Getting out of your head is an INCREDIBLY important skill that will transform every part of your interactions with the world. This is where the negative thoughts and feelings live!

Interestingly, knowing what you can’t do is just as important as knowing what you can do. I remember as a young nervous psychologist, considerable hesitation came from me thinking I needed to be able to work with and fix every one of their psychological problems. Over time, I started to work out which people I work best with and which people I needed to refer away. This was so liberating! I knew my limits and I only worked with people I was well equipped for.

When we feel inadequate it’s often because we see others as “more than” and ourselves as “less than” by comparison.  But as soon as you get to know someone beyond face value or public persona, you quickly discover they have all the hallmark struggles that most humans do. When you get better at seeing this, you will get better at letting go of comparison and start seeing people as people. With this will come relief and you will quickly build social confidence.

One of the reasons we feel self-conscious is because we feel like our “faults” make us lack something special, make us different or not perfect enough. No one is perfect and everybody has their own faults, but if you learn to accept yourself entirely, you begin to build your self-worth and spend less time feeling self-conscious.

While you are worried about your stuff, everyone else is so tangled up with their own thoughts, worries, struggles and their own confidence that they have little time to dwell over (and memorize) any reckless bloopers you might have displayed. The “spotlight affect” has most of us assume we are getting double the attention we actually are.