Improvement pill here a very interesting study was conducted in 2000 at Cornell
University by Professor Thomas Gilovich he took groups of students and randomly
selected one individual from each group he then told the rest of the students to
show up to a certain room at a certain time to work on a quote-unquote project
it's very important to note that all of the seats in this room were positioned
in a way so that everyone was facing the door he then took the singled out
individuals purposely stalled them a bit and had them wear a t-shirt with a
well-known person on it such as Martin Luther King or Bob Marley he then told
that individual to go to the room knowing that they would be late and also
knowing that all of the other students would look up at the door and notice who
was coming in this experiment was supposed to replicate an embarrassing
event the singled out individuals knew that there were the only ones who were
late and they were led to believe that everyone else noticed by the fact that
everyone looked up when they walked into the room after the experiment the
researchers asked these embarrassed individuals how many of the students do
you think remembered the incidents vividly and on average these singled out
individuals reported that 50% of all the other students would be able to recall
the event and the shirt that they were wearing because well they messed up and
they were absolutely sure that a large chunk of people in the room noticed but
what the researchers actually found was that only 10% of the students in that
room were able to recall the event and the t-shirt five times less than what
our embarrassed individuals thought what this experiment discovered is what's
called the spotlight effect we humans often overestimate how much others care
about our negative and also positive actions we think that the spotlight is
on us that everyone is looking at us and judging us when in reality the large
majority of people simply don't care and this is a very very important concept
that you need to internalize if you are struggling with social anxiety see the
main reason we feel anxious around others is because we feel like they're
watching us and judging us we're scared to act how we want to be ourselves
because we don't want to risk people looking down on us we don't want others
to dislike us but in reality the large majority of people simply don't care
that much about you I know this sounds like a bad thing but it's just human
nature most people are stuck in their own heads
and are thinking about themselves not you the moment you internalize this
concept and genuinely start believing in it your levels of social anxiety will
drop significantly but of course this is much easier said than done how in the
world can we get ourselves to truly truly believe in the spotlight effect
well today I'm gonna show you a simple two-step process that I personally used
to drill this concept into my own head step 1 you need to become more aware of
your own thoughts the large majority of us are oblivious to the fifty to seventy
thousand thoughts that we have on average every single day which is why
you need to start building a mindfulness habit like meditation where you try to
clear your head and try to focus on one thing like your breathing when you build
a mindfulness practice like this you will become 10 times more aware of how
you think and you will also start to notice that the large majority of your
own thoughts are about yourself past events future concerns worrying about
what others think that sort of stuff you'll notice that less than 1% of your
own thoughts will be about other people that you come across randomly throughout
the day step 2 once you've started becoming more aware of your own thoughts
you can start doing another mental exercise one that I like to call the
swapping shoes exercise this is when you go to a public place and pick out a
random individual then you focus focus focus and you try your hardest to
imagine what's going on in their head imagine that you're in their shoes
living their life what problems are they currently facing what are they currently
worrying or stressing out about what sort of insecure thoughts are going on
in their head what other things do you think they're thinking about allow
yourself to really imagine being in their shoes and also imagine what sort
of thoughts are going on in their head by doing this exercise you will start to
condition yourself to believe that others spend the majority of their time
thinking about their own problems and themselves which is actually true the
more you do this the more you will internalize the spotlight effect which
in turn will allow you to start feeling less and less social anxiety as you
start to realize that people just aren't paying that much attention to you it
might sound a bit sad to realize this but in reality you'll feel a huge weight
being lifted off of your shoulders you will feel free this episode is sponsored
by blankets oftentimes I get questions from you guys about where I get all of
my ideas from and to be honest a fair amount of them do come from books the
problem is that sometimes it can be hard to find time to sit down and read which
is why I recommend kist Linkous takes the key teachings
from thousands of non-fiction books and convinces them into 15-minute snippets
that you can read or even listen to that way you don't have to read the entire
book in order to extract the lessons I use blankets whenever I need to quickly
learn more about a subject for example just the other day I was doing some
research on the subject of psychology trying to find some new ideas the
problem was that there are literally dozens of books published every year
about psychology it would have taken me forever to manually go through each of
these books but because I have plinkus I was able to quickly learn a lot about
many interesting psychology concepts from great books such as truth by Hector
McDonald life lessons from a brain surgeon by rahul jandial
and childhood disrupted by donna nakazawa all of which i recommend you
guys to check out the first 100 people to go to WWE is calm Ford / improvement
pill will get unlimited access to try out blink is for an entire week you'll
also get 25% off if you want a full membership you can cancel at any time if
you want to help support the channel this is one of the best ways to do so
just check it out besides that guys stay tuned