#458 – Performing for People Who Aren’t Even Watching

All right, welcome back to The Brilliant Balance Show. Thanks for pressing play on today’s episode.

I feel like I am coming in on two wheels today to record this. It has been such a fun summer so far. As I’m recording this, we’re sitting in late July and have gotten to do a lot of really fun travel experiences. I have a number of other ones still coming up at the very end of the month and into August before we send our middle guy off to college.

I think I’ve just been feeling a really deep sense of gratitude for getting to have some of these fun and unusual experiences all centered in one summer.

I hope you are, too. I hope you’re getting to do lots of fun things. Not every summer has looked like this. Very often, we’ve had one big thing—you know, we’ve been steering toward some big vacation or big event. So it’s a different vibe to have a lot of little things peppered throughout, and I am not mad about it. I’m really enjoying it, actually.

That will play a role in today’s episode—this summer of adventurous travel that I’ve been having. But I want to talk today about a feeling, a particular feeling that I think runs quietly underneath a lot of our decisions. Sometimes we’re very aware of it. Sometimes I think we’re not aware of it at all. But it is there, and it is driving decisions whether we have awareness of it or not.

It’s questions like: Am I going to say this thing in the meeting? What am I going to wear today? Am I going to go to this event or not? Am I going to speak up and ask this question in a conversation I’m about to have? Am I going to take this risk?

If we really trace back to the root of what’s underneath our decision to do it or not do it, I think a lot of the time we find the same thing sitting there: we’re worried about what someone else will think. We’re worried about what someone else will think of this thing we’re about to do or this decision we’re about to make.

So today’s episode is called “Performing for People Who Aren’t Even Watching,” because we’re going to talk about this emotion of judgment—the feeling of being judged. Then we’re going to get into the uncomfortable punchline, which is that most of the time, the audience we’re performing for isn’t even paying attention.

I think this is one that I fall prey to a lot. It’s an emotion I don’t like. I don’t like the thought of being evaluated or preparing to be evaluated, and I have to fight through that feeling—or that fear—a lot in order to do the things I actually want to do. The higher the stakes, the worse this gets.

I was talking to a colleague about this, and we were wondering if this correlates to Enneagram types. A lot of you know I love the Enneagram. I think it’s really illustrative, and I suspect there are a few Enneagram types that are even more susceptible to this particular emotion—the anticipation of being evaluated or the fear of how we’re going to be judged for our actions.

As I’m recording this episode, I’ve just come out of a week with a few high-stakes days strung together, which is again part of this summer of adventure that I’m having.

It started with a workday on Thursday. I had two speaking engagements on the same day. That’s pretty unusual. Maybe it’s never happened before. But I had one in the morning and one in the early afternoon on the very same day.

Speaking days are always high stakes, right? You’re going to be in front of a room. People are obviously going to be evaluating how it went. So it’s easy to get in your head about whether it’s going to be good enough, all the way down to things like, “What are you going to wear?”

Then, the next day, I got on a plane and went to New York to see, somewhat unexpectedly, my college housemates. I had not seen this group of women for a very long time. We were trying to remember, and we’re pretty sure it had been more than twenty years since we were all together.

The fact that we can’t remember is pretty illustrative, but I’m pretty sure it was when my oldest was about six months old, and she’s about to turn twenty-two. So we think that’s the last time we were all together.

That’s high stakes, right? I haven’t seen these women in decades. We all have social media accounts—well, most of us do—but I was in my head wondering: How have I changed? How have they changed?

Then, the next day, because why not, I was going to see some high school friends whom I hadn’t seen in even longer. It’s probably been twenty-ish years since I’d seen those people, too.

I was very happy to be going to all of these gatherings, but I was also very much in my head about how I was going to be perceived.

I’m even sitting here watching myself want to censor what I’m saying because I think, “Well, what if one of them listens to this podcast? Do I want them to know that I was in my head about it?”

The reality is that I’d rather be truthful than avoid this feeling. So I’m just going to tell you the truth in the podcast and let the chips fall where they may.

I was in my head about how all of this was going to go. Now that I can sit here on the other side of the experience, I can tell you that by the time I got through day one, I thought, Whew, that went fine. I was happy with how everything went at the speaking engagements.

Then I could feel the next wave gearing up as I packed and chose what to take for the Friday night gathering.

Friday night was such a delight. It was so great to see those women. We had the best time. We really had a wonderful catch-up. We had a lovely dinner, drank champagne, and it was just awesome.

The next morning, I got on a train to Long Island. I was attending a celebration of life for one of my dear friend’s mothers, and while I was there, I got to see a handful of people I’d gone to high school with.

It was also great.

Here’s the way the universe gets you: it poured down rain. It wouldn’t have mattered what I’d done with my hair—I was going to look like a drowned rat. It absolutely poured that day.

I remember thinking that was such a lovely little wink from the universe: “Look at you, thinking you could optimize for this. Here we are, and now you’re standing in a torrential downpour.”

I think it was a good reminder that so much of the judgment—the fear of judgment, the perception of judgment, the noise about judgment—was in my head.

I was gearing up to perform for an audience of people who genuinely were not there to evaluate me. They were there to connect. They were there to have conversations. They were there to reminisce, not to evaluate anything about me.

It’s such an important reminder because I think there are many times when we’re in our heads, thinking we’re preparing for some evaluation, when in reality we’ve characterized the situation entirely incorrectly.

Not always, but often.

Most of us, in some part of our lives—and it doesn’t have to be moments like these, though reunions are probably a classic example—are performing for an audience. Not a real audience sitting in seats, actively watching and forming opinions, but an imagined one.

That audience is often a composite of every critical voice we’ve ever absorbed: maybe a parent, a boss, a former friend, or some stranger on the internet, all folded into this panel of judges that we carry with us into every room.

And that panel is expensive.

It has a cost to constantly believe we’re performing for a panel of judges. It doesn’t just make us uncomfortable—it makes decisions for us. It censors and edits our decisions, and it talks us out of things we actually want.

We play really small when we believe we’re performing for this audience.

I think women who have been successful are particularly susceptible to this because we’re good at reading rooms, anticipating reactions, and managing how we’re perceived. That skill serves us really well in some aspects of life, but it can also get in our way in others.

I’ve thought a lot about this, and there are three teaching points I want to unpack as they relate to this chronic fear of how our choices are going to look to other people.

The first teaching point is this: No one is watching as closely as you think.

This phenomenon actually has a name. In psychology, it’s called the spotlight effect.

There was a team of researchers at Cornell—ironically, where I went to school—that ran a now-famous study. Here’s what they did: They had a college student put on an embarrassing T-shirt. Then they had that student walk into a room full of peers and estimate how many people would notice and remember what they were wearing.

The student guessed that something like half the room would remember. In reality, it was closer to 20%.

That is all of us, right? We think every little decision—what we’re wearing, whether we have glasses on or contacts in, what our hair looks like—is so important. But the reality is, no one is paying that much attention.

They’re so focused on themselves.

When we overestimate how many people are paying attention and judging us, it’s because we’re the main character of our own experience. We assume everyone else is treating us like the main character too—that they’re waiting for us to walk into the room so they can see what we’re doing.

But that’s not what’s happening.

They’re in their own story with their own main-character energy. They’re the main character of their experience. So what are they worried about?

Themselves.

They’re not worried about you.

Here’s a little experiment you can run—your own version of the T-shirt study.

Think about a meeting, a dinner, a book club, or some event you attended recently. Now ask yourself what everyone else was wearing.

I did this myself, and it’s shocking how hard it is to answer that question.

Now, there are exceptions. If someone wore something really distinctive or memorable, you’ll probably remember it. Or if you intentionally looked around because you were comparing yourself to everyone else, that might stand out.

But in general, the people you see at the coffee shop, the grocery store, or in meetings? You don’t remember what they were wearing because that’s not what you’re paying attention to.

Everyone is equally busy being the main character of their own life.

They’re thinking about their own outfit, their own meeting, their own kids, their own bad night’s sleep. The bandwidth they have available to notice, remember, and judge you is a tiny fraction of what you imagine it to be.

And that’s measurable. It was measured in this experiment. You can rerun your own version of it, and it’s remarkable how true it is.

I remember talking to a therapist once—not my therapist—who was telling me about an exposure exercise she was doing with one of her patients who had OCD.

The exercise involved having the patient wear a temporary tattoo on their hand and go through everyday life to see whether anyone noticed or commented on it. The patient wasn’t allowed to bring attention to it. They could only respond if someone asked.

It was her own version of the spotlight experiment.

The patient thought, I’ll show you how obvious this is, and instead of putting the temporary tattoo on their hand, they put it in the middle of their forehead.

They figured, If it’s on my forehead, people will definitely ask about it.

Guess what happened?

Nobody asked.

Now the patient wasn’t just uncomfortable wearing the temporary tattoo—they were uncomfortable wearing it on their forehead, and they’d made the exercise fifty times harder for themselves.

To me, the fact that nobody asked about a tattoo in the middle of someone’s forehead is incredible. But it illustrates the point perfectly: people simply are not paying attention the way we think they are.

The second teaching point is this: There is a real cost to performing for a phantom audience, and our bodies pay the price.

Here’s what I mean.

Performing for an imaginary audience costs you everything that performing for a real audience would.

Think about how you feel when you’re gearing up to give a presentation. If you speak professionally or present at work, there’s this extra energy, right? Your body is preparing for peak performance.

Your body doesn’t know the difference between a real audience and an imaginary one.

If you’re telling yourself, Everyone is going to be watching. Everyone is going to think I made the wrong decision, your body responds as though that’s actually happening.

That tightening in your chest, the constant reworking of your decisions, the second-guessing, the delay while you perseverate over every little choice—you pay all the costs of that.

Your body is expending all that energy for an audience that doesn’t even exist.

I’ve been using relatively harmless examples today—things like hair and outfits—but we don’t just do this with appearance.

We do it with real opportunities.

We walk away from meaningful life opportunities because we’re so worried about what people will think.

I’ve had so many clients tell me something like, “I’ve always wanted to start this business, but my dad would be so disappointed.”

Or, “My husband would never support this.”

Or, “What will people think?”

I’ve also had clients hesitate to make major life decisions—not because they didn’t want to make them, but because they were afraid of what everyone else would say once they did.

We’re social creatures, so of course we care what other people think.

But our bodies pay a price.

Our nervous systems become taxed when we invent these scenarios that don’t actually exist.

So save that energy for the times when someone really is paying attention.

Save it for the moments when you genuinely need to navigate someone else’s reaction—not for fighting imaginary ones.

Which brings me to the third point.

Sometimes people are watching.

It would be too easy for me to say, “Don’t worry—nobody’s watching.”

Sometimes they are.

Sometimes people are judging you.

That’s not a fantasy. I’m not pretending it never happens.

What matters is what we do with that reality.

If someone has a negative opinion about a choice we’ve made, what are we going to do with it?

Are we going to let their opinion become the final verdict? Are we going to decide that their opinion matters more than ours, so when they judge us, we simply execute their verdict?

Or are we going to recognize that it’s just one opinion?

There will always be a range of opinions about the choices you make.

If I walk into a room to give a talk and then survey everyone afterward, the responses will form a bell curve. Some people will love it. Some people won’t. Most people will fall somewhere in the middle.

That’s true of almost every decision you make.

If you ask enough people what they think, you’re going to get a wide variety of opinions.

So think about what we’re actually doing when we try to eliminate every possibility of criticism.

We’re trying to get everyone into alignment with our choices.

If our internal rule is, I can’t do this if anyone disagrees, or If there’s any judgment at all, I won’t do the thing I really want to do, then we’re going to stay completely paralyzed.

The goal is not to eliminate the possibility of judgment.

The goal is to learn what to do when judgment happens.

What do we do when we make a choice, say something, tell the truth, or live in alignment with our values, and somebody doesn’t like it?

Then what?

What’s the skill that allows us to feel the discomfort of someone might judge this, while also knowing, I know this is right for me?

And then doing it anyway.

Think about the places in your life where you’re not acting in alignment with what’s right for you because you’re trying to stay in alignment with what you think everyone else wants from you.

It’s a losing battle.

Whether we’re talking about seemingly small things—like what outfit to wear to an event—or major life decisions, like what career to pursue, who to partner with, where to live, what company to work for, or what kind of work to do, if we’re making those decisions to keep this imaginary audience of spectators quiet, we’re not going to be living the life we’re actually meant to live.

I hope you can see that parallel.

We have to lay down this external scorecard.

It’s not an effective way to measure our lives.

Instead, we need to ask ourselves: What do we use instead?

If we’re no longer asking, How is this going to look? as our primary decision-making criterion, then what question do we ask?

I think we ask:

How is this going to feel for me?

Not, How is this going to look to everyone else?

But, How is this going to feel for me?

Here’s a fascinating mental exercise.

Imagine dressing rooms didn’t have mirrors.

Imagine the world didn’t have mirrors.

Would you make different choices?

Instead of asking, Do I want to buy this because of how it looks in the mirror? you’d ask, Do I want to buy this because of how it feels on my body?

Would that change your decision?

Now take that metaphor and apply it to the rest of your life.

If you focused on how something feels from the inside out, rather than how it looks from the outside in, would it change the decisions you’re making?

That’s how we reduce our reliance on—and the impact of—this fear of judgment.

Because it really can be paralyzing.

If we want freedom from that paralysis, we have to shift our orientation inward. We have to ask, How does this feel for me? instead of, What are people going to think?

Most of the time, the audience you’re performing for isn’t real.

And even in the small fraction of times when it is, those people don’t get the deciding vote.

Even when people are genuinely watching and genuinely judging you, three different people will judge you three different ways.

Their judgment doesn’t get to write the ending of your story.

You still have authorship of that story.

As I look back on that week—with all of those different audiences and all the different ways they could potentially have evaluated me—I’m really glad I eventually got my head around this.

I went into those experiences focused on questions like:

How am I feeling?

What do I want to bring to this conversation?

How do I want people to feel after interacting with me?

Then I tried to stay immersed in the experience of simply being myself.

It didn’t happen immediately—trust me—but I think I eventually settled into a place that was much more productive.

This is a skill you can build.

The ability to develop resilience around difficult emotions—including judgment—is a skill.

You can learn to tolerate uncomfortable feelings.

You can learn to hold the possibility that someone may judge you and still move forward anyway.

I think of that as emotional resilience.

That’s actually the skill we’re teaching in my masterclass this August as part of the Coaching Circle.

We’re going to go much deeper into this topic.

We’ll talk about judgment as one of the emotions we try to avoid, but there are so many others. I think too many of us live our lives trying never to feel uncomfortable emotions at all.

Instead of learning, How do I build resilience when these emotions inevitably show up? we organize our lives around avoiding them.

That’s what we’ll be exploring together.

If you’re new to the show or to Brilliant Balance, the Coaching Circle is a monthly class followed by a live coaching call.

Each month, we teach one skill or practice that helps you thrive during seasons of high life complexity.

If you’re in a season where you’re firing on all cylinders—building a career, raising a family, managing countless responsibilities, and trying to stay centered in the middle of it all—you’ve found your people.

This is where we gather.

Every month we focus on a different practice or skill.

In August, our focus is emotional resilience.

The class is on August 11, and as long as you’re a member of the Circle by then, you can join us live.

The classes are always recorded.

Then, a couple of weeks later, after you’ve had a chance to put the skill into practice, we come back together to talk about how it went.

We workshop the challenges, celebrate the wins, and I personally lead those coaching calls.

It’s a wonderful opportunity for us to get to know one another and continue building these capabilities together.

Then, the following month, we move on to a new skill.

Over the course of about a year, we’ll cycle through all of them.

We’ve been doing this for four or five months now, and it’s been incredibly rewarding to watch people begin stepping forward in ways they might not have without this kind of support.

It’s amazing to see people gain a new perspective and the freedom to move toward the life they actually want to create.

I hope you’ll join us.

The link is in the show notes. It’s easy to sign up, and once you do, we’ll send you everything you need to log in for the class.

All right, my friends—that’s all for today.

Until next time,

Let’s be brilliant.