Are People Judging Me?

I am working on a compulsion of my own. I sometimes feel the need to buy a new outfit before any event. I have become consumed by the thought that people would notice I was repeating an outfit or didn’t have something new to wear.

I assumed that people cared THIS MUCH.

As I’m writing this, I recognize how absurd it it is. But, this is what happens when the ego is talking. It convinces us that people are spending their precious energy thinking about us and our actions, rather than their own.

It results in something known as the “spotlight effect.”

The “spotlight effect” refers to the tendency to think that more people notice something about you than they do. Tons of studies have supported this phenomenon.

The spotlight effect is the result of our own egocentrism.

This doesn’t mean that we’re self centered or narcissistic. It just means that we are constantly thinking about things from our own experiences and perspectives. We assume that other people are doing the same.

Whenever we think about what other people think about us, we tend to overestimate how likely they are to notice things that we do and how much they think about those things.

Long story short…

When they’re judging or criticizing you, they’re usually just judging and criticizing themselves.

Think about it.

Are the things you criticize in others are the very things you criticize about yourself?

When you do criticize someone else is it because you’re comparing them to you?

No one cares about what you’re wearing. They’re too busy worrying about their own outfit.