😢 How to Be Okay with Being Disliked
Hey everyone,
One thing that has been a real psychological unlock for me over the past year has been the ability to be okay with not being liked by everyone.
I've always worried about people liking me or not, it has just always felt like a really important thing.
It's a relatively common concern at school and university, but I've slowly realised it's actually far less productive than I thought.
I rationalised my anxiety by thinking that trying to be liked by everyone was useful and would help me in life, but really it was just an internal ego battle, and an attempt to satisfy my innate desire to fit in and belong.
The first time this internal narrative started to be really challenged was when I listened to Professor Steve Peters (a psychiatrist and the author of the Chimp Paradox) talk on the Diary of a CEO podcast.
This is a little note I wrote on my phon when I listened to it last year.
Steve spoke about this idea of accepting that you won't like roughly 20% of people and 20% of people won't like you.
My instinct is that the percentage is slightly too high, but maybe it's not and I'm just still battling with that part of my psyche.
Anyway, it made me reflect on this desire that I had for everyone to like me, and slowly over the next few weeks, I chipped away at that thought pattern.
Then one month later I decided to start my YouTube channel, which has completely changed my life.
To use a clichéd expression, I think it's potentially one of the greatest 'mindset shifts' I've had in the past year.
It doesn't mean I treat people any differently, I still try to be as kind and considerate as I was, but I just don't get anywhere near as hung up on the idea of someone not liking me or go out of my way to make someone like me, especially if I don't value their opinion.
But the reason it's so much more productive as a mindset is because it allows me to live the life I want to live and do the things I want to do, which will inevitably make me happier and more successful (success being whatever I define it for myself).
The takeaway here is to accept that some people just won't like you or care about you that much, and to use that knowledge to fuel yourself to do the things that you're scared of doing.
The number one most common regret of the dying, according to palliative care nurse Bronnie Ware, is:
“I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.”
That's it.
That's the number one regret of people as they approach the end of their lives.
On that note, if you haven't already, it's worth reading the original blog post from Bronnie Ware about the top five regrets of the dying.
Have a great week!
Tintin
👀 Cool Things I've Found 👀
A masterclass in sales funnels from Russel Brunson.
Found this rapper Harry Mack a few weeks ago, damn his videos are addictive.
How much you could read if you read 25 pages a day.
Medium article about the "blockbuster mindset."
Free PDF of the Almanack of Naval Ravikant.
📚 My Reading Log 📚
Nearly finished A Wanted Man by Lee Child, which is great. But I've also started listening to an audiobook which is slightly more out of my usual reading habits.
It's called Models by Mark Manson and it's a book about becoming an attractive man lol. I'm a big believer of not always reading the same type of stuff over and over, and it was recommended to me, so I thought I'd test something outside my comfort zone and it's actually really good. I've never had any kind of frameworks or mental models etc for thinking about this kind of thing, except for whatever random thought patterns I've come up with myself, and it's really interesting to read about it. I'd really recommend for all my single bros out there.