The truth about people judging you

Transcript:

The fear of judgment is so real

I’m sure you’ve experienced the fear of judgement. I would say that 99.9% of people on the planet are fearful of other people judging them. And it can stop us from doing what we want to do. It keeps us small, we hide away and we don’t do the things we truly want to do, because we’re allowing the fear of judgement, run our life. And it’s time to stop allowing the fear of people’s judgement to stop you from living your life how you want to!

So in today’s episode, you’re going to learn how to stop being worried and fearful of people judging you. And also you’re going to learn about the two types of judgment fear. Which are abandonment and rejection. So we’re going to dive into that. And you will learn how to be free from people judging you and how to feel amazing, happy, and free. So let’s dive in…!

Meaning making machines

When we are worried about judgment from others we think things like, “what would my mum say?” I used to say that all the time! Or if you’re putting a live video out: “what are people gonna think of me?” Truth bomb:

People are gonna judge you all the time.

Whether you are aware of it or not, you are judging all the time! If I said to you, what do you think about Netflix? Whether you like it or not, you’re judging. Even having an opinion on something is a form of judgment. It can be a positive judgment or negative judgment. There’s a personal development program I went on – I’m always investing in myself – it’s called the landmark forum. And what I learned there, and this changed my life, as human beings, we are meaning-making machines.

We have to make everything mean something. We can’t just be like, Okay, well, Netflix is Netflix and that’s the end of it. We say things like, I love Netflix, it’s always got great movies for whatever mood I’m in. Or you might say, well, actually, I think it’s annoying because I can never find what I want to watch. This is because we have to make things mean something because as humans, we’re meaning making machines.

Imagine a guy in a sports car. And imagine a homeless guy, and the guy in a sports car is pulled up, and he’s at some traffic lights, and the homeless guy is on the street. The homeless guy is looking at the guy in the sports car and he is turning his nose up or pulling a face at him. And now we imagine the guy in the sports car, judging the homeless person and making a face and turning his nose up at the homeless person. Which judgement is better out of the two? The answer is there’s not one judgement that is better, because they’re both judging each other. And neither is right or wrong. We just have to make things mean something because we’re human beings. So that’s what people do. So I’m going to give you a way out of this so you can put the fear of judgement behind you.

Judgements and opinions are the same things

I’d like to ask you a few questions:

What do you think of Donald Trump?

What do you think of Corona?

What do you think of chocolate ice cream?

Most of you are going to have an opinion. In fact, all of you will have an opinion, a judgment on anything that I ask you, and everyone’s judgment is going to be different. Some people will have the same opinion. It’s like, you know, the saying a picture speaks 1000 words because you can look at a picture and 50 people can see something different. Everyone’s judging all the time. And everyone has different opinions of the same thing all the time.

For example, the first coach I invested in, I loved her voice and her accent. And I shared one of her podcasts with my best friend one time, and my best friend replied, Oh, my God, I can’t listen to her because her voice is the most annoying voice I’ve ever heard. And I was like, well, I love that about her. I actually really like her voice, which is one of the things that drew me to want to work with her!

If you think of global leaders in this field of personal development, Global icons such as Tony Robbins, or Oprah, most people have heard of them – if you haven’t, where have you been?! ๐Ÿ˜‰ People are judging, even famous people, negatively and positively all the time, regardless of who the person is, regardless of what they do. I absolutely love Tony Robbin’s but I know quite a few people in the personal development space that aren’t so keen on Tony Robbins. And at first, I was like, what, how can you not like Tony Robbins?! At the end of the day, people are going to have judgments about people regardless of how famous they are.

A lifetime of judgment?

If we spend our whole life, trying not to be judged, we are all completely wasting our life away. Because we judge unconsciously, all day long. We judge consciously, we judge unconsciously, we were judging, we’re meaning-making machines, people judge people all the time. The two biggest fears that I mentioned at the start of this, the fear of abandonment, which is rejection. And then you’ve got the fear of inadequacy. Am I enough? Am I good enough? Both of those fears are at the root cause of nearly every human being’s inaction because of the fear of judgment.

The fear of inadequacy and abandonment are what drive our behavior or stop us from doing the things we want to do. And these kinds of judgments are like poison in our society, and they massively affect our lives. It used to affect my life massively, hugely, I would never want to do a live, because I would be scared of what people would think of me. What if I messed up? What if I had to look at my notes more than I wanted to? Like, what if? What if, what if? It doesn’t matter, people are gonna judge you anyway.

We let judgment hold us back. It used to hold me back with my business, being vulnerable with my partner, because I used to be judgmental of my own body. So I used to decide that whoever I was with, would also be judgmental, of me. If we’re keeping ourselves small, from the fear of being judged, that’s actually quite selfish if you think about it, because if we’re keeping ourselves small, and not doing the things we want to do, not helping the people we want to help. That’s actually selfish because we’re thinking of ourselves. And we’re allowing our fear to lead the way. Instead of taking fear along with you and instead of it being in the passenger seat, or even the driver’s seat, we can put it in the backseat. Fear is always going to be there.

Abandonment

Let’s dive a bit deeper into abandonment, abandonment, and rejection. When you have a fear of being rejected the question you ask yourself, consciously or unconsciously, “am I going to get rejected?” That’s a genuine fear, whether that’s if you go in on a date with a man or a woman, or whether that’s joining a new friendship group or whatever, joining a gym, and wanting to fit in in the crowd. You’re worried about being rejected because who doesn’t want to be liked? As humans, we want to be liked because it’s who we are. Back in the day before we had houses and society, we lived in tribes. If we weren’t a part of the tribe then it meant we could quite possibly die.

If we were rejected by our tribe, we might not have been able to survive. We see rejection as possible death. So that’s why it’s so ingrained in us – to be scared of rejection. It’s a fear, and it’s okay. But I’m here to show you that it doesn’t need to be ruling your life, and you can let that go.

I have a few questions for you (when haven’t I…?!)

Have you ever been rejected before? I’m sure the answer is yes.

So my next question, have you ever rejected anyone?

Maybe you got asked out on a date and you’re like, No, thank you. I’m just not feeling it for whatever reason?

Has a homeless person asked you for money before? And you’ve said no, or you’ve ignored them?

That’s you rejecting somebody! Okay, so this is where it starts to get funny… if you know that you reject people all the time, which means that other people reject people all the time. You’ve rejected many people before and most likely you have been rejected people many times before. It is what people do! It is how we show up as humans.

Yet the fear of rejection paralyzes so many people.

If people judge people all the time, wouldn’t it be unreasonable to think that you won’t ever be judged or rejected?

So I’m just gonna say that again – if people judge people because that’s what we do – Isn’t it unreasonable to think that you won’t be rejected? I know that not everyone will love me, right? When I got my head around that because I so desperately wanted to be liked, I was using my body and my appearance in order to attempt to be liked. Once I realised that no matter what I do, not everyone is going to love me and not everyone’s going to like me, I finally became free to be who I am and to share my message. I’m very energetic. I like to talk a lot. I’m not everyone’s cup of tea, and that’s fine. Like, I’m totally okay with that. Do you like tea? Or do you like coffee? I personally hate coffee. I can’t stand it. I love the smell of coffee. But the second I taste it, no thankyou! Whereas you might absolutely adore coffee.

When you make a cup of tea, you might like a little bit of milk in it or a lot of milk, and you might like sugar or no sugar, you might like sweeteners, or whatever, you get the gist. Not everyone has the same cup of tea. Not everyone likes coffee, not everyone is gonna like you. And that’s okay. There’s nothing to be fearful of because people are going to reject you every single day. And that could be due to your skin colour, your hair colour, your religion, your sexual preference, the car that you drive, what size your body is what you say, what your
lifestyle is like…

The list is endless. People are gonna judge you and reject you every single day, just like you judge and reject other people every single day. If you reject someone, it’s unlikely that you’re thinking about them for the next month or so… you reject them or you have an opinion, and then it’s done and gone. That’s it, you just continue with your life. That’s how other people will perceive you as well. Some people are going to like you, some people are going to find you neutral and some people are not going to like you and either is okay.

If I “asked you another question like “what do you think about people who drive sports cars?”

Or what do you think about someone who is in prison?”

Automatically, there are going to be judgments that come to your mind. You can’t help it because again, we’re meaning-making machines as humans, we judge all the time. My question to you is, “when you’re judging these people, maybe somebody in a sports car, or someone in prison, where’s that judgment come from?” If maybe you were in prison before, or you’ve driven a sports car or you had a sports car before, your judgments going to be different because you’ve experienced that thing.

Think of a podcast that you don’t like, you’re not allowed to include mine because I’m guessing if you’re listening or watching this, you’re kind of get something from me otherwise you wouldn’t be watching or listening right now. ๐Ÿ˜‰ – what is it about that podcast that you don’t like? Or like I said before Donald Trump, what do you think about him? What kind of music do you like – if I said to you heavy metal music? What comes up for you? Is that a hell Yes I love heavy metal? Or is that hell, no, I don’t like that at all. What kind of movies do you like? I love sci-fi movies, kind of like Harry Potter and Marvel movies and superhero movies. And my amazing friend Lotte, in the Netherlands she hates stuff like that. So when we meet together to watch a movie, it’s always a chick flick. It’s just so interesting to see that, you know, what I like, isn’t what she likes, what I like, isn’t what you like. And that goes the same for you as a person and not everyone is going to like you.

Now it’s becoming obvious that you judge all day long. And people judge all day long. People. Judge. Not being judged is one of your biggest fears that you and pretty much everyone else on this planet has, yet you judge on a daily basis. I don’t know about you. But I find that pretty ironic!

You’re scared of being judged?

I get it. But you’re judging everyone every day. And other people are judging everyone every day. yet we’re keeping ourselves small because we’re scared of being judged. It doesn’t make sense. quite funny. If you think about it. And I’ve got another question for you. This is a really powerful one.

How many people have to accept you or not reject you before you’re okay, letting go of the fear of people judging you?

So I’ll ask that, again. How many people have to accept you or not reject you before you’re okay, letting go of the fear of people judging you? Maybe it’s 10 people that have to accept you and tell you that they love you, and you’re enough as you are? Or maybe it’s 1000 people that have to say you’re okay, as you are or that’s good, or I approve, maybe it’s a million people, maybe it’s like 7 billion people, however, many people are on this planet? How many need to accept you in order for you to feel good enough? really powerful questions.

So biggest takeaway for you in this is to be okay, as you are right now. Because, again, there’s always going to be someone who likes you, someone who’s just neutral, and someone who doesn’t like you. And that’s okay. Why would you judge anyone else? Or why would someone else judge you anyway? Because we’re people and as people, we’re meaning-making machines.

Karma

Each and every one of us, I believe, are living out our own karma. So what I mean by that is, every single person on this planet right now has their own lessons to learn, has their own lessons to overcome. That’s what I believe. And so if we come back to that, and know that, then someone who you class maybe ‘below you’, and you’re judging them, well leave them alone, because they have their own life lessons to learn, and you have your own life lessons to learn. So it doesn’t make any sense to judge people knowing that we’ve got to come through stages, like through our soul stages, or whether you believe in that or not, it doesn’t really matter. Everyone’s exactly where they’re supposed to be at any given moment. Everyone’s learning their own lessons. So you focus on your lessons and allow them to focus on their life lessons.

Fear of not being good enough

Okay, now I want to talk a bit about the fear of inadequacy, the fear of not being good enough. This is another fear of judgment, the second fear of judgment. And you know, inadequacy comes from comparison.

If you don’t compare, you cannot be inadequate to anybody.

So you have to compare in order to feel inadequate, and this is so toxic. And it’s poison in our culture today, that the number of people that compare themselves to other people inadequacy. Inadequacy requires comparison. And comparison requires putting people on a hierarchy. So you’ve got people above you and people below you, yet we’re all equal as human beings. We’re all equal as human beings. Everyone has their own story. We’re all equal. So I could just say to you stop comparing right now, which maybe some of you might try – you might do it. You might listen you might not. But the point of me helping you in this podcast in this life is for you to go away with like an aha moment, kind of like, Oh my gosh, yeah – and like something shifts inside of you. That’s my goal for you.

I have a few more questions for you:

When will you know you’re good enough?

How many people will have to say you’re good enough before you accept it and know that you’re good enough?

Of those people saying that you are good enough, what are the social economics of these people saying this? So are you only going to listen to people saying you’re good enough If they’re rich, or famous or successful, whatever that means to you? What about if someone who was poor said that you were good enough? Would you listen to them?

Or what about someone who’s unsuccessful? In your terms? Would you listen to them? Come back to remembering that we are all equal, and judgment is going to happen no matter what. Let’s say a checkout person in the supermarket says that you’re not good enough. What about a lawyer? Who with a really posh degree, what about if a lawyer says you’re not good enough? Who are you going to listen to the most? Whose opinion are you going to allow to affect you the most?

You know, how are you weighing this all up? It’s each person’s opinion. And how many people’s opinions are enough? Like I said, Is it 10? Is it three people is a million people? And what are the educational levels needed of all of the people that do say that you’re good enough? Okay, so what I want you to get from this is how absolutely ridiculous it is to allow your drive – your life – to be driven by the fear of judgments of other people. No matter who you are, no matter where you go in life, there will always be someone who is better or worse than you, there’s always going to be someone who’s prettier than you cleverer than you, funnier than you, smarter than you, more successful than you, have a better car than you, the list is endless. But you’re also going to be better than people in every life area as well. There’s always going to be someone better or more successful, whatever that means to you. And there’s always going to be someone worse off.

If you go through life, comparing yourself, you will never be good enough. Never.

Do you want to waste your life away trying to be good enough? When you’re good enough already, because you are you, there’s always going to be someone better. And if you’re judging yourself by the externals, for example, the house, the car, the job, the holidays, that’s a huge trap, that you’re setting up for your life to be unhappy. Because you’ll never be happy if you keep judging yourself and comparing yourself to people and striving to be as good as
them because there’s always going to be someone better than you so you’re never going to be happy.

Avoiding judgment

Now you can see that you judge people, and people judge you. What people do is they try to avoid judgement. And they think that’s a really effective strategy. By keeping small by keeping themselves hidden, by avoiding judgement, which by the way, it’s impossible to avoid judgement. Because even if you’re keeping yourself small, and not doing the things you want to do, so in order not to be judged, people are gonna judge you for doing that anyway! That’s why it’s so funny. People are gonna judge you no matter what you do. So if you’re not doing the things you want to do, for fear of being judged, people are going to judge you anyway for doing that.

The best and most effective way to let go of the fear of judgment is to accept – fully accept – that you’re going to be judged all the time anyway. If you try to avoid being judged, that will keep you hidden, it’ll keep you small and people will judge you for keeping yourself small and not putting yourself out there anyway. Ironic. So show up for yourself fully knowing and accepting that you’re going to be judged anyway. Right? Walk right into it face on, people are going to judge you. So you may as well go out there and have a good time and help people. Like if I was letting fear of judgment rule my life. I wouldn’t be sharing this with you. And there are quite a few people that have been watching so I must be helping some people, which is all that matters to me.

So If instead of asking yourself, Am I good enough? Start asking yourself, what does the world need from me in order for it to be a better place?

How can I give myself to others in a way that feels good for me? How can I share my knowledge it doesn’t, you know, it doesn’t have to be through your business, it can be through anything that you want to do that you’ve been scared to do because you’ve been keeping yourself small from fear of judgment. Maybe it’s from, you know, you’ve desperately wanted to stop dieting, and you’re just so scared that you might put weight on. And then what will people think and all the judgments that could come, there’s so much around this. People are gonna judge you anyway! Like, when I was really small and really lean and really fit my fiance, Wouter – he said when he first saw me he said he liked the look of me – sounds like he’s picking something in a supermarket, doesn’t it?! When he first met me, but he honestly said, You, I think for me, you’re too small. Like, I love you for who you are. But if you were to ask me, I would like you to have more fat on you. Right? So funnily enough, I’m now bigger than I was when
I met him and he loves it. And it doesn’t matter what he thinks, anyway. But what I’m saying is, in what you think about yourself, and the way you judge yourself isn’t how other people judge you.

I’m going to go to that in a moment because this gets really good in a minute. So instead of asking, am I good enough? Start asking what does the world need from me. So like my podcast, and my content, and the lives that I do, is far from perfect. Sometimes I get tongue-tied, I make my own words up, I can’t figure out what I want to say. It’s not perfect, but it doesn’t matter. Some people are going to like the fact that it’s not perfect, or what is perfect anyway because they can relate to me. And some people are gonna look and think maybe things like that are unprofessional. It doesn’t matter. I don’t care, because I’m doing me and I’m helping the world in the best way that I know-how. And people are gonna judge me and that’s all good. But you know, the biggest joke of all, are you ready for this? Are you ready for

People aren’t actually judging you

This completely contradicts what I’ve just been saying, doesn’t it? But let me dig deeper into this. Do you think that they’re judging you? Right? And they may even tell you, they’re judging you, or this is what their opinion is. But what you’re actually doing is you’re reflecting back to them, about what they’re judging in you. So you’re reflecting who they are back to themselves when they judge you. So they’re judging themselves. By defining themselves as someone who has to judge. There’s a quote by Buddha, I want to read I’m going to say it two times because it takes a while to just get, it might not it might sink in straight away. But when you get this, your heads just gonna be like, wow, okay, so yeah, are you ready?

I am not who and what you think I am – You are who and what you think I am

And I say that again… I am not who and what you think I am – You are who and what you think I am

Can you get that? Like if you get that please just share in the chatbox. They’re putting out the version of who they are into the world. And I’m the mirror for that. So what people think of you is none of your business. It has nothing to do with you and everything to do with them. So do you have the right to judge others? Let’s even ask ourselves this question. Because when you’re judging someone:

The harsher the judgment, the deeper the wound within you.

So this just goes to show that even when people are judging you, they’re not technically judging you because they’re judging themselves and seeing you as the mirror! So the harsher the judgement, the deeper the wound within.

Are you the harshest judge for yourself? Whatever degree you judge yourself, you’re going to judge others to the same degree. So if you work on your self love, your self-acceptance your self worth all the juicy, amazing things that I talk about, it’s unlikely that you will be judging other people because you stopped judging yourself, because everyone is a mirror anyway. So good!

So knowing that the harshest judgement of yourself and knowing that to the extent that you judge yourself, you’re also going to judge others. What degree of judgment from other people – knowing that people judge you all the time – What degree do you accept them judging you? What I mean by this is, are you happy for someone to judge you just 10%? Like a little bit? Are you happy? And can you take action? If someone’s judging you at like, 50%, whatever that means to you? And the next question, following from that is how do you even know how much people are judging you? Because you don’t, unless they’re going to say it, what we don’t know, we can’t read the minds of every single person that we come into contact with.

What we do is assume people are judging us, the same way we judge ourselves. So if you have body confidence issues, if you like, hate the way you look, and you go out into the world, this used to happen to me all the time. And let’s say for instance there was a bunch of teenage girls or whatever, and they’ll be laughing, I would all of a sudden just decide that they’re obviously laughing at me because I’ve got shorts, and you can see cellulite or something. Because I was judging the hell out of myself, I decided that everyone else was judging me in the same way. Or when you get intimate with your partner. If you notice something you’re not that happy with on your body, you’re just automatically deciding that your partner is going to notice that too, because you’re judging yourself that way.

But it doesn’t work like that. When I had my hair dyed, like white-blond, I’m sure if you’ve been following me for a while, go back into the videos. It’s hilarious. My hair was literally white. It was a new color. And I was like, holy shit. This is like, I’m so not down with this! And I was walking the dog and I met some this guy who I had not met before, and he got speaking to me. And the whole time, I was a bit conscious like, Oh my gosh, he’s gonna think my hair looks ridiculous. And of course, he didn’t. Because of course, me being me, I had to like, protect myself and bring up my hair colour – You know, it’s a self-protective mechanism to make sure that if he’s laughing at me, then it’s okay because I’m also laughing at myself, right? I’m sure you’ve done that, too. And he was like, Oh my god, I love your hair. I thought what an amazing hair colour!

So whatever we’re judging about ourselves. The other people aren’t judging that about us. But what we’re judging about ourselves, we actually judging other people

Can you see that “everyone is a mirror” analogy in this? And we’re almost done, I’m just going to tell you a few more things or share with you a few more things.

Future vision

This is a really, really powerful question to ask yourself, what would your life look like a year from now? If you started to take action, knowing that you’re going to be judged, and it doesn’t matter to you anymore? So knowing that you’re going to be judged knowing that you judge people and people judge you imagine a year from now if you took action towards your dreams, or whatever your goals are? knowing you’re going to be judged? How different would your life look like in a year’s time?

And it gets easier, I promise you like I do lives now and it doesn’t bother me in the slightest if I mess up because I’m just giving my heart. I’m asking how I can help people. And it really doesn’t bother me. So it does get easier. But just like just think about that. How different would your life look in a year’s time?

And when you start showing up for yourself, however, that looks for you. You realize that actually, nobody dies. The worst thing that can happen is you think you’ve messed up and that’s it and you just learn from it. And that’s it and people are gonna think you’ve done good and people are gonna hate it. People are gonna love it and that it doesn’t matter because people are gonna think that anyway, I’m gonna leave you with this, these:

I am who I am. You are who you are.

So just go out and be you and do what you love and make a difference in the world because you’re going to be judged anyway.

If you need help and support with this if it’s in the realm of food and body image, I have a free Facebook group. I would love to have you in my free Facebook group. It’s called food and body freedom queendom – I’d love to have you in there. If you struggle with body image with foodstuff emotional eating, binge eating. It’s a place to go where all of my content is there at your disposal. Like in my podcasts, I share things that I don’t share on my usual feed to help you so just let me know if you have any questions and love you all and I’ll see you next week.

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