Nobody is thinking about you nearly as much as you think they are.

Psychologists call it the spotlight effect. It's the belief that people are watching and judging us far more closely than they actually are.

Writer Andy Murphy (I follow him on Medium) tells a lovely little story about it. He met a potential client and spent the whole meeting self-conscious about the fact he'd forgotten to brush his teeth. After the deal closed, he confessed. She laughed. She'd spent the entire meeting trying to hide a coffee stain on her top.

Two people, both convinced they were being scrutinised. Neither one noticing the other, because they were too busy watching themselves.

There's research behind this. People asked to wear an embarrassing t-shirt in front of a group wildly overestimate how many people will clock it. So do people asked to wear a "cool" one. Whatever we're wearing, saying, or worried about, we assume we're the main character in everyone else's day. We rarely are.

Murphy points to a line from G.K. Chesterton that sums it up better than any modern self-help book:

"How much happier you would be if you only knew that these people cared nothing about you! How much larger your life would be if your self could become smaller in it... You would begin to be interested in them, because they are not interested in you."

Most of us are performing to an audience that isn't watching. The stain, the bad breath, the thing you said that you replayed for three days. Nobody else is holding it. They're too busy holding their own.

Credit to Andy Murphy for the original piece and the story behind this one.

#SpotlightEffect #Psychology #SelfAwareness #Perspective