In second grade, I asked a girl in my class if she liked my new haircut. I was insecure and nervous about how I looked, so I needed the approval of a peer. But if desperately diving for compliments wasn’t bad enough, she promptly replied “no.”
Already insecure about this haircut and devastated that others had confirmed my fears, this proved to be a tremendous blow to my confidence. A simple “no” — from a peer who could probably care less about my what my hair looked like — ruined my day. There are two things wrong with this.
The first is that I asked the question at all. I shouldn’t have needed validation from someone else to prove to myself that my hair didn’t look so bad. I wasn’t necessarily insecure about the haircut itself, but about what others would think of me?
I asked the question to try and stifle this fear and instead only made it worse. I convinced myself that it mattered what others thought of me and that I received their approval before I could accept myself.
The second thing wrong is that I actually listened to the answer. If this girl had said, “Yes, it looks beautiful!” I wouldn’t even remember that this second grade exchange had happened. But the fact that I remember so clearly is a testament to how much it hurt.
I listened to the answer, and I let it affect me. I let someone else dictate my self-esteem, and it temporarily crushed me. Something as simple as a haircut — something so short-lived — crushed me.
This is a bigger problem than second graders and their silly rules for the world. This is about caring what people think so much that it starts to affect who you are and changes how you view yourself.
The thing is, I now know that this is a problem. But if someone told me again, years later, that they didn’t like my hair, it would hurt. No, it wouldn’t crush me, and yes, I would get over it, but it would definitely sting. Even though I know it shouldn’t matter.
We spend so much time trying to prove that we don’t care what others think. We seem to value this concept of individualism and difference yet are afraid of standing out too much. We want to be different, but we don’t want to be so different that we risk others judging us.
This seems to be a fake commitment. A half-hearted dedication to our true selves. We know we’re supposed to not care what others think, but it still remains one of the things we struggle with on a daily basis.
We admire the few people who can walk through the day without a care in the world, totally and utterly themselves. It’s a beautiful, honorable and rare trait.
For those of us who want to make more of an effort to “let go,” there is a more realistic, everyday way of not caring what others think. It’s very simple.
Act in a way that you can be proud of. If someone tells you they hate your favorite movie, it doesn’t mean you have to pretend to hate it, too. Be honest about who you are and don’t feel like you have to suppress yourself to match the needs of others.
It’s normal to find yourself caring a little too much about what people think every now and then. Most people do, and that’s OK. But keep it in check. Don’t let a haircut and a meaningless comment ruin your day. It’s just not worth it.
