Is Criticism & Judgement From Others Holding You Back?

So often we hold ourselves back because we're afraid of what other people might say or think. We're worried about their disapproval. We don't want to be criticised or humiliated.

This has been a major recurring theme in my life, and I’ve noticed it at work in the lives of many other musicians, artists, and creatives. I think this is because we are inherently very sensitive people.

We talk ourselves out of doing things that we really want to avoid being judged by others.

I'm not talking about doing anything sketchy, unethical, manipulative, abusive, or illegal.

I'm talking about doing those things which will move you towards your dreams and goals that you might feel some resistance to doing because you’re afraid of what other people will think or say.

This is evolutionarily hard-wired into us. We evolved as social animals in small groups of about 100-150 people. There was safety in numbers to avoid being picked off by predators and other rival tribes. If you were ostracised from the group, your life was literally at risk. Your physical safety and survival depended on being a part of your tribe and not incurring their disapproval and subsequent ejection from the group.

Fast forward to today. We still have that wiring, but our environment has changed dramatically. In our modern urban environment, our survival no longer depends on being a part of a tribe. So there was and still is a positive intention behind that biological impulse to avoid being marginalised by our tribe. It's just that because the context has changed, the environment that we live in has changed, that that impulse no longer serves us by protecting us and ensuring our physical survival. Now it actually harms us because it holds us back from doing the things we need to do to move forward in our lives.

The first thing is to acknowledge that this impulse towards not doing things that court criticism, negative judgement, or humiliation, and thus becoming ostracised and marginalised, developed as an evolutionary adaptation with the positive intention of ensuring our survival.

The second thing is that if you want to lead an extraordinary life, you will have to do things that other people won't understand or agree with or approve of.

If other people don't understand you or think you're not normal, wear that as a badge of honour. Take that as a sign that you're on the right track.

You don't want to be normal. Normal people don't lead extraordinary lives.

Jim Rohn said, “If you are unwilling to risk the unusual, you will have to settle for the ordinary.”

The people who might criticise you or disapprove of you are unconsciously fighting for their own smallness in a multitude of subtle ways every day. And they're fighting for your smallness too.

Earl Nightingale said, “Most people tiptoe their way through life, hoping they make it safely to death.”

Relying on the opinions or judgements of these people as a barometer for your decisions and actions is going to steer you in the wrong direction. It's going to hold you back from creating the life of your dreams.

When we're trying to go to the next level in our lives, we have to remember that the next level is a different world.

When you're at a particular level, you'll have a paradigm, values, and an identity particular to that level. When you go up a level, your paradigm, values, and your identity change. The meaning of things change. The way you look at the world changes. Reality looks different and you have different reasons for doing things.

And so, it's a big mistake to try to use our current level thinking to understand the next level, because the next level is a different world with different rules and different values.

This is another aspect of what happens when people criticise you or judge you. How could they possibly understand what you're trying to do? They're not on your path. They haven't been exposed to the experiences and the ideas that you have. So they're not qualified to make judgements about you or what you're doing. You're operating from a higher-level perspective than they are. That doesn't mean that you should be arrogant or judge them or make them wrong for their less-evolved perspectives. If you had been through their life experiences, you would probably think and act exactly like they do.

But it does mean that you don't have to listen to their criticisms or judgements about your own decisions and actions. You can have confidence that their opinions have no validity, that their current-level thinking isn't sufficient to comprehend the next level that you're going to. They just feel threatened by you because you're taking steps towards a bigger life while they're fighting for their smallness.

Stay in your own lane. Ultimately, it's more important to please yourself than to try to please everyone else. You're not going to feel fulfilled by putting off your dreams just to please the people who might criticise you.

Ultimately, it's not your responsibility to manage the expectations or the opinions of others. Your responsibility is to manage and regulate your own emotional and mental state so you can consistently do the things that will move you forward and create the life you dream of.