Keep telling yourself you don't give a fuck until you believe it. It may take awhile, and it may seem like it will never work, but eventually it will...and the eventual is all that matters in the end
Constantly remind yourself that you are going to die some day. Give yourself enough time to realize the fact of that statement and then realize you are letting someone else stop you from truly being you. Life is too short to worry about things you cant control.
This is something you can do right now. Make a commitment to allow everyone in your life to come and go out of your life as they please. Let this apply to friends, peers, lovers, parents, children, partners. Commit now to release all of your effort to pull people in, or hold them close.
For example, are you trying to guilt-trip or manipulate people into sticking around? Are you trying to be super nice to them so that they'll stay? Are you putting on a performance of some kind so they'll like you?
See clearly that this is a losing game! All of this mental energy that goes into holding people in your life should be allocated to your life's purpose.
See which people will stick around if you stop trying to be likeable all the time. These are the people who like you for your authentic self. In the meantime, keep an eye out for more people who appreciate you as you are. (By the way, this means becoming skillful at appreciating yourself.)
See clearly - beyond any doubt - that it doesn't matter what anyone thinks about you.
Let people have their opinions. Let people see you the way they want to see you. Let people judge you! Make a commitment to yourself to release all attempts to control other people's thoughts/opinions about you. Just let all of that go. You can do this now, if you choose.
You're not here to be some watered-down version of yourself that makes everyone happy. You are here to step deeper into your uniqueness, your authenticity. This is how you best serve yourself and the world.
Keep death close.
Know, beyond any doubt, that you're going to die, and live your life accordingly.
If you knew you were going to die soon, but you still had a few weeks or months to go - what would you do? What would you create, study, explore, or express? What is in you to be manifested in the world?
For what are you waiting for permission to do?
And what's risky about taking a new, bold step in this direction?
Take everything and put it on the 'red' square at this roulette table. The possibility of failure, embarrassment, disappointment... take on a willingness to experience these things despite how unwanted they might be. Decide that this is a worthwhile risk.
Sometimes we can come under the impression that we don't matter, that our lives don't matter, that we don't have any significant value to offer to the world.
This would be a mistake.
When a human being is given the right conditions, they mature into fuller, more-evolved versions of themselves. From there they manifest greater gifts to the world. These gifts can take innumerable forms and can vary in many ways. Sometimes they're global and expansive, sometimes they're felt and seen just in the home or community.
But in either case, your presence is valuable in this world, and it's needed. The more you offer yourself respect, time, space, understanding and encouragement, the more mature you grow and the more you become a contribution to the species.
This is serious work, and there's no time to waste trying to modify your behaviour to gain the approval of others.
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I don't mean like being uninterested or cold towards people. But in my experience, when I started to truly not care about the outcome of a social interaction or how someone perceives me, I got much better results from others. It's almost as if overthinking social interactions made me come off as more awkward and unappealing.
Like I went to this new club on campus the other day not knowing anybody, and I told myself that I wouldn't care about how I did or how I was coming across. So I went in there, consciously ignored my numerous slip ups and all the awkward silences, and talked to others expecting absolutely nothing. And it worked. It just took four solid years of becoming more and more fed up with people's bullshit until I realized that I owe NOBODY any sort of perfect performance. If you really look around and stop obsessing about your social flaws, you will realize that the world is full of totally imperfect people that probably aren't worth trying to impress. So whenever I meet someone new, I immediately tell myself "fuck them and whatever they think about me, they aren't that great" and it takes a load off my shoulders.
I am still trying to find my ideal friends, and have a long way to go before I am satisfied with my social life. But my tip, from someone who has dealt with social anxiety and loneliness for years, is to simply stop caring so much about it. Ask those people to hang out, strike up the conversation with your cute classmate - if they reject you then you are most definitely not missing out on anything worth your time. Your true self is your unapologetic self, so fuck everyone else and what they think. Most of your problems are in your own head
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