Even in childhood, in one situation or another, we understand that you cannot always say what is on your mind. If you don't fall in line with the majority opinion, they will laugh at you. Okay, it’s still school years, but the rules of behavior learned in childhood continue to work in adulthood. Moreover, public opinion orientation is a real hysteria that is spreading in cultures all over the world. On the one hand, there is nothing wrong with this, many people live like this all their lives, but HOW do they live and how could they live if they listened to themselves and were not afraid of society?
Irrational obsession with public opinion
There are no random events in evolution, and to understand the real reason for this madness, let's go back to 50,000 BC. e., when your distant ancestor lived in a small tribe.
Being part of this tribe is very important to him, his survival depends on it. Ancient people hunt together, protect each other, and outcasts die. So for your distant ancestor, there is nothing more important than agreement with his fellow tribesmen, especially with authoritative alpha males.
If he does not agree with everyone and please the people of his tribe, he will be considered strange, annoying and unpleasant, and then he will be kicked out of the tribe altogether and left to die alone.
If he pursues a woman from his tribe and their relationship ends before it begins, she will tell all the women in the tribe about his failure. And all the women with whom he could have a relationship, having learned about the failure, will also reject him.
So staying in society at that time was everything, and everything was done to ensure that you were accepted.
Many years have passed, but social hysteria continues to torment people. Now we don’t need approval from every person so much, but the search for social approval and the paralyzing fear of not being liked by other people seems to have remained in our genes and does not think of disappearing anywhere.
Let's call this obsession the social survival mammoth, or the inner mammoth. It looks something like this:
image from Wait But Why website
For your distant cave ancestor, having an inner mammoth was the key to survival and prosperity. It was simple: feed the mammoth well with social approval and carefully monitor his fears about disagreement, and everything will be fine.
This system worked perfectly well 50,000 BC. e. And 30,000 BC. e., and even 20,000 years after that. But gradually society changed, and with it the needs changed. But biology has not had time to adapt to it, which is strange, until now.
Our body and our mind are still made as if we were to live in 50,000 BC. e. This cave style of survival in society is no longer relevant, but it continues to torment us.
Now, in 2014, we continue to be haunted by a large, hungry and timid mammoth who still thinks like he did in 50,000 BC. e.
Otherwise, why are you going through four outfits, but can’t decide what to wear?
image from Wait But Why website
image from Wait But Why website
image from Wait But Why website
image from Wait But Why website
The mammoth's nightmares about bad experiences with the opposite sex made your ancestors cautious and smart, but now the mammoth's advice makes you simply indecisive and pathetic.
image from Wait But Why website
image from Wait But Why website
image from Wait But Why website
image from Wait But Why website
image from Wait But Why website
The mammoth interferes with the impulses of creativity and does not allow itself to express itself due to fear of failure.
image from Wait But Why website
The mammoth constantly has outbursts of fear, he is afraid of public reproach, and this plays a huge role in many areas of life.
This is the reason why you are afraid to go to a restaurant or to the cinema alone, because it is strange. The reason is that parents worry too much about what college their child will go to. The reason for marriages without love and a lucrative career without dedication and passion for their work.
The mammoth must be fed, and fed constantly. He thrives on approval and the feeling that he is on the right side of any moral or social dilemma.
Why else would you choose your Facebook photos so carefully? Why do you brag to your friends, even if you later regret it?
Society has an interest in maintaining this mammoth-dependent model. It introduces titles and awards, the very concept of prestige, to keep the mammoth happy and force people to do essentially unnecessary things and live flawed lives that they would never have chosen if not for the mammoth.
In addition, the mammoth wants to adapt and be like everyone else. He looks around all the time to understand what other people are doing, and when he understands, he immediately copies their behavior. To see this, just look at the photographs of two college graduations from different years.
image from Wait But Why website
An “acceptable” prestigious education also became part of the mammoth’s food.
image from Wait But Why website
image from Wait But Why website
Sometimes the mammoth focuses not on the general public, but on winning the approval of the puppeteer. This is a person or group of people whose opinion means SO much to you that it actually determines every aspect of your life.
Often parents or ringleaders in the company of friends become puppeteers. You can even make someone you don’t know very well or even a celebrity you don’t know your puppeteer (as teenagers often do).
We desire the approval of our puppeteer more than any other, and are terrified at the thought of disappointing or upsetting him.
In such a poisonous relationship with the puppet master, your opinions and moral beliefs are completely his, and it depends on him what they will be.
And while so much thought and energy is spent on the needs of the inner mammoth, there is someone else constantly present in your brain. It is always in the very center of your Self - this is your authentic voice.
image from Wait But Why website
Your authentic voice knows everything about you. In contrast to the strict dualism of a simple mammoth, for which there is only white and black, the authentic voice is comprehensive and complex, sometimes not very clear, constantly evolving and not knowing fear.
Your authentic voice has its own moral principles, which are based on experience, feelings and personal views, on compassion and honesty.
He knows how you feel about money, family and relationships; which people, interests and types of activities really bring you pleasure and which don’t. Your authentic voice understands that it does not know how your life should go, but it senses the right path.
While the mammoth relies only on the external world when making decisions, the authentic voice uses the external world to collect and learn information, but when it comes time to make decisions, everything it needs is already in the brain.
The mammoth constantly ignores the true voice. For example, if a self-confident person expresses his opinion, the mammoth turns into a rumor. And the desperate pleas of the inner voice are rejected and ignored until someone expresses such a point of view.
And when our brain, acting according to the laws of distant ancestors, continues to give the mammoth too much power, the authentic voice begins to feel superfluous. He becomes silent, loses motivation and disappears.
image from Wait But Why website
Eventually the man, controlled by the mammoth, loses touch with his true voice. In tribal times, this was normal, because all that was needed was to agree and conform, and the mammoth does this very well.
But today, when the world has become much wider and fuller, and people are exposed to many cultures and individuals, opinions and opportunities, losing the inner voice becomes a danger.
When you don't know who you really are, the only decision-making mechanism you have is the outdated needs of your emotional mammoth.
And when it comes to the most personal and most important questions, instead of plunging inside yourself and finding the answer to all questions in the foggy variability of your Self, you simply look at those around you and look for answers in them. As a result, you become some kind of mixture of the strongest opinions of those people who surround you. And certainly not by myself.
Also, losing touch with your authentic voice makes you weak. When your identity is supported only by the approval and recognition of those around you, the criticism and judgment of others will really hurt.
Of course, defeat is painful enough for everyone, but for people led by a mammoth, it means much more than for people with a strong, authentic voice.
People with a developed “real self” have an inner core that helps them hold on and continue to do their job, but a mammoth-dependent person has only the desire to fit in with others and no core, so failures for him are a real disaster.
For example, do you know people who cannot take even constructive criticism, and sometimes can even take revenge for it? These people are mammoth obsessed, and they get so mad about criticism because they can't handle disapproval.
image from Wait But Why website
image from Wait But Why website
image from Wait But Why website
After all that has been said, it becomes clear: you need to find a way to curb your inner mammoth. This is the only opportunity to take life back into your own hands and control it.
Roots of the phenomenon
Fear of evaluation in psychology (FR) is a manifestation of the instinct of self-preservation in response to the regulation of our behavior by the society where we live. CO also has a positive function, for example, it prevents a person from committing crimes, because a person knows that society will react negatively to his action and he will be punished.
But there is a dark side to this phenomenon: blocking creativity, when you have the illusory security that no one will see your “terrible” work. And it seems to you that you are committing an aesthetic crime by showing the world your pictures with a “pretense of originality.”
How to find and tame your inner mammoth
Some people are born with an intelligent tame mammoth, or their upbringing helps keep the mammoth in line. Others never try to tame their mammoth until their death and spend their entire lives following its whims. Most of us are somewhere in the middle: in some life situations we control our mammoth, in others it harms us.
If you are controlled by a mammoth, this does not mean that you are a bad or weak person. You just haven't learned how to control it yet. You may not even know about the existence of a mammoth and that your true Self is huddled in a corner and silent.
Whatever your situation, you must keep the mammoth under control. Here are three steps to help you do this.
Step 1: Check yourself
The first step is to take an honest and fair assessment of what's going on in your head. Here are the three parts of this step.
Get to know your authentic voice
image from the Wait But Why website
It seems simple, but in fact it is very difficult. It takes serious effort to wade through the web of other people's thoughts and opinions and understand your “real self.”
You spend time with a lot of people, which of them do you really like? How do you spend your free time and do you really enjoy all the parts of it?
Are there things you regularly spend money on but don't feel any pleasure from? How do you feel about your work and social status? What are your political beliefs?
Have you thought about this at all? Do you pretend to care about certain things just to have an opinion? Maybe you have your own opinion about some political and moral issues that you have never voiced because people you know will be outraged?
These are common questions for soul searching or self-discovery, but it really needs to be done. Maybe you can think about this right now, wherever you are, or maybe you need a special atmosphere: move away, be alone with yourself and only then plunge into reflection.
Either way, you need to figure out what really matters to you and start being proud of your authentic voice, your “real self.”
Find out where the mammoth is hiding
image from Wait But Why
Most of the time, when a mammoth is under control, the person does not even realize it. But you can't succeed unless you know exactly where the biggest problems are.
The most obvious way to discover the mammoth is to find out where your fears nest, in which area shame and embarrassment most often arise. When you think about any area of life, you are overcome with a terrible feeling, a feeling of failure, and this failure seems like a nightmare. What is this sphere?
You are afraid to start something, even if you know you are good at it. What areas of your life definitely need changes, but you avoid changes in them and do nothing?
The second place where the mammoth hides is in the overly good feelings that arise when you agree with other people. Are you a true people pleaser at work and in your personal life? Are you afraid of the possibility of disagreeing with your parents? Between their pride in you and the opportunity to please yourself, do you choose the former?
The third area where the mammoth hides is when you cannot make decisions without the approval of other people. Or you can, but you feel very uncomfortable. Which of your opinions and beliefs are yours and not other people's? Do you hold these opinions because others say so?
If you introduce your new boyfriend/girlfriend to your family and friends and no one likes your crush, can their attitude change your feelings? Is there a person in your life who controls you like a puppet? If so, who is he and why are you allowing this?
Decide where it's time to take control of the mammoth
image from the website Wait But Why
It’s impossible to completely get the mammoth out of our heads, after all, we are human. But what really needs to be done is to rid some areas of life from its influence that simply must be under the control of your true Self.
These are obvious areas such as choosing a partner, career, and how to raise children. The remaining areas are individual and are determined through a simple question: “In what areas of life should I be completely honest with myself?”
Step 2: Be brave, the mammoth has a low IQ
True woolly mammoths were stupid enough to go extinct, and the survival of social mammoths is no better. Even though they are chasing us, mammoths are stupid, primitive creatures who do not understand the modern world.
Feel and realize this deeply. This is the key to subduing your mammoth. There are two good reasons not to take your mammoth seriously.
The mammoth's fears are irrational
The mammoth has five global errors.
→ Everyone is talking about me and my life, and just think what they will all say if I do this risky or strange thing!
This is how a mammoth thinks:
image from Wait But Why website
And here's what it actually looks like:
image from Wait But Why website
No one cares about how you live and what you do. People for the most part think only about themselves.
→ If I try, I can please everyone.
Yes, this can happen if you live in a tribe of 40 people united by the same culture. But in the modern world, it doesn’t matter who you are or how you behave. Some people will love you, others will hate you or just dislike you.
If some people approve of you, you infuriate others. So having a strong desire to please one group of people is illogical and wrong, especially if you don't strongly support their views. You make extraordinary efforts to please one group of people, and at the same time other people who could become true friends will not wait for your company.
→ If they judge me, look down on me, or say nasty things about me, this will cause serious consequences in my life.
The person who is judging you or your actions is not even in the same room as you, or at least not directly next to you. In 99.7% of cases this happens. It is a classic mammoth mistake to imagine social consequences that are much worse and worse than what actually happens. In reality, other people's opinions mean practically nothing and do not affect life in any way.
→ People judging me matter.
This is what goes on in the minds of people who like to judge others: they are completely under the control of a mammoth and are looking for the same mammoth puppet friends. The favorite pastime of such people is to get together and wash everyone’s bones.
Maybe they're jealous, and bad-mouthing other people helps them feel a little less jealous. Or they just like to wallow in schadenfreude. In any case, these condemnatory tirades serve as excellent food for the mammoth.
When judging someone, gossipers always end up on the other, “right side” and feel white and fluffy. It's unpleasant to realize that at your expense someone feels beautiful and pure, but in reality it has no effect on your life.
image from Wait But Why website
image from Wait But Why website
image from Wait But Why website
Other people's conversations and gossip do not concern you, they concern only the gossipers and their fattened mammoths. If you find yourself making decisions with an eye on gossipers out of fear that they will judge you, realize what is happening in time and stop.
→ I will be a bad person if I disappoint or offend the people who love me and have invested so much in me.
No. You won't be a bad person, son or friend if you listen to the real you. There is one simple rule: if they truly love you and are not selfishly taking advantage of you, they will accept whatever makes you happy and will come back to you.
Well, if you're happy and they don't think to come, here's what's happened: their strong feelings about who you should be and what you should do are an echo of their mammoths, and they're upset because they're worried about what they'll say about it other people. They allow their mammoth to conquer their love for you, which means they have no place in your life.
And two more reasons why the mammoth's fearful obsession with social approval makes no sense.
A. You live here.
image from Wait But Why website
What could possibly matter?
Q. Both you and everyone you know will die. And pretty soon.
image from Wait But Why website
So, all the mammoth’s fears are irrational, because he is stupid. And here is the second reason.
This is how smart people play it safe
It is not at all necessary, when expressing your opinion, to chop the air with your palm and generally show aggressiveness. There is a family around you, not enemies. It is best to use soft formulations, like: “Isn’t it true that...?”, “Perhaps the issue needs further study...”, “Something has not yet been sufficiently studied, but...”
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This creates the stage for continued dialogue, during which all participants can learn more.
And one more added bonus. By laying his cards on the table, a person partially relieves himself of responsibility for possible bad consequences. The concerns expressed largely shift them to the shoulders of the authorities. Let him have a headache now!
