Other People's Opinions of Me Aren't My Business?

I’ll be 50 next year — and the truth is, some insecurities don’t vanish with age. They just resurface in new ways.

If you’re reading this, you know I’m charting a new path with my coaching business. This path feels exciting — but also unfamiliar. My sense of competence is wobbly, and any major life change seems to stir up self-doubt. Add to that the fact that this work is exposing — my ideas, my voice, myself — to people I know and plenty I don’t. And guess what ancient hardwiring came roaring back? The need for approval. My inner critic has been very loud (and very mean) lately.

This isn’t new territory for me. In my early 20s I spent time with a very wise human who told me: “Other people’s opinions of you aren’t your business.” At the time, it was shocking. It’s taken me years to see the wisdom in that statement.

But of course, it’s not easy to live out — because the need for acceptance is one of the deepest features of our human wiring. Until very recently in history, acceptance wasn’t just about belonging; it was about survival. Those of us alive today owe a debt of gratitude to our forebears who were likable (or at least likable enough not to get kicked out of the tribe before reproducing, lol).

Anthropologist Robin Dunbar posits that the size of the human brain correlates with the number of social relationships we can track. For the first 200,000 years of human history, we lived in small bands of 20–150 people. The success of both the individual and the tribe was tied to cooperation and acceptance.

Fast forward to a world of 8 billion. Intellectually, we know we don’t need everyone’s approval. But evolution moves slowly. There’s no software update for this ancient hardwiring. Which means that even when we know better, the desire for approval still drives us — consciously and unconsciously.

I’ve built enough self-acceptance over the years that I can usually tolerate not being everyone’s cup of tea. Most days, I like myself enough to handle that. But when I’m stretched, vulnerable, or doing something new, those old circuits fire just as loudly as they ever did. I have to remind myself that what people think of me is outside of my control. What is within my control is whether I stay aligned with my values, how I show up, how I respond and the kind of person I choose to be.

That’s where nervous system awareness comes in. When my inner critic gets loud, I have to intentionally come back to my body — to notice the ways stress is showing up, to choose how I respond, and to regulate so I can act from alignment rather than reactivity. It’s not about never feeling insecure; it’s about knowing what to do when I do.