To be clear, others ARE judging you. You are not imagining it. What I am suggesting is that their judgment about you isn’t important (even to them) and won’t affect you if you never buy into their frame in the first place.
You’re probably good at some things. The person judging you is probably good at some things, too. If you take it further, you are inviting unnecessary pain into your life.
Usual Frame: Some people are good, and some are not.
Reframe: We’re all flawed, and we’re all good at different things.
A healthy habit for staying out of the judging mindset involves gratitude. Appreciate the skills and qualities of the people you find the most annoying. There’s a person in my extended social world that I dislike and for good reason. But I must admit he’s excellent at his job.
Every time you judge someone harshly, you buy into the idea that judging is a thing worth doing. It isn’t. Stop judging others so much and watch how much less you worry about being judged.
The Danger of Art
People who view art as entertainment often make the tragic mistake of accidentally injecting themselves with sadness medicine. And by that, I mean they consume anxiety-inducing movies, books, and music about loss and tragedy to make themselves feel good. That makes perfect sense to anyone who sees art as entertainment. What do you do when you feel blue? One good idea is to find some entertainment. How about rewatching the movie Schindler’s List? That’s entertainment, isn’t it?
No, it isn’t. It’s more like a drug that gives you PTSD for the rest of your life. If the message of it keeps the world safer, I’m in favor of it. I just wish it had a proper warning label. I think Spielberg should have paid me to be a test animal for his mind-altering product. Here’s the reframe of this.
Usual Frame: Art is entertainment.
Reframe: Art is a powerful, mind-altering drug.
I recommend removing from your life all art that makes you sad or anxious, even if it redeems itself with some sort of happy ending. Find art that moves you without the bad parts. There is plenty of it.
Handling Criticism
As a public figure who is reckless enough to use social media, I am viciously criticized many times a day. A few times per year, I wake to see my name trending on X. That is rarely a good thing. It usually means the trolls have already begun their assault on my timeline. And yet I generally have a good day. Do you think you could handle a daily hellscape of insults about your work, your character, your mind, and your appearance? After reading this chapter, it will be a lot easier. I’ll start with my favorite reframe for critics.
Usual Frame: Your critics are evil monsters.
Reframe: Your critics are your mascots.
Years ago, when I co-owned a local restaurant, one of the employees decided to do a one-person picket line in front of our entrance every day during peak meal periods. I forget what his complaint was, but no one else on the staff seemed to have a problem except for their complaints about the picketer, as they believed he was driving away their future tips. Tensions were high between the staff and my co-owner, Stacey. At first, I advised them to wait it out, assuming the disgruntled worker would get tired of it after a few days. But he was feisty. He leaned into it, day after day.
One day I stopped in and watched the show. It was comical because we didn’t regard his complaint as valid (whatever it was), and he was all alone putting on a show. So I decided to reframe him. I turned to Stacey and told her I liked her new mascot. She laughed. I laughed. She shared it with the servers and kitchen staff. They laughed.
And just like that, our biggest critic became our mascot. We weren’t mocking him so much as reframing our experience. We could let him bother us. or we could let him be our mascot, which we all agreed was sort of hilarious. It was an easy choice. A few days later, he gave up.
I’ve had success reframing several of my most energetic critics and trolls as my mascots. I have no idea what impact that has on the critics or if they even know it happened. All I know is that the moment I mentally reframe a critic as a mascot, I feel better. Sometimes I even feel great.
Reframing How Criticism Feels
A good way to take energy out of any criticism that is using your self-esteem as a speed bag is by imagining the situation in its most basic scientific form. Particles and chemistry. Physics. Things bumping into other things. Most of that interaction is happening outside your zone of giving-a-darn. The random electric signals in the brain of another person need not be your concern.
Usual Frame: Criticism feels like a dagger to your heart.
Reframe: Criticism is a chemical reaction in the skull of someone who isn’t in the room.
Criticism stings. No one is immune. But reframing criticism as tiny changes in the wet and foldy brain of some walking-and-talking clump of carbon doesn’t feel so much like it is your problem.
The Go Eat Fudge Philosophy
This is the family-friendly version of a philosophy I heard as a young man. You can substitute naughtier words for “Go eat fudge,” and it will work just as well if not better. This reframe is NOT meant to be spoken aloud.
Notice how the reframe feels.
Usual Frame: You should do what I think you should do.
Reframe: Go eat fudge. (Spoken only in your mind.)
I learned this reframe in my freshman year of college, and it has served me well. Every time someone tried to control me with their opinion of what I should or should not be doing with my life, I dismissed them with one mental thought: Go eat fudge. (I might have substituted spicier words.)
This might be the best example of how reframes can be useful while also being nonsense. The three-word mental dismissal doesn’t seem as if it would be helpful, but I can report that it was. Not only for me, but for several of my college friends who tried it.
The essence of the reframe is that other people are not the authors of your experience. Sometimes you need to work with people you don’t like, and in that case, you will have to fake it as best you can. But for everyone else, they can go eat fudge. Not your problem.
Movie Reframe
Here’s a reframe I heard the other day. I tried it, and it worked right away.
Usual Frame: Everyone is thinking about me.
Reframe: You are only a bit player in their movie.
Outside of your immediate friends and loved ones, how much do you think about the imperfections of other people? Probably not much. You notice them sometimes, but they do not stick in your mind. It’s the same way they think of you—most of the time, they don’t care.
Our egos cause us to think everything we do is important. It isn’t. And that means your friends and loved ones will understand when you mess up. The rest of the world will never care one way or another.
The next time you feel like you’re being watched, or people are just waiting for you to make a mistake, remember how rarely people care about anyone but themselves. It’s weirdly comforting.
Social Media
When I was a young man, life would sometimes be stressful, but at least I could relax between the stressful situations and recharge. Today when I am between stressful situations, I take out my phone and browse social media—which makes me angrier and more anxious. Maybe later I turn on a movie and watch dozens of people getting slain for my entertainment. This is not relaxing.
I use social media because it is an essential element of my job. That might be the case for you, too. But for most people, social media is an addiction. They come for the dopamine hits, and if that has some long-term detrimental impact, it isn’t obvious enough or big enough to stop the addiction. The immediate concern is getting the next hit of dopamine. Addicts learn to think short term.