How easy life would be if I could think, "I don't mind being disliked."
We wish for that, and still freeze up worrying about how others see us. I think many people know that feeling.
Meanwhile, people who are seriously absorbed in something seem not to care much what others think. It's tempting to say, "They just have a strong mind." But is that really it?
In this article I'll use psychology research to look at the relationship between centering yourself on a purpose and other people's opinions. The short version: you don't "stop caring" about being disliked. A more accurate view is that it drops in priority.
1. "I don't care" is probably an overstatement
First, a common misconception.
People are thought to have a basic need for connection with others. Psychology has long studied this as the need to belong.[1]
Having a purpose doesn't bring that need down to zero. Even someone absorbed in their work can be hurt when they're disliked.
Not "I don't care," but "there's something that ranks higher."
It's more natural to think that other people's opinions haven't vanished from your mind, but that their ranking, in terms of your time and attention, has changed.
2. A purpose pushes other concerns back
A clue for this idea is goal shielding.
Research has shown that when you are strongly committed to one goal, competing goals become less active in your mind.[2]
Applied to other people's opinions, the mechanism might look like this:
- When you're heading strongly toward a purpose, your attention and time gather around it
- As a result, there's relatively less room to think about how others see you
But this needs care. What goal-shielding research actually studies is competition between goals. It doesn't directly show that people stop caring about others' opinions.
Applying it here is only an analogy drawn from that research.
3. What you aim at can flip the result
This is the heart of the article.
You can't simply say, "Have a purpose and you'll stop caring what others think." That's because the purpose itself can depend on other people's approval.
| What you center on | Relationship with others' opinions |
|---|---|
| The purpose itself what you want to make, learn, or achieve | Their opinion tends to drop in priority |
| Approval gained through the purpose followers, praise, titles, reactions | You may become even more sensitive to it |
In research on what people base their self-worth on, "approval from others" is treated as one of the domains that self-worth can be contingent on.[3]
Self-determination theory also distinguishes motivation that comes from your own interests and values from motivation driven strongly by outside pressure, such as rewards and evaluation.[4]
In other words, "having a purpose" isn't enough on its own.
Is it a purpose you'd keep pursuing even without anyone's approval?
Take the goal "I want to make money writing online." What's inside it can differ:
- I want to write articles that help readers, and earn money as a result
- I want my numbers to grow, to be recognized, to be seen as impressive
In reality, these two can't be completely separated. But where your center of gravity lies changes how much you're shaken by criticism or silence.
If the second is at the center, "being disliked" or "not being recognized" isn't just noise. It's a threat to the purpose itself.
4. The "separation of tasks"
A similar way of organizing this is widely known in Japan as the "separation of tasks," through the book The Courage to Be Disliked.[5]
How others judge you isn't something you can directly control. What you can do is choose what you do, what you make, and how you act.
Connected to the point above, the separation of tasks can be used as a way to move your purpose back to the side you can actually handle.
5. Still, don't shut everything out
Finally, an important caution.
Lowering the priority of others' opinions is not the same as shutting them out.
- Being disliked or liked: no need to put it at the top more than necessary
- Criticism and feedback that help your purpose: take them in as information
Mix the two up, and in the name of "not caring what others think," you stop hearing the things you need to hear.
If anything, the more serious you are about your purpose, the more valuable useful criticism becomes. You can judge it not by "who said it" or "do they like me," but by whether the information helps your purpose.
Conclusion: not courage, but where you put things
To sum up:
- You don't stop caring about being disliked; it drops in priority
- That shift depends on whether you're centered on the purpose itself
- If others' approval is at the center of your purpose, you may become more sensitive to their opinions
- What drops in priority is liking and disliking; you don't need to throw away useful criticism
People who stop fearing being disliked haven't necessarily become unusually strong.
Where they're headed has become more important than what others think.
Maybe, as a result, other people's opinions simply moved down one place.
If you're frozen right now by how others see you, it may help more to ask what you want to put at the very top before asking "how do I stop caring?"
References
- Baumeister, R. F., & Leary, M. R. (1995). The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 117(3), 497–529.
- Shah, J. Y., Friedman, R., & Kruglanski, A. W. (2002). Forgetting all else: On the antecedents and consequences of goal shielding. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83(6), 1261–1280.
- Crocker, J., Luhtanen, R. K., Cooper, M. L., & Bouvrette, A. (2003). Contingencies of self-worth in college students: Theory and measurement. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85(5), 894–908.
- Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2000). The “what” and “why” of goal pursuits: Human needs and the self-determination of behavior. Psychological Inquiry, 11(4), 227–268.
- Kishimi, I., & Koga, F. (2013). Kirawareru yūki [The Courage to Be Disliked]. Tokyo: Diamond (in Japanese).