Chapter 6

People Don't Think about You as Much as You Think They Do

People are inherently narcissists. For now, we are all trapped in this one carbon‐based body. (This should all the changing by 2050 with the coming of singularity, thank you very much, AI.) This means that each of us experiences the world through only one limited viewpoint. Our own.

It really does not matter how empathetic a person is or how considerate they are or how open to other perspectives a person may be. While all of those are admirable traits, it still does not change the fact that we can only perceive the world within our own brain. Life is our own film where we have a starring role and everybody else is a supporting character, at best.

Cynical? I don't think so. Clearly we need to think about ourselves more than anyone else on a day‐to‐day basis to actually stay alive. If we don't eat and drink and take all the other necessary steps as a human being on a regular basis, we will cease to exist. Fact, not opinion. We spend the majority of our time thinking about ourselves and what is necessary to do in order to, at the very least, function and, at the very best, be happy and healthy and thrive. If we accept that each person thinks mostly about his or her own self then we can infer that everyone else is thinking very little about us. And that is a liberating thing.

Comedians live and die by what people think about them. The reason that public speaking is consistently in the top three of the list of fears of human beings is because the fear of being humiliated in front of groups is a deep‐seated primal emotion. A long time ago, being singled out and humiliated in front of your tribe or your village had very real consequences.

Being banished or burned at the stake or drowned as a witch were not emotional scars. They were very real and dangerous outcomes for people who were perceived as different. If you said to your friend in the Middle Ages, “Hey, dude, the king is full of shit, and I'm going to gather everybody at the village green and let them know all about it,” your friend would likely reply, “Are you sure you want to do that? I mean, I don't disagree, but you might want to be careful about what you're saying.”

So you go ahead and invite all of your friends and family to the village green to hear your thoughts on the king and why he is such a dink. A bunch of them show up out of a sense of obligation (“I'll go this one time and hopefully he will stop asking me to come see his shows”), while others are curious to hear what you have to say, and still others are hoping to see some kind of ox‐drawn cart wreck (no trains, yet).

You really get going and you are just nailing the king. The guy is an idiot, doesn't care about the little people, is surrounded by sycophants, is fat, and can't sire a male heir. You know, classic “king” material. The audience is mostly with you, laughing and having a grand old time. Everybody but those two dudes standing in the front wearing long robes and pointy hats with their arms crossed. They don't seem to be digging your shtick. “Oh well, you can't please everybody,” you think to yourself, and join up with your buddies at the local pub for an ale or two after the show.

Two days later you are in the castle dungeon being stretched on the rack as you confess to being possessed by evil spirits who are out to destroy the king.

Not a pleasant outcome for separating yourself from the crowd. In these times, caring about what other people thought of us was actually something that was important in terms of keeping ourselves alive. That feeling still exists in our brains today, but the physical danger is not nearly the same (except, of course, in countries that do not have freedom of speech, or on social media).

A comedian on stage will always have a residue of that primal fear. And while they learn to overcome and suppress it, there will always be the smallest kernel of fear or concern about the audience and whether or not they liked the show. I don't care how ballsy or confident a performer may be, somewhere deep in their lizard brains is a worry that the audience won't like them and that someone in that audience is going to report them to the king, and they'll end up being drawn and quartered.

The reality is that the audience really does not give nearly as much of a shit about the performer as the performer thinks they do. I have been performing, directing, or producing live comedy for over 20 years. Almost all audiences are the same in terms of how they respond to the performance. In general when people come out and see a good show their response is, “Hey, that was pretty funny, let's go out and get some drinks!” And when they see a bad show, their general response is,” Hey, that was pretty bad, let's go out and get some drinks!”

It just doesn't matter to them the way it does to the performer. Good show or bad, the audience is quickly moving on with their lives, and what you did on the stage has very little impact not only on their life but in the immediate future of what they plan to do. They just aren't thinking about you as a performer the same way you think they are.

This, more than anything, is what good performers and public speakers and iconoclasts who do original things have mastered. The ability to not give a shit about what others think about them. And it is a relatively easy thing to do once we get in our heads that they are not thinking about us nearly as much as we think they are.

What that means for anybody who wants to do their own thing and blaze their own path is that we can and should ignore the concept of what other people think about us. Think about it like this; how much of your day is spent thinking about how stupid or awesome someone else is? Do you spend hours on end dissecting the words thoughts or actions of someone else? I highly doubt it.

You probably had passing thoughts regarding different people, but you most likely quickly moved on to more important thoughts like “Should I get an Italian sub with extra hots for lunch today, or get a healthy green smoothie?” Since we know that other people spend a very small amount of their own personal time thinking about us, we therefore do not need to invest any of our own time thinking about what others think about us. It is a waste of time and, more important, erodes our self‐confidence, stopping us from pursuing the things we want to do.

The fact that everybody is pretty much self‐absorbed and mostly focusing on themselves is liberating. If we accept this fact, then it allows you to do whatever it is that strikes your fancy. By recognizing that your actions or ideas are not at the center of anybody else's concerns, you are freed up to explore your own pursuits. Other people no longer have power over how you approach creating new work. Now we can quickly move past the negative voices and self‐doubt that will always creep into our heads.

There are plenty of ways to practice not giving a shit about what people think. What I have found helpful is to be declarative in anything that I'm doing. In improv we are trained to make declarative statements wherever possible. This helps drive the action in the scene and also to make very clear to our scene partner as well as the audience what we are trying to achieve.

Strong declarative statements help narrow and control the narrative. Where the possibilities can lead are endless in improv – to have a coherent scene we have to carve away the other possibilities and eventually settle on an agreed subject.

For example, a general statement could be “What do you want to do?” While this kind of open‐ended question can lead to thousands of different responses, it also gives the power of the narrative over to the other actor, who has to respond. Oftentimes the responding actor assumes the actor who initiated the dialogue has something in mind and responds with something like, “I don't know, what do you want to do?” This is just about as bad a beginning to an improv scene as you can get. Vague statements with no actions being taken by anyone.

This is what a declarative statement would look like: “Let's grab a coffee at Dunk's.” This is a strong statement that gives the other actor and the audience clear understanding of the first actor's intent. Actor number 2 now just needs to respond one way or the other and does not have to guess what actor number 1 wants or is thinking.

Easy enough to do on stage, but what does that look like in real life? If we are not caring about what other people think, making declarative statements allows the individual to control the narrative of the conversation and clarifies how they feel about something without ever having to be asked. For example, imagine this conversation:

Besides discovering that Dan is a super‐negative turd of a friend, it is easy to see how criticism and self‐doubt could creep into John's thought processes as to whether he should or shouldn't take a yoga class. The same conversation using declarative statements looks like this:

I have often found that making a strong declarative statement along the lines of “So, I'm doing X now,” tends to stop other people from offering overly negative judgments about what it is I'm doing. It is easy for people to point out why you shouldn't begin something, but it is much more difficult for people to tell you why you should stop doing something, especially if you follow up with the reason why you like doing it. Even the biggest blowhard tends to not want to crush someone else's good vibes.

The declarative statement takes the power of judgment away from the responder. Once you state what it is you are doing, most people tend to shrug their shoulders and think to themselves,” I guess she is doing that now.” They may approve or disapprove, but ultimately if they see that you are already committed, they tend to move on to other subjects.

Strong declarative statements don't require a ton of follow‐up explanations. They lay out why you are doing something or why you feel a certain way.

Why is Dan such a negative twit? He just brings everybody down and clearly has a drinking problem. From a functional standpoint, declarative statements shut down negative statements and send the message that you are not overly interested about how the other person feels about what you are doing. By practicing this technique you start to develop somewhere in your brain the ability to care less and less about what people think. This in turn removes one of the biggest obstacles to creating or being original thinker.

Another fun little technique that you can practice is responding to negative thoughts or opinions with two simple words, “Thank you.”

Saying “Thank you” to a negative statement completely disarms the person who is making it. It is also a confident but not super‐aggressive way to demonstrate that you do not give a shit about what the other person thinks and it really doesn't bother you that they don't agree with you. For example:

Kira is now confused and knocked off balance. She just insulted Ashley and didn't get anywhere near the response that she was expecting. Kira could come back with another insulting remark and Ashley can continue to respond with things like “Thank you, I appreciate it.” Very quickly, Kira will stop offering these negative critiques and move on because it will quickly become apparent that Ashley is not affected by Kira's opinion and has no interest in having a discussion.

It is so simple and effective and very clearly communicates that you do not need someone else's validation of your own thoughts and ideas. The conversation will quickly shift on to other things, most likely revolving around Kira's life and problems, because ultimately most people just want to talk about themselves.

What has become harder in today's day and age is the explosion of social media and other forums where individuals can critique you. Because those opinions stay online, they feel all the more real and powerful. There are millions of digital opinion warriors ready to tear down anyone for anything at anytime.

One response would be: “Stay off and away from any sites and forums that have that kind of toxic culture. It is a world you can actively choose not to be in if it is causing you any kind of stress.” I truly believe this. You would not go to a gym if every time you went in, everyone started to tell you that you are fat and out of shape. You would never go to a movie theater if as soon as you bought tickets to a movie, people in the lobby starting shouting at you about what an idiot you are for choosing that film. Why the hell would anyone subject themselves to the same kind of treatment online?

Of course social media and digital discourse is never going away, so basically becoming an Internet Hermit is not really a viable choice for most of us. The good thing about the internet and social media is that, just like discussions in the biological world, people mostly care about themselves and quickly move on to other things if they are not engaged.

The only person whose opinion truly matters in regards to what you are creating is your own. At least in the initial phases. Sure, at some point, if you've created material for public consumption, other people's opinions will matter in the moment. But even then, whether they deem what you created is good or bad, they will look at each other and say, “Hey, you want to go grab some drinks?”