Insecurity
The saying “you shouldn't care what others think” is often thrown around as a cheap remedy for the psychological blight of our insecurities. It is a frequent excuse to blithely saunter throughout life ignoring any and all criticism or judgment—to “walk your own path,” as it were—yet it's far from a controversial notion, simply because it's actually true most of the time. But I think it's very much worth exploring this idea and asking why this is. "You shouldn't care what 95% people think," is probably a more honest phrasing for two main reasons:
95% of people are simply incapable of formulating good criticism and it is senseless to heed to their opinion of you.
95% of people you encounter won't be a part of your life; they have no involvement in your success or failure as an individual.
We first have to acknowledge that a vast majority of people we’ll encounter in our lives don't have the patience to understand the nuances of you as a person and your individual situation. And for many of those that do judge you, they neither know how to give good feedback and organize their ideas in a constructive, helpful way, but instead, it is often illogical, incoherent, or with bad intentions.
Most criticism is just people’s convoluted—and often vitriolic—way of saying, “it’s not for me.” The person who goes to a Sichuanese restaurant and subsequently gives a one-star rating on Yelp because the food was too spicy helps neither the restaurant improve the quality of their food or service nor help the consumer determine that quality either. The criticism often tells more about themselves than the person or thing they're trying to criticize. Read enough online reviews, or the average high school or college student’s essays, and you’ll find more than enough damning evidence that the average person you’ll come across—in school, work, and even your family—is incapable of coherently summarizing their thoughts, do not possess any depth of knowledge in the relevant domains, and cannot disentangle their emotions in order to give an unbiased perspective. They will not give you good advice or feedback for what works for you, because they don’t understand you, nor do they care to understand.
The second point is that we need to only worry about the five percent—your friends, family, significant others, mentors, and anyone else that will support you in your journey in life, your bosses that will offer you meaningful work to do, and your coworkers that will walk alongside you as you do that work.
Yet another hackneyed concept is that these people "love you for who you are," regardless of your shortcomings. This is missing the point. Maybe they do indeed love you for who you are, but especially when our current self is clearly inadequate and in need of improvement, those that matter in our lives love us for who we can be; they understand our potential to grow and develop as an individual despite our shortcomings. Your insecurities don't matter to them because they don't share your same tunnel vision and myopic tendency to focus on your faults; they see beyond those trivialities because they've already acknowledged your capacity to overcome them. They have such a deep faith and commitment to your present and future success that it's impossible for them to merely settle for the person you are now.
If we can make this distinction of the people that matter and don’t matter in our journey, we can begin to break free of the psychological chains of our insecurity. If we’re inadequate in the eyes of irrelevant people in our lives, why care when they will contribute nothing? And if we’re inadequate in the eyes of those we trust—those that we have recognized as simultaneously able to empathize with our situation and offer constructive feedback—being vulnerable and allowing our insecurities to be privy to those people is precisely the means, and probably the only means, of truly becoming our best selves.
Let this be a reminder that we have to hone our ability to discern who does or does not have good judgment, a kind heart, and the patience to understand your individual situation, because those are the only people that will exhort you to become a better person or do better work. It's incredibly rare for truly successful people to have made it to their peak completely alone and without these kinds of supportive individuals along the way. In the same light, we equally have our own responsibility to hone our ability to have good judgment, a kind heart, and the patience to understand others so that we ourselves are able to support others in their journey with tact and discretion.
