413. You're not for everyone? GOOD!

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Speaker 1: Hello everybody. I'm Jemma Spake and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties, the podcast where we talk through the biggest changes, moments, and transitions of our twenties and what they mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to the podcast. It is so great to have you here back for another episode. Before we get into it, I want to remind you all that this episode of the podcast, and so many others are now available on Netflix, not just in the US, not just in Canada, but in the UK, in Australia, in Germany, in Malaysia, in South Africa, just to name a few. So if you are a fan of watching a podcast as you listen to it, this is your chance. You can go and watch a video episode of the podcast right now, right this very second, just by searching the Psychology of Your Twenties on your Netflix app. Go ahead, give it a go, see what all the fuss is about, and I sincerely hope that you enjoy it. Today we are talking about one of the greatest freedoms I think we can experience as human beings. Realizing that not everyone will like you and simply no longer caring what a beautiful thing. I truly think the second chapter of life begins when you come to understand that you cannot be liked by everyone, and truly that is in fact a privilege. It is a privilege for that to be the case. Like most of us, I think I grew up believing that there was a direct correlation between my happiness and the more people who liked me, The more people who found me pleasant, enjoyable, interesting, fun to be around, the more fulfilled that would be. All of these compulsions emerge from that belief system that probably and definitely have made me actually a lot less happy. They've probably also made me a worse friend. I think they've made me a worse daughter, sister, person. The more you experience life, and again I'm still really at the beginning like most of you are, but I think slowly, the more you experience life, the more you realize that trying to force yourself into a version that everyone finds pleasing is actually going to create so much more dissatisfaction and self alienation than if you just truly accepted that some people aren't gonna like you and that's just that. So that is what I want to dissect today why we find ourselves begging for the approval of others even when we know it's not in our best interests, What you lose when you do so, and what you gain when you decide and in fact practice and rehearse this idea, in this principle that not everybody has to like you, and why you know, finally, I think that that probably means you're doing something right. Because this might be a controversial take, but I genuinely think that people who are liked by everyone are rather boring and that is not you. That is certainly not you. So if you can embrace like the power of being disliked and what that means to your identity and what that says about your character, I think that you will become a much more interesting, fun and wonderful human being. So that is what we are going to discuss today without further ado, Let's get into it. So to begin with a very simple principle and a very simple understanding, why do we feel the need to be liked so deeply by absolutely everyone when we know that that is in fact probably not going to happen. The most simple explanation is that we are and have always been safest in a group. I know that this explanation has been done a million times over. But when we can rely upon others around us to support our individual needs because they like us, because they see us as one of them, because there is reciprocity, we are better primed to survive in the long run and to be fulfilled. There is this evolutionary instinctual drive to return back to the herd for better and for worse, and that has been embedded in us since the very beginning because the herd, the herd represents a strong system that we can predict, a system where we feel least susceptible to threats and also the danger emotionally, physically, mentally of having to go at things alone. So much of our behavior as humans is determined by our desire to attach and our desire to be liked. And anybody who says otherwise, anybody who says they don't care, who says they are completely unaffected by other's opinions, are lying because to feel that way would be to deny the very nature of your huge mannerly and what it means to be human. We know this is a fundamental drive. We know the desire to be liked is a fundamental drive because we feel it when it's not met. Specifically, when we don't feel accepted, we feel lonely, and loneliness sits parallel to things like hunger and thirst and tiredness. It is an emotion, yes, but it is also a biological sign that something we need for functioning, in this case, social acceptance is not being met. I'm sure you've all heard this before, but loneliness, rejection, not feeling socially included, affects your body in ways in almost identical ways to true physical, tangible pain. We have to remember pain is not felt in the body, it is felt in the mind. When you scrape your knee, the part of you that goes out that hurts, let's deal with that, is not actually your knee. It is your brain that's interpreting and feeling the sensation that is arriving from the neurons in your knee. Those same internal systems that are happening in your mind are equally activated by things like loneliness, meaning that not feeling liked is literally the equivalent of being physically wounded. Your brain cannot tell the difference the feelings you are having they're not dramatic. The desire to be liked but everybody is not dramatic. It is backed by science. This is why we develop people pleasing tendencies and why we try and chameleon ourselves for everyone we meet or everybody we engage with. We are essentially trying to ensure that, no matter what, we won't be left out in the cold. If we are for everyone, there will never be There will be no shortage of people who will like us, who will be our friend, who will support us, who will think of us. And that feels like insurance, because if the people we are currently aligned with suddenly drop us, the fact that we are liked by everybody, the fact that we have these backups feels significant and feels safe and reduces the likelihood in our mind of being ostracized. What's also interesting is that our tendency to worry about what other people think is also partly because we actually overestimate how much other people think about us, and we overestimate that because centering other people's opinions more strongly allows us to preempt again this deep social threat of being rejected. Now, this phenomena of believing that everybody at all times is thinking only about you has a name. It's a name we've mentioned on the podcast before. It's called the spotlight effect. Essentially, our mind believes there is this big, giant light shining down on everything that we're doing, everything that we are doing wrong, everything that we're doing right, every flow or We can't help but overvalue our role in other people's lives and think of ourselves as more significant. You know, we imagine again this spotlight following us around everywhere, bringing attention to everything we'd rather conceal. The reason being, the reason why we have this effect is that because we are the main character right in our own lives, the universe revolves around us, and therefore, when we attempt to slip into the minds of others to evaluate how they're seeing us, we think they must be seeing us as we see ourselves, which is at the center of everything, all our flaws laid out, all of our mistakes clear to everyone as they are to us. We give them, We give them the site that we have over ourselves, and this obviously creates a weird panic. You know. Researchers have found and have examined that this spotlight effect is one of the main things that triggers obsessive self monitoring and self policing as a reaction to this heightened sense of insecurity that everybody must know the big secrets about us, and everybody must be thinking about us. The other thing that researchers reveal is that the spotlight effect again is actually real only for us. Nobody is thinking about you that much. There have been so many studies that show I think it's like ninety percent of people's daily thoughts are about themselves, and yet rationally we can't see through that. Let's talk about what we lose when we try to be for everyone. We've kind of spoken about why it is we are so eager to be in every single person's pocket and every single person's group or peripheral vision or in their lives. What is the cost of this? What does this do to our lives and to our attention spans and to our time. Firstly, the biggest thing that comes needing to be liked by everybody is that you risk losing a coherent sense of self or any stable core that you may have because you've panned it to everybody else's tastes. If we are constantly becoming an emotional social physical version of ourselves that isn't really us to fit in with what we think others will like. How do we know who we really are if that thing is constantly changing. Being individual requires having strong preferences, right. It requires you to really like some things, but also really dislike other things. It requires you to really care about certain events or situations and not care about other things as much. That means you will, naturally, because of those preferences and passions, become aligned or misaligned with certain people who just simply don't think the same way as you. And for some people that misalignment can breed dislike. That dislike That opposition is often a good thing. It is a sign that you have strong enough feelings and know yourself well enough for somebody with equally strong feelings to be able to identify that you think strongly and to not agree with you. That disagreement and maybe even that dislike, if it gets to that level at times, can only occur because you had some skin in the game and because you possessed passion. If you lose that passion, yes, you may gain likability because you're suddenly, you know, palatable to everyone, you also lose yourself in the process because you stand for and care for nothing. Being liked by everyone requires a level of compromise and flexibility that again only somebody who has no stable center can offer or can do. Don't let that be you. Studies are found as well that although more people may like you if you pander and desire to be liked by them, their actual level like of like and how much they like you and their level of respect for you is actually lower. So basically, what these studies are finding is that you might sit at fifty percent with everyone, but you never sit at one hundred percent with anyone. You know, there's never going to be somebody who fully is like, I really like that person, because you're too neutral for people to have an opinion about you. Of course, there's definitely exceptions to this, you know, it's only natural that we try and be a different version of ourselves at work, have a good working relationship with our colleagues to make sure that we get the promotion, or like we don't ruffle any feathers. We might make the effort to like be liked by somebody if it helps us out socially, or even if we want to impress them, like on our first date with a new friend, with a friend's first date or new partner. But pick your people, really pick your people, and investigate why you feel the need to be different to who you are to be liked and how long that masquerade and how long that you know pretending can actually truly last if this person ends up being integral to your life, because eventually a mask, your mask is going to slip. I think this really segues into the second thing we lose when we are liked by everybody, which is that we never actually find our people. We never find those people who are one hundred percent for us. Forcing a persona that is liked by everyone means that the people who would genuinely like you for who you are cannot find you underneath all this other crap that you've put on top. And again, it's not that you're doing it to be a manipulative Maybe it's you're doing it to survive or because you're quite socially anxious, but it is still a distraction. This fake version of you is still distracting. You become less honest, less natural, less you, and therefore you aren't actually rewarded with those deep and meaningful relationships there was a study from two thousand and four that showed that in the context of romantic relationships especially, people know when you are being inauthentic, and it becomes a barrier for closeness because true intimacy, we know this requires vulnerability and the core foundation. The only way that you can be vulnerable is if you are authentic. Otherwise your vulnerability has nothing to draw from. I think we all know this. But the more you hustle for approval, the less that is you are with yourself, and the less at ease other people will be with you because they can sense the tension, They can sense that something untrue is behind the way you speak. They might notice you contradicting yourself in front of a different friend. They might even notice you lying people when somebody. You make somebody feel manipulated or as if they're being tricked. They don't want to be They don't want to be your friend. They don't want to be your friend, they don't want to date you. And so the friendships that would actually suit us we don't get access to, and the friendships that we are left with often with people who are probably doing the exact same thing to us, or they match a specific version of us that we have created and paper masched for that one specific person. Meaning you end up with people that you may not even like and actually have nothing organically in common with, and that in itself is so can get so boring and tiring. Again, I don't want to tell you to not go out there and make an effort to make friends, but examine why it is that the people we often like the least, or who show the most disdain or boredom with us in some ways seemingly become those we try to impress the most, Like, why does that happen? I don't know if you've noticed this. It's a real phenomena. The exclusivity they hold, the approval we feel the need to gain from them, becomes intoxicating, psychologically intoxicating, and it becomes this prize we're so fixated on that we forget that there are people out there who would love us, regardless of who we are or what value we had to them. The best example of this phenomenon, or like that stereotype is like the in group or the in crowd. Like at high school, I feel like every single school had one often much of what made them seem so popular and quite frankly powerful, and what made us want to be them is the fact that they got to choose who was and wasn't allowed into their group. They leveraged very much unconsciously the psychological power of scarcity and the fact that their approval and belonging to their group is not for everyone. They Literally the reason being friends with these people is so attractive is because you know that not everybody can do it. Literally, there have been so many papers on this that show exclusivity and this not everyone can have it feeling drive people to do very irrational things. That's been examined, mostly like in an economic context. So think like ermez bags, think luxury goods, think trending products, think like Lebuboos are a great example of how scarcity drives people to do irrational things. It also applies to relationships. It also applies to our social lives as well. You know. At the same time, just to use that high school example again, I'd also wager that the older you get, the more you realize that you actually don't really respect those people today as an adult as much as you thought you did when you were at school, and you realize the embarrassing things you maybe did to impress them when for what reason. I remember there was this guy I knew at college who, for whatever reason, I'm sure he had a reason. He probably did have his reasons, but he didn't like me very much, and he made it very very very well known that he is not a fan of me, and it made me feel I distinctly remember feeling like I was like five years old again, and because of his obvious disdain, like I was constantly then trying to impress him, trying to like prove that he should like me. And honestly, I can look back at that now and be like, that made me look really pathetic, but also it made me even more stressed and anxious, which probably only increased, I don't know, increased the severity of the traits that I possessed that he didn't like originally. This kind of brings me to the final cost of trying to be universally liked. It's just plain exhausting, Like it's just so tiring. The psychological toll of pretending is like so enormous. On top of everything else that you are doing right now, to just exist, you then have to monitor like every word, every action, every step you take and that puts you into a state of chronic hypervigilance, draining your cognitive resources, draining your energy, fragmenting your sense of self. Or for somebody who probably doesn't even like you to begin with and doesn't appreciate any of the psychological stuff you're putting yourself through. You pay the cost and they don't even appreciate the reward. That's what's really happening when we try and cater to the people who seem to have the greatest level of dislike for us. Science, the research, of course, you guys know it backs this up. A study from twenty twenty five investigated whether people pleasing is linked to poor mental health. They looked at over two thousand university students. These university students were asked to basically rate how to kind of yeah, say, how many approval seeking thoughts, behaviors and emotions they probably experienced on a day to day basis, And then they also gave them this test that measured their personal well being, so how happy they were, how fulfilled they were, how at peace they were. I feel like, you guys probably know what the results are, but the results, just to make it very obvious, showed that the higher the level of people pleasing, the lower the psychological well being, and actually the greater the loneliness, the more emotional distress. The people who were working the hardest to have the most people like them were the loneliest participants with strong people pleasing tendencies also had the worst mental health profiles overall. And obviously that's a bi directional relationship, right, but it does show how psychologically harmful it is to be in the state of constantly needing to be light. Being everyone's favorite person doesn't work if you have no time for yourself. And often we feel so much resentment, exhaustion, frustration that we don't even get the benefit from belonging any ways because we're so stressed. And eventually, you know, you realize it's pointless. Because the thing is someone is always going to dislike you. There's literally nothing you can do about it. You could do everything in the world. You could spend millions of dollars on this person, You could fulfill the greatest wishes. Their ability to like you is just not They just can't do it. There's a social framework that's known as the twenty five percent rule. My friends Sal and Al shared this with me when I was like doing a live show with them, and it states that basically, no matter how kind, charming, talented you are, twenty five percent of people will never be convinced into liking you. And the breakdown is basically like this. There are twenty five percent of people will always like you, have always liked you, and always will you could they will always be in your team. Twenty five percent of people will maybe like you initially but may change their mind and not like you. Twenty five percent of people won't like you initially but may change their mind and have a different impression. And then there's that twenty five percent of people who, irrespective of what you do, will not like you for whatever reason. That twenty five percent is a fact of life. They're never going to budge to expand on this. Bob Sutton, a professor of management science at Stanford, talks about this thing called the ninety ten rule. You should strive to have ninety percent of people like you and ten percent of people not the fact that ten percent of people dislike you, and his words, in his eyes, is literal cause for celebration. That is a sign that you are doing something extremely right, because no one dislikes somebody who is a fensitter. Nobody dislikes somebody who is neutral, doing nothing and without passion. They dislike people. They dislike people who have ambition, desires, and who put themselves out there. Logic follows, nobody's going to dislike you if there is not a part of you that it is out there and chasing things and like really investing in yourself, because there's something inherent in that they that they dislike. Right, All too often, our preoccupation with needing to convince the twenty five percent, or needing to convince the ten percent, as mister Job was saying to us, holds us back. That's what he's saying. He's saying, if you had one hundred percent of people like you, you are not achieving your full potential. When we accept that, like again, this second door we never knew existed is opened, and suddenly you step into this whole new universe that was running parallel to the one you were previously in, where everything's just a lot easier. It's just a lot easier, and you're probably a nicer and kinder and happier person as well. So how do we shift into that universe? How do we shift into that way of being. Well, I'm never going to leave you guys hanging. You know, I have my tips, you know, I have my little list of advice, my psychological guide, which I'm going to provide to you after this short break. Accepting that people don't like you is basically just to accept I think, a much deeper truth in life, which is that you can't control everything, and you waste precious time trying, time that you could be using to do side quests to make your visions into reality, to be like whoever the fuck you want to be. A study from twenty eighteen show that people who accept difficult mental experiences like these ones, like that of being disliked rejected, they actually end up achieving a greater level of psychological health, a greater level of social enlightenment, and they typically have more friends because this acceptance helps them change the narrative around why this is happening to them to be something that is more neutral. Basically, they stop searching for a personal explanation for everybody else's problem with them, and they realize that this is a universal truth of being human. Now, obviously some of these people probably should do some digging, but we're talking about the people who are falling in that twenty five to ten percent of just like the general population, there's like some people who don't like them. They've tried to investigate, and then they've realized enough people like me that it's probably not a me problem, and they've come to accept the fact. Again, we're not talking about people who have like the majority of people have problems with them and they're like, I'm just more free if I don't think about it. We need some balance here. Itshiro Kishimi wrote the book The Courage to Be Disliked. He says, I think this is the perfect way to succinctly tie it all up. The courage to be happy needs to include the courage to be disliked. When you gain that courage, your interpersonal relationships suddenly feel so much lighter. So here is how we're going to do it. Here is how we're going to find that acceptance for the thing and this specific thing we can't control. Firstly, something for you to just think about every now and again. Do you like everybody? Do you? Can you honestly say everybody in the world is your favorite person that you could like? Can you think of nobody you don't just like No, and is that necessarily their problem that you don't like them? Also, No, this is a weird exercise, But sometimes I think about the people I don't necessarily like, and I force myself to consider something about them that other people would find positive, to remind myself that everybody has redeeming qualities, including myself, including the people I don't like, and that really gives me a lot of freedom and just accepting that again, sometimes it's not about me and it's not about them. Secondly, just like you don't have to change your opinion of those people, despite what may be good about them or not, others don't necessarily have to change their opinion of you because we're not owed an explanation for why somebody does or doesn't approve of us. If you seriously want to be liked by everybody, I think the logic follows that you have to like everybody back. And is that something that you're willing to do. Probably not. I also think it's important to keep in mind the cost of being liked by everybody, and that's like at the list we've already given right this self alienation, The somewhat counterintuitive truth that being liked by everyone actually means you have fewer good friendships. The time that you lose, the trust that you lose, especially the time that you spend being obsessive, like are you willing to pay that cost? Is that worth it to you to spend precious time on earth worrying about those things? Or would you rather invest it in something more fruitful. Thirdly, recognize the way that your fear of being disliked mirrors the things you dislike about yourself and the things that you unconsciously haven't fully accepted yet. Psychologists sometimes refer to this as projection. It's basically a defense mechanism first identified by like Freud in psychodynamic theory, where we attribute to others the very traits we feel insecure about within ourselves. If you're deeply afraid that somebody will find you too much, too quiet, awkward, unlikable, or if you see all those things in them, it's often because on some level you actually believe that about yourself. Focusing on that route insecurity will remove the need for the approval you crave because you become comfortable with those things maybe being true. Maybe they are true about you, maybe you are kind of loud or kind of sensitive or maybe not, but whatever the outcome, you're not going to care about it anyways. That's just part of who you are. Next, I would also say change the questions you bring to a social situation to be in your favor. Basically, instead of constantly asking do they like me? Do they think I'm cool? Do they think I'm attractive? Do they think I'm interesting? Be focused on and I know it's cliche, but like do you like them? Especially for dating? Like do you like them? This first really requires interrogating your fears and anxieties a little bit about why their feelings and opinion, Why does their opinion matter more than yours? Where did that come from? Firstly, where did that start that your opinion is lower than possibly a complete stranger? And link it back to what frightens you the most about somebody not liking you? Is it that it reminds you of when you felt left out at school and you never wanted to be in that situation again. Are you worried that you'll be lonely or that you'll die alone, or that you'll be abandoned because of a past experience that's still showing up in your day to day life Can you think of their time or a time where this wound was first opened, and then can you find a way to possibly imagine being okay if that situation were to occur, if the worst case scenario of rejection, being ostracized, being hated were to worker, can you picture yourself being still okay? I think it's important to remind ourselves we are so much more capable, and that our terrible feelings and terrible imaginations and hypotheticals never come true in the way we think they will. And you're going to be so much more fulfilled leaving a social situation if you have enjoyed yourself rather than if you have constantly curtailed your behavior so that you're enjoyable to others because you got to just it was just easier, it was lighter. You can't feel embarrassed if you don't ask yourself the question of did I do anything embarrassing? Like do you know what I mean? Asking yourself instead questions of like was I genuine? Did I have my own approval? Am I? Am I caring about what other people are saying? Am I being truthful? Am I? Having fun shapes the experience so that you are on the lookout for situations and people and moments that are going to create more of that within you. I think it's also worth remembering, and this is probably the biggest thing of all. People are responsible for their own emotions the way that you are responsible for your own. You don't have to manage their discomfort for them. You don't have to manage their negative feelings, their upsets, their annoyances at you for them. Like those, you don't have to fix every single negative feeling, especially if it's about you. It becomes your responsibility when they bring it up when they're honest with you, not when they're being passive aggressive, not when they're trying to manipulate or shift your mood for their benefit. Like their adults, they can feel annoyed at you, frustrated at you, they cannot like you, and that actually is none of your business and also not your responsibility. They're an adult. They should know by now how to regulate feelings about other people that have nothing to actually do with that person. A final internal strategy I like to do is also finding a way to separate your worth from your likability, and a very easy way to do this is literally and a therapist told me about this once is literally, sit down, make a list of all the things that would still be true and would remain true if suddenly the whole world stopped liking you, if the whole world yet tomorrow decided we don't like this person. What anchors you beyond people's opinions? For example, even if the world decided that you were the worst person, you would still be kind to animals, wouldn't you. You would still be curious about things that you didn't know about. You would still be a creative person regardless of whether people liked you or not. You would still be a good friend. You would still notice the small things. You would still be a great cook. You would still take great care of your body. You would still be a hard worker, You would still think deeply. These things would remain because they are a part of you, more than whether somebody likes those parts of you. And the list could go on and on and on. This is basically, like to be fair, It's just a form of positive affirmation. We know from study after stuff that thinking good things about ourselves is not arrogance. It's self protection, and it's expansive. Literally, other people's opinions may impact us and can impact us obviously, that's why we're talking about it, but only if we let them kind of like breach the gates of our self esteem affirmations about our own likability that becomes self truth. Like I think of them like guards. They're like the lookouts that are able to identify somebody else's negative thoughts about us before they reach the gates and are able to discard and get rid of them and realize, like, those thoughts aren't that's that's not one of ours. That shouldn't be here, because our thoughts and our belief in ourself is stronger. So this this is an intro guide into how we're going to embrace not being for everybody, and I sincerely hope that you do as early as possible and listen, Like I'm still figuring it out, and I still get really upset anytime I hear a mutual friend or you know, a friend of a friend doesn't like me. Had that happen the other day and I was I lost sleep over it. I still at times pander to people I shouldn't. I get consumed by me in comment, But I think compared to where I was five years ago, I'm worlds apart from that, and I'm just excited, like genuinely excited for more and more freedom to come with choosing whose opinions of me I get to care about, and choosing who I get to be for like genuinely is this I don't know if this is something that other people are going through, but the older I get, the more excited I am to be one of the women that I see in their fifties and sixties and seventies who just like give zero fox, who say like what they want, wear what they want, eat what they want, do what they want. Those women to me seem like some of the happiest people alive, and I'm sure there's some research that's probably going to confirm that they are. And they also seem to have as well, like the most profound relationships, the most profound friendships, the most profound creativity, because you know, along the way, through trial and error, it seems as if they've learned what we are actively learning now, which is that being for everybody robs you of something you actually probably want more from life, which is to be authentic and to be happy. Not being for everybody gives that back to you, gives that self approval back to you so that you can live freely. And that's something that I'm just really excited for. I can't wait to give less and less and less fox about other people's opinions, and I can't wait for that to be a testament that I'm probably doing something very very right with my life. As so many of these so much of this research has shown us. Not being liked by everybody is a litmus test and is the biggest sign that you're probably living life the way that it should be lived. So that is all we have time for today. I want to thank our researcher Lucy Davidson for her help with this episode. Make sure, oh my god, you guys ready my big list. Make sure you are following us on Instagram. Make sure that you have watched a Netflix episode What's next substep ow You can send me a DM. You can leave a comment down below, You can send this episode to a friend. There is so much that you can do. And honestly, oh, you can buy my book forgot about that one. All the links are in the description, of course, but please, if you are listening on Spotify and you are in any of those countries I mentioned at the beginning, go and check us out on Netflix just so you can get a sense of the vibe if you have no idea what I look like as well, because I know some of you don't, now's your opportunity off you go go go check it out. As we always end the episode with, be safe, be kind, especially when it comes to social approval. Be gentle with yourself, and we will talk very very soon.