovery that equips you with the tools to tread lighter and find joy in the unpredictability of life.
As we round off our discussion, I leave you with a thought-provoking nudge from the wise Olin Miller: People are far less fixated on us than we suppose. I challenge you to select just one part of your life to care less about this coming week. Your stories fuel our conversations, so I'm eager for your feedback and suggestions for what topics we should tackle next. Let's embrace the beauty of spontaneity together, maintaining curiosity, and seizing each day with renewed passion. Thanks for listening, and remember, life's script is unwritten—let's enjoy the improvisation.
The goal of The UnScripted Mind Podcast is to give you fresh perspectives, practical insights and tools you can use to give you more choices, self-awareness and control of your feelings, reactions and behaviors.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Lao Tzu once said care about what other people
think and you'll always be theirprisoner.
Today, on the unscripted mind,we're going to reveal how doing
one simple thing can increaseyour joy, improve your
relationships, improve youropinion of yourself, your
motivations, your honesty, yourself-esteem, maybe even your
(00:24):
faith and spirituality.
What's that one thing?
Caring less.
Welcome to the Unscripted Mind,where our goal is to give you
fresh perspectives, practicalinsights and tools you can use
(00:47):
to give you more choices,increase your awareness and have
better control of your feelings, reactions and behaviors.
My name is Jim Cunningham andI'm a licensed professional
counselor, and today we're goingto discuss the one thing you
can do to improve virtually allaspects of your life.
That one thing care less.
We'll take a look at where alot of these cares come from and
(01:10):
some ways you can startimplementing them.
So the two words that will fixI guess I would say 90% of my
clients are care less.
Now, this might sound callous,counterintuitive.
It's not.
Stick with me for a little biton this one.
While it might be simple, it'salso not easy.
This is not to say that weshouldn't care at all.
(01:32):
That's not what I'm saying.
It's simply to say that weshould care a little less about
certain things.
I'm not saying that we shouldignore concerns about safety or
justice or those types of things.
I am saying if we were tosimply care less about what
others think, their emotions,their decisions, their reactions
to us, we would be able to takeso many rocks out of our
(01:54):
metaphorical backpack and ourload would be so much more light
.
So here's the problem when westart caring too much about the
wrong things, we also startfeeling anxious, we feel sad, we
feel depressed, maybe havingpanic attacks.
We might feel ashamed and evenfeelings of not being good
enough can creep up, like I haveto perform in order to be
(02:15):
accepted.
Anxiety and depression andfeelings of not being good
enough are predicated largely onwhat other people think of us
and how they react to us as ametric for how we're doing in
life.
We use relationships todetermine how we're doing.
These include other people'sreactions, their disdain,
comments, praises, criticisms.
(02:36):
We kind of use this as abarometer to make sure we're
kind of going the rightdirection, not an outlier in
some way.
Unfortunately, this is really apoor measure at best.
I mean others' reactions to meoften are clouded by the
hundreds of variables that areaffecting the other people,
simple variables.
These don't have to be bigthings, I mean, such as I don't
(02:56):
know how that other person hasslept last night.
I don't know if they're hungryright now.
I don't know if they've justhad a fight with their wife.
All I know is that moment intime when I got that reaction
from them, but I don't know whatwas behind that and what was
driving a lot of that.
I think I can safely say thatI'm not the only variable
impacting them, though, and so alot of times when we're using
(03:18):
other people, is this litmustest.
It's kind of like going andgetting yourself a brand new
suit and then going down to thecircus and the fun house and
looking at yourself in thatdistorted mirror to see how you
look.
It's a very bad reflection ofwho I am.
So, having said that, I thinkit's unfortunate, but the vast
majority of opinions we have ofourselves I think we've learned
(03:41):
from other people A lot of thesenegative beliefs that we have
about ourselves.
In some ways, we were kind oftaught.
I often ask clients thequestions like who taught you
that it was not okay to showemotions?
Or how did you come to knowthat you weren't shy.
How did you know certain thingswere impolite?
They were from reactions fromother people.
(04:01):
Some of those can be veryuseful and we can use those.
The problem is, we can't letthose overwhelm us.
A lot of the negative ideasthat we were not born with,
these weren't our originalthoughts.
They're based on other people'scomments, reactions, emotions
and behaviors, as I've said.
So how do we actually know this?
Well, I think that's simple.
(04:22):
I want you to imagine being backin middle school.
As you're walking down the hall, you trip, fall flat of your
face.
Now that can be a horrificevent for any middle schooler,
especially if the halls are fullof people.
But now I want you to imaginethe same scenario when you trip
and you fall, but no one'saround.
(04:43):
No one saw you fall.
This tells me the problem isn'tthat you fell, the problem is
that it was public.
The ultimate irony in thisscenario is that now I care more
about what other people'sreactions are to my mistake than
the actual mistake itself.
That's what begins to define me.
It was their reactions thatcreated the shame.
(05:06):
Mistakes made in private tendto not generate those same kind
of emotions, if any.
It is that mistake that wasseen that elevates the
consequences.
For many, that means shame andfear of abandonment.
Michael Elkin, he is a licensedmarriage and family therapist
and he said shame is theexperience of having our badness
(05:27):
witnessed.
Shame is one of the mostpainful experiences any of us
can imagine.
So let me walk you through anexample.
I want you to think back to atime before you knew certain
things about yourself, maybeback in elementary school or
even before, when everything wassimple, everything was fun,
everything was light, you couldjust kind of go about your day
(05:48):
and you didn't worry aboutcertain things.
Now, do you remember the daythat it all changed?
Do you remember the day youfirst felt overwhelming shame?
The day your eyes were open tonot being good enough, the day
there was nowhere to hide, theday the world got harder, more
complicated and more threatening, the day you realized you had
(06:12):
to be careful of what you said,how you said it, what you wore
and how you acted.
The day you had to become, inshort, more vigilant.
I would call that gut-wrenchingawareness.
You may have made mistakesbefore that time, but for some
reason, on that day it stuck.
You may have made mistakesbefore that time, but for some
(06:32):
reason, on that day it stuck.
Now take a moment and go back tothat day, or one like it.
What do you feel when you putyourself back there?
Where do you feel it physically?
What do you think aboutyourself in light of that memory
?
Maybe you feel like you're notgood enough, you didn't deserve
love, that you're a bad person,that you can't show emotions,
that you're not good enough, youdidn't deserve love, that
you're a bad person, that youcan't show emotions, that you're
(06:54):
not okay, you're weak, youcan't trust yourself, you can't
trust anyone.
For many, this awareness ofthemselves feels so overwhelming
.
It's indistinguishable fromthemselves.
It's not that they made amistake, it's that all of a
sudden they are a mistake.
I think this is why we startcaring more.
(07:16):
We have to, we have to hide andprotect this newfound fragility
, the vulnerability, theweakness.
I know a lot of this mightsound like hyperbole, but I see
it play out in our client'slives every day.
Often people tell me well, youknow, that was such a little
thing and it was like threedecades ago.
It shouldn't bother me at all.
And yet it does.
(07:37):
Our brains seem to do thatmagnificent job of keeping us
safe and never letting us forgetthings that were a real threat
or a perceived threat.
Now I have to start caring more.
I really don't have a choice.
I will say this that anyone cancause these things and these
ideas to get into our heads.
It can be a stranger mom, ateacher, a friend, a classroom
(07:59):
full of laughing peers.
It could have been a simplelook of disappointment, a
chuckle or even a non-reaction.
There's a good chance.
The person who taught you that,though, had no idea or
intention of doing so.
These negative self-beliefs getto the root of why people feel
certain things and act certainways.
Once we get these ideas fromothers, they're hard to shake.
(08:21):
In fact, we usually do theopposite.
We get this idea that I'm notgood enough, and then we
continue to look for andaccumulate evidence that
supports those beliefs.
Every time I fail, see, I'm notgood enough.
After we've done this for yearsor decades, it becomes second
nature and we start to believeall those lies.
(08:44):
Now, not to get too simplistic,but the remedy to this is to
start caring less.
This doesn't mean we don't careat all.
This means that we simplyprioritize what we care about.
It's a simple concept butcertainly not easy, like I said,
to implement.
So how do we do that?
What are the things you need tocare less about?
(09:07):
What would you love to let goof?
What weight would you like toput down?
I would encourage you to takesome time list all of the things
you believe about yourself.
Then take a critical look atthat list, evaluate it,
scrutinize it.
Ask yourself whose voices dothese ideas sound like?
(09:28):
When did I first start thinkingthis?
Whose voices do these ideassound like?
When did I first start thinkingthis?
If you were to float back intime, what does each statement
or phrase remind you of?
If you get stuck on your list,ask someone you trust.
What do they hear you say aboutyourself?
You might be unaware.
I'll give you an example.
(09:49):
When I first met my wife, I usedto say this thing that I was
lazy, I'm lazy, I'm lazy.
And she called me on that.
She's like you seem to say thata lot.
After I thought about it a lot,I remembered that I got this
idea from my mother wonderfullady, but she would often ask me
(10:10):
to bring groceries in when shewent to the store and I tried to
get them all, usually in oneload.
So she would say well, quitbeing lazy.
And, you know, make severaltrips because invariably the old
paper bags would tend to ripand I dropped stuff everywhere.
But it goes to show how easysome small comment can just
stick yeah, once you have yourlist, then you can start looking
(10:35):
at it and considering what isin your scope of control and
influence.
What can you control in thiswhole world?
Honestly, not much and, as I'vesaid before, usually I can only
control myself and I'm prettybad at that.
We certainly can't controlother people and their thoughts,
and if I can't control it, Ican let those things go and
(10:56):
focus on what I actually cancontrol and influence.
In short, it's about efficiency, using our energies and our
gifts where they can be appliedand eliminating the frustrations
where they can't.
That's called caring less.
Finally, just realize whatsomeone else thinks of you
actually has no impact on you.
(11:17):
What you may think of me doesnot determine or change who I am
, unless I let it.
Once you decide to care less,you can take back all the power
in these relationships and theseemotions and these negative
self-beliefs.
You won't be at the mercy ofopinions, reactions or those
negative looks or comments.
Can you imagine, if you can dothis and if you're successful,
(11:41):
how that might feel to takethose rocks out of the backpack.
How would caring less increaseyour joy, improve your
relationships, your opinion ofyourself, your motivations, your
honesty, your self-esteem andmaybe even your faith in
spirituality motivations, yourhonesty, your self-esteem and
maybe even your faith inspirituality.
I'll leave you with this quotefrom olin miller.
You probably wouldn't worryabout what other people think of
(12:03):
you if you could know howseldom they actually do.
Thanks for joining me and havean amazing day, and I challenge
you to find one thing, maybejust one thing this week to care
less about.
If you found this episodehelpful, please subscribe and
leave a review.
Also, if you have any questionsor topics you'd like us to
cover, feel free to reach outfor that as well.
(12:24):
Until next time, remember, lifedoesn't come with a script, so
embrace the unexpected, cherishthe unplanned, always stay
curious and have an amazing day.
We'll see you next time, thankyou.
Lao Tzu once said care about what other people
think and you'll always be theirprisoner.
Today, on the unscripted mind,we're going to reveal how doing
one simple thing can increaseyour joy, improve your
relationships, improve youropinion of yourself, your
motivations, your honesty, yourself-esteem, maybe even your
(00:24):
faith and spirituality.
What's that one thing?
Caring less.
Welcome to the Unscripted Mind,where our goal is to give you
fresh perspectives, practicalinsights and tools you can use
(00:47):
to give you more choices,increase your awareness and have
better control of your feelings, reactions and behaviors.
My name is Jim Cunningham andI'm a licensed professional
counselor, and today we're goingto discuss the one thing you
can do to improve virtually allaspects of your life.
That one thing care less.
We'll take a look at where alot of these cares come from and
(01:10):
some ways you can startimplementing them.
So the two words that will fixI guess I would say 90% of my
clients are care less.
Now, this might sound callous,counterintuitive.
It's not.
Stick with me for a little biton this one.
While it might be simple, it'salso not easy.
This is not to say that weshouldn't care at all.
(01:32):
That's not what I'm saying.
It's simply to say that weshould care a little less about
certain things.
I'm not saying that we shouldignore concerns about safety or
justice or those types of things.
I am saying if we were tosimply care less about what
others think, their emotions,their decisions, their reactions
to us, we would be able to takeso many rocks out of our
(01:54):
metaphorical backpack and ourload would be so much more light
.
So here's the problem when westart caring too much about the
wrong things, we also startfeeling anxious, we feel sad, we
feel depressed, maybe havingpanic attacks.
We might feel ashamed and evenfeelings of not being good
enough can creep up, like I haveto perform in order to be
(02:15):
accepted.
Anxiety and depression andfeelings of not being good
enough are predicated largely onwhat other people think of us
and how they react to us as ametric for how we're doing in
life.
We use relationships todetermine how we're doing.
These include other people'sreactions, their disdain,
comments, praises, criticisms.
(02:36):
We kind of use this as abarometer to make sure we're
kind of going the rightdirection, not an outlier in
some way.
Unfortunately, this is really apoor measure at best.
I mean others' reactions to meoften are clouded by the
hundreds of variables that areaffecting the other people,
simple variables.
These don't have to be bigthings, I mean, such as I don't
(02:56):
know how that other person hasslept last night.
I don't know if they're hungryright now.
I don't know if they've justhad a fight with their wife.
All I know is that moment intime when I got that reaction
from them, but I don't know whatwas behind that and what was
driving a lot of that.
I think I can safely say thatI'm not the only variable
impacting them, though, and so alot of times when we're using
(03:18):
other people, is this litmustest.
It's kind of like going andgetting yourself a brand new
suit and then going down to thecircus and the fun house and
looking at yourself in thatdistorted mirror to see how you
look.
It's a very bad reflection ofwho I am.
So, having said that, I thinkit's unfortunate, but the vast
majority of opinions we have ofourselves I think we've learned
(03:41):
from other people A lot of thesenegative beliefs that we have
about ourselves.
In some ways, we were kind oftaught.
I often ask clients thequestions like who taught you
that it was not okay to showemotions?
Or how did you come to knowthat you weren't shy.
How did you know certain thingswere impolite?
They were from reactions fromother people.
(04:01):
Some of those can be veryuseful and we can use those.
The problem is, we can't letthose overwhelm us.
A lot of the negative ideasthat we were not born with,
these weren't our originalthoughts.
They're based on other people'scomments, reactions, emotions
and behaviors, as I've said.
So how do we actually know this?
Well, I think that's simple.
(04:22):
I want you to imagine being backin middle school.
As you're walking down the hall, you trip, fall flat of your
face.
Now that can be a horrificevent for any middle schooler,
especially if the halls are fullof people.
But now I want you to imaginethe same scenario when you trip
and you fall, but no one'saround.
(04:43):
No one saw you fall.
This tells me the problem isn'tthat you fell, the problem is
that it was public.
The ultimate irony in thisscenario is that now I care more
about what other people'sreactions are to my mistake than
the actual mistake itself.
That's what begins to define me.
It was their reactions thatcreated the shame.
(05:06):
Mistakes made in private tendto not generate those same kind
of emotions, if any.
It is that mistake that wasseen that elevates the
consequences.
For many, that means shame andfear of abandonment.
Michael Elkin, he is a licensedmarriage and family therapist
and he said shame is theexperience of having our badness
(05:27):
witnessed.
Shame is one of the mostpainful experiences any of us
can imagine.
So let me walk you through anexample.
I want you to think back to atime before you knew certain
things about yourself, maybeback in elementary school or
even before, when everything wassimple, everything was fun,
everything was light, you couldjust kind of go about your day
(05:48):
and you didn't worry aboutcertain things.
Now, do you remember the daythat it all changed?
Do you remember the day youfirst felt overwhelming shame?
The day your eyes were open tonot being good enough, the day
there was nowhere to hide, theday the world got harder, more
complicated and more threatening, the day you realized you had
(06:12):
to be careful of what you said,how you said it, what you wore
and how you acted.
The day you had to become, inshort, more vigilant.
I would call that gut-wrenchingawareness.
You may have made mistakesbefore that time, but for some
reason, on that day it stuck.
You may have made mistakesbefore that time, but for some
(06:32):
reason, on that day it stuck.
Now take a moment and go back tothat day, or one like it.
What do you feel when you putyourself back there?
Where do you feel it physically?
What do you think aboutyourself in light of that memory
?
Maybe you feel like you're notgood enough, you didn't deserve
love, that you're a bad person,that you can't show emotions,
that you're not good enough, youdidn't deserve love, that
you're a bad person, that youcan't show emotions, that you're
(06:54):
not okay, you're weak, youcan't trust yourself, you can't
trust anyone.
For many, this awareness ofthemselves feels so overwhelming
.
It's indistinguishable fromthemselves.
It's not that they made amistake, it's that all of a
sudden they are a mistake.
I think this is why we startcaring more.
(07:16):
We have to, we have to hide andprotect this newfound fragility
, the vulnerability, theweakness.
I know a lot of this mightsound like hyperbole, but I see
it play out in our client'slives every day.
Often people tell me well, youknow, that was such a little
thing and it was like threedecades ago.
It shouldn't bother me at all.
And yet it does.
(07:37):
Our brains seem to do thatmagnificent job of keeping us
safe and never letting us forgetthings that were a real threat
or a perceived threat.
Now I have to start caring more.
I really don't have a choice.
I will say this that anyone cancause these things and these
ideas to get into our heads.
It can be a stranger mom, ateacher, a friend, a classroom
(07:59):
full of laughing peers.
It could have been a simplelook of disappointment, a
chuckle or even a non-reaction.
There's a good chance.
The person who taught you that,though, had no idea or
intention of doing so.
These negative self-beliefs getto the root of why people feel
certain things and act certainways.
Once we get these ideas fromothers, they're hard to shake.
(08:21):
In fact, we usually do theopposite.
We get this idea that I'm notgood enough, and then we
continue to look for andaccumulate evidence that
supports those beliefs.
Every time I fail, see, I'm notgood enough.
After we've done this for yearsor decades, it becomes second
nature and we start to believeall those lies.
(08:44):
Now, not to get too simplistic,but the remedy to this is to
start caring less.
This doesn't mean we don't careat all.
This means that we simplyprioritize what we care about.
It's a simple concept butcertainly not easy, like I said,
to implement.
So how do we do that?
What are the things you need tocare less about?
(09:07):
What would you love to let goof?
What weight would you like toput down?
I would encourage you to takesome time list all of the things
you believe about yourself.
Then take a critical look atthat list, evaluate it,
scrutinize it.
Ask yourself whose voices dothese ideas sound like?
(09:28):
When did I first start thinkingthis?
Whose voices do these ideassound like?
When did I first start thinkingthis?
If you were to float back intime, what does each statement
or phrase remind you of?
If you get stuck on your list,ask someone you trust.
What do they hear you say aboutyourself?
You might be unaware.
I'll give you an example.
(09:49):
When I first met my wife, I usedto say this thing that I was
lazy, I'm lazy, I'm lazy.
And she called me on that.
She's like you seem to say thata lot.
After I thought about it a lot,I remembered that I got this
idea from my mother wonderfullady, but she would often ask me
(10:10):
to bring groceries in when shewent to the store and I tried to
get them all, usually in oneload.
So she would say well, quitbeing lazy.
And, you know, make severaltrips because invariably the old
paper bags would tend to ripand I dropped stuff everywhere.
But it goes to show how easysome small comment can just
stick yeah, once you have yourlist, then you can start looking
(10:35):
at it and considering what isin your scope of control and
influence.
What can you control in thiswhole world?
Honestly, not much and, as I'vesaid before, usually I can only
control myself and I'm prettybad at that.
We certainly can't controlother people and their thoughts,
and if I can't control it, Ican let those things go and
(10:56):
focus on what I actually cancontrol and influence.
In short, it's about efficiency, using our energies and our
gifts where they can be appliedand eliminating the frustrations
where they can't.
That's called caring less.
Finally, just realize whatsomeone else thinks of you
actually has no impact on you.
(11:17):
What you may think of me doesnot determine or change who I am
, unless I let it.
Once you decide to care less,you can take back all the power
in these relationships and theseemotions and these negative
self-beliefs.
You won't be at the mercy ofopinions, reactions or those
negative looks or comments.
Can you imagine, if you can dothis and if you're successful,
(11:41):
how that might feel to takethose rocks out of the backpack.
How would caring less increaseyour joy, improve your
relationships, your opinion ofyourself, your motivations, your
honesty, your self-esteem andmaybe even your faith in
spirituality motivations, yourhonesty, your self-esteem and
maybe even your faith inspirituality.
I'll leave you with this quotefrom olin miller.
You probably wouldn't worryabout what other people think of
(12:03):
you if you could know howseldom they actually do.
Thanks for joining me and havean amazing day, and I challenge
you to find one thing, maybejust one thing this week to care
less about.
If you found this episodehelpful, please subscribe and
leave a review.
Also, if you have any questionsor topics you'd like us to
cover, feel free to reach outfor that as well.
(12:24):
Until next time, remember, lifedoesn't come with a script, so
embrace the unexpected, cherishthe unplanned, always stay
curious and have an amazing day.
We'll see you next time, thankyou.
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