You know that moment when you’re about to speak up in a meeting… and then your brain suddenly starts running a full-on risk assessment?
What if I sound dumb?
Will people disagree?
Am I going to come across as too pushy?
How can I downplay what I want to say so no one criticizes me?
If you’re a smart, capable woman who looks confident on the outside but secretly wrestles with self-doubt on the inside, you’re not alone. Worrying about what your co-workers think can feel like a constant background hum in your workday… but that’s just the tip of the iceberg in terms of how that worry impacts you (and your career).
While caring about your professional relationships and reputation is a good thing, caring too much about what people at work think can become exhausting and distracting. It can also be a faulty guide for your choices and career that leads you *way* off course from where you truly want to be.
It can cause you to:
- Soften your ideas
- Hold back your opinions
- Over-explain your decisions
- Overwork to avoid criticism
- Say yes when you really need to say no to protect your time and energy
- Say no when you really want to say yes, because you know you have what it takes (you just feel too scared of how people will react)
That’s why learning how to stop caring so much about what people at work think is such a worthwhile goal.
Why you’re on the right track (and why you should keep going!)
When you stop worrying about others’ opinions so much, you free up time, energy, and mental and emotional space.
You also give yourself room to make decisions based on your own goals, values, and guiding principles instead of constantly filtering your choices through the question, “But what will they think?”
You can:
- Make decisions with more confidence
- State your ideas without shrinking them to avoid criticism
- Sharpen your own contributions and impact without tailoring everything to impress, appease, or please the people around you
So, how do you actually do that?
Here are 4 shifts that can help. Let’s dive in!
Shift 1: Clean up your own thinking first
You can’t stop caring so much about what other people think about you if you don’t have a strong, supportive foundation of what you think about you first.
A strong relationship with yourself is critical to the process of worrying less about what others think. That’s because when the voice in your own head is belittling, critical, or full of self-doubt, it becomes much harder to steady yourself when someone else’s opinion, comment, or feedback stings.
For example, let’s say a co-worker questions your idea in a meeting.
If your internal voice immediately says, “See? You don’t know what you’re talking about. You should have stayed quiet,” then that co-worker’s question is going to feel much heavier than it has to.
By contrast, if you’ve been building a more supportive relationship with yourself, you have more room to respond internally with something like, “That question doesn’t mean I’m not good enough. It means there’s more to clarify when it comes to my idea. I can handle that.”
That’s a *very* different internal experience, right? And I’m guessing you can see how it would lead to very different choices externally, too.
Cleaning up your thinking starts with noticing the thoughts you already have about yourself.
Are they:
Supportive?
Fair?
Rooted in truth?
Helping you lead, contribute, and grow?
…Or are they keeping you quiet, small, and constantly second-guessing yourself?
This is one of the first areas I work on with clients inside my signature 1:1 coaching program, The Self-Confidence Edit.
Inside the Perception pillar of my 3P Self-Confidence Method, we focus on helping you rebuild your relationship with yourself.
That includes:
- How you think about yourself
- How you feel about yourself
- What you believe is true about who you are, what you’re capable of, and what’s possible for you
When your self-perception becomes healthier and more supportive, other people’s opinions don’t have the same power to knock you off-balance.
You also need to clean up this second part of your thinking
Cleaning up your thinking around how you perceive yourself is part 1. There’s a second part to cleaning up your thinking that’s just as important:
You also have to clean up your thoughts about what other people might be thinking about you.
Your brain can make up all kinds of stories about what people *might* think before anyone else has even said a word.
If that sounds totally nebulous and confusing, here are a few examples.
You send a message and they don’t reply right away, so your brain says, “They’re annoyed with me.”
You share an idea and someone pauses before responding, so your brain says, “They think that was stupid.”
You set a boundary and your manager seems quieter than usual, so your brain says, “They’re mad at me.”
As humans, our brains are wired to seek social approval (and to watch for and guard against the possibility of social disapproval).
In some ways, your brain is just trying to protect you… but that doesn’t mean every story it tells you is true.
This is why it’s so important to recognize when your brain is spinning a story it wants you to believe, and then respond with intention instead of automatically accepting that story as fact (because it rarely is).
In reality, sometimes the biggest problem isn’t what someone else thinks, but what you think they think.
You can shift how you respond to the stories your brain tells you about what they’re thinking (or what they might be thinking) and choose a perspective that serves you much better. I know, because I’ve done it myself (it feels amazing), and I help clients do it all the time.
Inside The Self-Confidence Edit, I work with clients on this under the Perspective pillar of my 3P Self-Confidence Method. We look at what your brain is making other people’s words, actions, silence, or facial expressions mean about you, and we practice creating a more honest, self-supportive perspective.
Shift 2: Learn how to navigate the discomfort of words or opinions that sting
It would be lovely if no one ever said, thought, or implied anything negative about you ever again, but let’s be honest. You and I are probably more likely to win the lottery.
The truth is, if you work with other humans, there will be moments when someone’s words, feedback, tone, or opinion stings:
- Maybe a co-worker disagrees with you
- Your manager may give you feedback you weren’t expecting
- A client might question your recommendation
- Someone may misunderstand or misinterpret your intention
- Perhaps someone simply doesn’t like your approach
While those scenarios might not sound super fun, they also don’t have to be a crisis.
One of the reasons we as humans can become so focused on what other people think is because we’re trying to avoid the discomfort that comes with criticism, disapproval, or misunderstanding.
That avoidance can show up in subtle ways that feel like you’re being conscientious, considerate, or cautious. The more accurate reality might be that you:
- Avoid asking for feedback because you don’t want to hear anything negative
- Overwork or overperform so no one has a reason to criticize you
- Seek reassurance after every decision because you want someone else to confirm you did the right thing
- Hold back a strong opinion because you don’t want to deal with the discomfort of someone disagreeing
I want to pause here to say that these patterns make total sense. Your brain is likely just trying to help you feel safe.
Here’s the thing, though: Safe might not seem like a big deal in the moment… but always reaching for short-term safety leads to feeling long-term stuck.
Plus, your brain is usually mistaking feeling uncomfortable as feeling unsafe. They’re two different things, but that part of your brain (I call it your inner Security Guard) isn’t great at telling the difference.
If your main strategy is to avoid discomfort, then other people’s opinions will keep feeling more powerful and influential than they really have to be. You’ll continue to arrange your work, words, schedule, and decisions around avoiding the possibility of criticism.
Try this secret weapon: Resilient discomfort
The shift to go after here is learning how to feel and process the discomfort instead of building your whole work life around avoiding it.
The good news is that when you approach this kind of discomfort in a *healthy* way, it actually tends to feel less uncomfortable (or at least, more survivable) over time.
The thing is too, not all discomfort is bad. Some discomfort (the kind associated with growth, learning, and making positive changes) is actually good for you. I call that resilient discomfort.
When you sit with and even embrace resilient discomfort, your brain begins to learn two important things:
- First, the discomfort is survivable
- Second, you have the capacity to navigate it effectively and even come out stronger on the other side
Cleaning up your thinking around healthy discomfort is a *huge* part of developing self-confidence.
Self-confidence doesn’t mean lying to yourself, like, “No one will ever criticize me.”
Real self-confidence sounds more like, “Criticism may happen, and I can handle it.”
Inside my 1:1 coaching program, The Self-Confidence Edit, this is exactly what we work on in the Potential pillar of my 3P Self-Confidence Method.
We look at the people, scenarios, and circumstances you’re avoiding because they feel emotionally risky. Then, I help you build the mental and emotional capacity to move through those moments with more self-confidence, clarity, and self-trust.
Oh, and by the way, it’s exactly zero percent forcing yourself to “just get over it.”
Instead, you learn how to lead yourself when discomfort shows up, instead of abandoning yourself, over-functioning, or letting someone else’s opinion become the final word on who you are and what you’re worth.
Self-confidence is a skill that you can build over time. You just need the tools, structure, and practice to make it happen.
Shift 3: Create a personal philosophy and framework for responding to people’s opinions
You don’t need to stop caring completely about what anyone thinks of you.
Honestly, that’s not realistic for most humans.
The more realistic ideal is to stop letting everyone’s opinions carry the same weight.
Not all feedback deserves the same level of access to your mind, your decisions, or your self-perception.
Other people’s thoughts, opinions, and feedback can be:
- Useful
- Incomplete
- More about the other person’s preferences than your performance
- Worth considering
- Worth releasing
- Any combination of the elements above!
When you don’t have a clear framework and set of beliefs for how you want to respond to other people’s words and opinions, though, everything can feel equally important (and equally painful).
A co-worker’s random comment can carry the same emotional weight as your trusted mentor’s feedback.
One person’s tone in a meeting can send you into a spiral.
A piece of feedback can feel less like information and more like a personal verdict.
Why this combination is ✨ pure gold ✨and how it works
Clearly, at least on an intellectual level, you’d probably agree that not all opinions should carry the same weight. That’s why it’s so incredibly helpful to develop a personal philosophy and framework for how you respond to people’s opinions… both internally *and* externally. That’s the work that moves you from understanding it intellectually to truly believing, embodying, and living it mentally and emotionally.
Internally, this helps you decide what you want to make someone’s words mean about you and/or your work.
Externally, it helps you decide how you want to respond and move forward.
Your personal philosophy around feedback guides you in deciding whose opinions and feedback matter most on which topics. Meanwhile, the framework helps you assess those opinions and feedback in a productive, growth-fueling, aligned way.
This combination is valuable not only in terms of how you’re thinking and feeling, but also for your nervous system… and specifically, a part of your brain that I like to call your inner Security Guard (more on her later).
Instead of instantly absorbing someone else’s opinion as truth, having (and more importantly, using) a philosophy and framework puts time and space between what someone says (stimulus) and how you choose to think, feel, and act (response). You give yourself the opportunity to pause, assess, and select a response that serves you.
You learn how to weigh feedback in a way that is self-confident, values-based, and grounded in your own goals.
Inside The Self-Confidence Edit, this happens inside the Perspective pillar of my 3P Self-Confidence Method.
Together, we build a custom framework that helps you decide what to do with other people’s opinions, without handing them the steering wheel.
This process begins by helping my clients uncover (and shift, when needed) their beliefs about themselves, their assumptions about what others think, and the way they want to process other people’s input.
Then, I help them distill those shifts down into a personal philosophy for navigating opinions and feedback, as well as a framework of questions they can use to assess them and determine how to move forward with intention.
Other people can (and will!) have thoughts about you, but those thoughts do not automatically get to have authority over you… unless you let them.
Shift 4: Regulate your nervous system so your inner CEO can stay in the room
This fourth shift is a little different. It’s not exactly a separate step, but rather a skill that supports the *entire* process from the ground up:
Nervous system regulation.
The thing is, you can understand everything we’ve talked about so far on an intellectual level and still struggle to act on it if your nervous system is dysregulated.
Maybe you know and understand that:
- Your co-worker’s opinion doesn’t define you
- Feedback is survivable
- You want to respond from your values instead of reacting from fear
However, if your body is in fight, flight, or freeze modes, it can be nearly impossible to access and act on that knowledge in the moment.
Meet your inner Security Guard and inner CEO (and learn how to work with them)
Remember that inner Security Guard I mentioned earlier? It’s time to learn more about her.
As I said earlier, your brain is wired to seek social approval and scan for the risk of social disapproval. That part of you that’s trying to keep you safe is kind of like an inner Security Guard.
When she senses the threat, or even the potential threat, of being judged, rejected, criticized, or disliked, she may sound the alarm.
That alarm can feel like:
- Racing heart
- Tight chest
- Tense shoulders or neck
- Flushed face
- Spinning thoughts
- Shutting down
And when that alarm is blaring, your inner CEO (she’s the wise, thoughtful, values-led part of you) can get pushed out of the room.
*Nervous system regulation helps you communicate with that inner Security Guard.*
It helps you send the message: “I hear you. I know you’re trying to protect me. And we are safe enough to navigate this thoughtfully.”
Without nervous system regulation, you might understand what needs to change, but still feel stuck and unable to take action. Maybe you want to:
- Speak up, but you freeze instead
- Set a boundary, but end up giving in (again)
- Receive feedback like a calm, composed professional, but end up spiraling afterward
- Stop caring so much about what other people think, but your body reacts as if their disapproval is a real threat
If you’re experiencing any of this, please know that there’s nothing wrong with you. These are simply nervous system responses that are normal (*and* that you can learn to regulate, so you can get unstuck and move forward).
Inside my 1:1 coaching program, The Self-Confidence Edit, nervous system regulation is an integral part of the entire process. It supports the thought work, belief work, perspective shifts, and the real-life practice of showing up more confidently at work.
When your nervous system feels more regulated, your inner CEO has a much better chance of staying in the room and making decisions about how you navigate and respond to feedback and opinions.
Imagine what your workdays would be like if you could:
- Respond instead of react
- Pause before assuming the worst
- Hear feedback without collapsing into self-doubt or self-criticism
- Make decisions from your values instead of fear
- Let other people have opinions without treating every opinion like an emergency that you have to fix
If any of that feels too far out of reach, please know that my heart goes out to you. That can feel like a really big uphill battle. Please also know, though, that nervous system regulation may be the piece that’s been missing for you the entire time.
“Shouldn’t I care at least a little bit about what people at work think of me?”
Yes! For sure.
The point of ALL of this is not to completely stop caring about what anyone thinks… that would just be swinging from one extreme to another.
Truthfully, you probably DO want to:
- Care about how you impact people
- Be open to useful feedback
- Build trust, communicate well, and maintain healthy professional relationships
All of that is totally fine and healthy. Issues arise, though, when people’s thoughts and opinions (or what you think they might think) become the main filter for your choices.
- The real ideal is to strike a healthy balance. That looks like:
- Having a strong self-perception, so your sense of worth is not constantly up for debate
- Building your capacity to navigate the (resilient) discomfort of criticism, feedback, or disapproval
- Creating an intentional, curated perspective on what other people think of you, whose feedback you want to weigh heavily, and whose opinions don’t need to take up so much space in your mind
The end goal isn’t to go from “I care way too much” to “I don’t care at all.” Rather, it’s to navigate nuance effectively (both internally and externally) so you can encounter feedback (even when it stings) and move forward in a way that serves you.
Ultimately, you can care about other people’s thoughts without being controlled by them.
The beautiful thing about this work is that you don’t have to become someone who doesn’t care at all.
Instead, you become someone who cares with discernment.
You can care less without becoming careless
When you stop worrying so much about what your co-workers think, work starts to feel different. You:
- Gain more mental space
- Stop spending so much energy replaying conversations, editing yourself in real time, or trying to prevent every possible negative reaction
- Make decisions with more self-confidence
- Share your ideas more clearly and more often
- Stop softening or suppressing your opinions just to avoid criticism
- Protect your time and energy more honestly
…And on a macro level, you begin to measure your choices against your own goals, values, and guiding principles, instead of constantly trying to appease everyone around you.
To get there, start with these 4 shifts:
- Clean up your own thinking
- Learn how to navigate the discomfort of words or opinions that sting
- Create a personal framework for responding to people’s opinions
- Regulate your nervous system so your inner CEO can stay in the room
These shifts take practice, but they are absolutely possible.
As you build them, you become less dependent on external approval and more rooted in your own self-trust, your self-confidence grows, and your leadership skills blossom.
Your work starts to feel less like a performance to keep everyone happy, and more like a real expression of who you are and what you’re capable of contributing.
Ready to stop letting other people’s opinions run the show?
If you’re ready to stop caring so much about what your co-workers think and start building the kind of self-confidence that helps you lead, speak up, set boundaries, and trust yourself at work, I’d love to support you.
Schedule a free coaching consultation to discuss becoming a 1:1 client in my highly personalized coaching program, The Self-Confidence Edit. Visit https://www.amyschield.com/book to get on my calendar.
