
How to Stop Giving a Fuck What People Think - sarreph
https://medium.com/life-hacking-2/46bf86584c95
======
haukilup
When you are someone who lacks self-confidence or whose actions are determined
by how others will think of you (taken to the extreme), this may very well be
good advice. This is the type of advice that helps me personally, since I have
struggled with the anxiety caused by worrying too much about other people's
opinion of me.

However, while this may be a good quick-fix solution to self-confidence
issues, I wouldn't say it's a very good way to live life in general. We're not
isolated in this world, and other people's thoughts and opinions do matter.
But if someone worries _too_ much about what other people think, this may be
the type of article that helps shock them out of their current state.

------
Crake
This is a pretty good way to limit your friends network, though. For example,
feminists and other sjws often will delete you from everything and start a
witch hunt trying to fire you, get all your friends to hate you, and so on if
you "confess" to being an egalitarian and/or say anything that indicates rival
theories for things outside of their ideology, like the scientific method,
might have some validity.

Religion used to be like this (and still is in many developing countries,
along with an uncomfortably large segment of the US), but it has to some
extent grown much more milder in portions of the community. However, cult like
thinking takes many forms, and inadvertently contradicting a cultist may very
well become an aspiration crushing torment to the novice idgaf-er.

I guess it's all about taking baby steps at first. And sometimes
antidepressants.

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beltex
The rest of the article aside, I really like the notion of travelling alone,
at least once. It reminds me of a quote from one of my favourite movies, Into
the Wild.

 _”The sea 's only gifts are harsh blows, and occasionally the chance to feel
strong. Now, I don't know much about the sea, but I do know that that's the
way it is here. And I also know how important it is in life not necessarily to
be strong, but to feel strong, to measure yourself at least once, to find
yourself at least once in the most ancient of human conditions, facing the
blind, deaf stone alone with nothing to help you but your hands and your own
head. “_

Not that you have to hitchhike alone to the Alaskan wilderness! Thats extreme
of course.

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dominotw
This is bad. The advice given perpetuates the myth you are an individual
completely separate from the world outside of it, the very feeling that
alienates you from other people and the feeling behind the animosity that we
feel towards others. The only way to be at peace with world( and people who
live in it) is to realize that you are the world not a part of it.

~~~
BetterLateThan
>> the myth you are an individual completely separate from the world outside

Aren't you?

You were born alone, you will die alone, nobody can live your life for you,
nobody can share the responsibility for your decisions.

You are alone. Everyone else is a script. The only thing that matters is
whether your actions make you happy without a hangover. Why would you worry
about anyone else's judgments?

(Sick people, who are made happy by abusing neighbors, will always exist, but
they are, luckily, not numerous.)

~~~
dominotw
>> Aren't you?

Yes if you choose to identify yourself with small part of your being called
the consciousness.

I don't find that view of self particularly appealing, I prefer to view my ego
as part of me as my leg is a part me. You are not the image that you have
constructed for yourself shaped by the society you live in. I don't want to
identify myself with a tiny portion of thoughts that my mind has, I am not my
ego.

------
fuddle
Reminds me of the title of a book by Richard Feynman -"What Do You Care What
Other People Think?"
[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Do_You_Care_What_Other_P...](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Do_You_Care_What_Other_People_Think%3F)

------
gte910h
Exercise is also effective at reducing emotional reactions to painful stimuli

[http://www.health.harvard.edu/newsweek/Exercise-and-
Depressi...](http://www.health.harvard.edu/newsweek/Exercise-and-Depression-
report-excerpt.htm)

------
becauseGoogle
But what about downvotes and hellbans?

~~~
becauseGoogle
Also, it's hard to take this advice seriously, when the title of the article
engages in polite self-censorship by partially masking foul language with
asterisks.

~~~
Malician
I think there are two sides of this question.

The first is common decency: don't hurt others unnecessarily, don't be an ass,
or you feel guilt.

The other is a matter of shame: worrying about the disapproval of others for
something you did.

I want to be more proactive about being good to people around me in ways that
matter to them.

I am also trying to do more things which create my "shame" feeling, because as
this piece says the feeling is generally unnecessary and irrelevant to the
feelings of the people around me. I try to do things I am uncomfortable with,
or if the only thing holding me back is some vague sense others might
disapprove. Really, most of the time they just don't care.

From that perspective, if you really think it will hurt some of your readers
to spell out the words, and you don't have a significant reason to do so,
censoring them is perfectly in line with his philosophy.

