What people think of you
“There’s a lot of people who aren’t socially aware,” Malik said. We were having dinner at a Thai restaurant the last night of our San Diego trip.
“How socially aware do you think I am?” I asked, curious as to his opinion.
“You?” Malik paused. “You’re very socially aware, since you care a lot about what people think of you.”
“What?” I asked, a bit surprised since I don’t normally correlate those two things.
“You care a lot about what people think of you,” Malik repeated. “I think you know you’re socially aware, right?”
“Yeah, but I was just curious about your assessment of me.”
Internally I was still reeling from what Malik said — you care a lot about what people think of you. Was he right?
My gut reaction was to reject his claim, mainly because of the negative connotation it carried. Plus, I argued to myself, how do you measure that when it’s so context and people dependent?
Furthermore, there are definite situations where I couldn’t care less about what other people think. Just last month I was organizing a BBQ at Malik’s place, and was asking Jason to get some chicken in addition to beef.
“So I’ll get some drumstick and thighs? Or white meat?” Jason asked.
“Uhh, no white meat,” I said.
“Haha ok, just confirming since dark meat isn’t for everyone.” What I didn’t tell Jason was that I was fully aware Malik and our other friend Kyle preferred white meat to dark meat. Did I feel a little bit guilty about making that call? Yes, but sometimes in life you have to make tough choices — like, did I want to be a people-pleaser, or did I want superior-tasting chicken at a BBQ I organized?
On the other hand, there are probably other circumstances where I care a bit more about what other people think of me.
So I decided to poll some longtime friends to see what they thought. I started texting some friends, “On a scale of 1-5, what’s your assessment of how much I care about what other people think of me?” (1 = doesn’t care at all, 5 = cares a lot)
To be honest I was surprised at what most of my friends said: 4, even though all of them acknowledged there’s nuance around the situation and people involved. One friend said it best, “Oh it’s high…but it’s probably a bell curve correlating to how you view that person. I’m the same way.”
It was sobering to hear, but I was mostly grateful I had friends I could count on to tell me the truth about myself. Going through this exercise made me reflect on a few things:
- It doesn’t seem like a good thing to care a lot about what people think of you. Is this something I need to work on?
- Are there other things I don’t know about myself, but everybody else does?
- It was fun getting feedback from friends…maybe I should doing that more often. What questions should I be asking?
Obviously I don’t have all the answers, but it was fascinating learning how my friends viewed me in this area. As for you, I’m curious….on a scale of 1-5, what’s your self-assessment of how much you care about what other people think of you?
True and sincere friends.. will take time and observe us.
This is just my observation. The fact that you wrote this shows you care about what people think of you, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. I think there is a level of correlation between social/self awareness and caring about what people think. In order to be aware of others you do have to put yourself in their shoes, therefore care about what they think. The example of the chicken was interesting because in chosing the dark meat to have a tasty bbq was based on how you want your guest to experience your bbq (and factually dark meat is tastier haha). In that situation it seems either choice would be based on caring about what people think. What’s more important is the core value that drives this, I.e. do you care about what people think because you care about people vs. projecting a persona you think they want you to be. I think you fall in the first one if you cared for my thoughts 😉