WHAT IF? You’re Wrong About What Other People Think of You

The Stories We Make Up

Have you ever sent someone a message, seen that they read it, and then spent the next hour wondering why they haven’t responded?

Maybe you replay your last conversation. Did you say something weird? Were they annoyed? Did you come across as too much—or not enough?

Or maybe you walk out of a meeting feeling pretty good about what you contributed, until you remember one awkward comment. Suddenly, that one moment takes over the entire experience. You start imagining what everyone must have thought of you.

And just like that, a perfectly ordinary interaction becomes a full-blown investigation into your likability.

This is part of What If?, my 30-day experiment in rethinking everything. Each one starts with a question designed to challenge an assumption, explore a different perspective, or open up a possibility we may not have considered.

Today’s question is: What if you’re wrong about what other people think of you?

Not necessarily because they’re secretly impressed with you or like you more than you realize. Maybe they do. Maybe they don’t.

The point is that we often don’t know. We take a look, a pause, a short email, or a conversation that didn’t go quite how we expected, and we fill in the blanks with our insecurities, fears, and self-doubt.

We’re remarkably good at making up stories.

The problem is that we can spend so much time trying to figure out what’s happening inside someone else’s head that we miss an opportunity to understand what’s happening inside our own.

Most people aren’t watching as closely as you think

Psychologists call one version of this the spotlight effect: we tend to overestimate how much other people notice us and our behavior.

Think about the last time you made a mistake at work. Maybe you stumbled over a presentation, forgot someone’s name, or gave an answer that wasn’t quite right.

You might have thought about it all afternoon. You might still remember it a week later.

Meanwhile, the person sitting next to you might have forgotten the entire thing before lunch because they were busy worrying about their own presentation.

We’re the main character in our own lives. We experience every insecurity, every misstep, every moment we’d like to redo. But we’re supporting characters—or barely even extras—in most other people’s stories.

They’re busy thinking about their deadlines, their relationships, their finances, their kids, and that thing they said yesterday that they wish they could take back.

They’re starring in their own mental drama, too.

Yet we sometimes behave as though everyone else is sitting in the audience, watching our performance and taking notes.

We wonder whether we sounded intelligent enough, looked confident enough, or said exactly the right thing. We rehearse conversations before they happen and review them afterward, as if there’s going to be a final exam on whether we made a good impression.

And here’s where it gets interesting.

Sometimes we aren’t just overestimating how much people notice us. We’re projecting our own insecurities onto them.

We feel awkward, so we assume they thought we were awkward. We feel insecure about our abilities, so we interpret a question as evidence that someone doubts us. We feel disconnected, so we conclude that the other person doesn’t like us.

We take a feeling we’re having and use it to explain what someone else must be feeling.

But our feelings aren’t mind-reading devices.

A quiet colleague isn’t necessarily disappointed in you. A friend who’s distracted may have a dozen things on their mind. And a conversation that feels a little flat doesn’t automatically mean you failed to connect. There could be a million different reasons why that conversation wasn’t everything you wished it were, and most of those reasons are likely unrelated to you.

Sometimes there really is something going on. But sometimes we’re filling in the blanks with our own fears.

And I started thinking about this in a more personal way when I recognized something about myself through my coaching practice.

What I Discovered About Myself

People generally see me as confident. I’m comfortable taking the lead, speaking up, and being in the spotlight.

But confidence and connection are two different things.

I’d sometimes wondered why I didn’t feel as connected to people as I wanted to. It’s easy to start interpreting that kind of feeling as a problem with how other people see you. Maybe they don’t really like you. Maybe they don’t understand you. Maybe you’re just not connecting.

But through my coaching practice, I discovered something about myself that I hadn’t fully recognized before.

I could listen to what someone was saying and follow the conversation, but sometimes I was so focused on the point they were making that I moved past the emotion underneath it. I glazed right over it.

Someone might share something vulnerable or meaningful, and I could acknowledge what they’d said without really pausing to hear what they were feeling.

I was listening to the words, but I wasn’t always fully hearing the person.

In getting coached myself, I was able to recognize the pattern of how I was contributing. What was I protecting? Was I trying to avoid feeling emotional connection myself? Or was I protecting the speaker from my own fears of bringing up something too emotional?

It was worth digging into.

That was an important realization because it revealed a gap in my awareness—a skill I could actually work on.

I hadn’t known to look for it. And I couldn’t deliberately develop a skill I didn’t realize I needed.

Through practice, I began learning to pay closer attention to emotion, slow down, and notice what was happening beyond the words themselves.

Now, I don’t know whether other people have experienced me that way. I can’t say this explains every time I’ve felt disconnected, and I’m not going to pretend I know what other people think of me.

But I did discover something about myself that I wanted to understand and develop.

And that changed the question I could ask.

Instead of endlessly wondering whether people liked me or why I wasn’t connecting with them, I had something more useful to explore: How do I want to show up in my relationships, and what can I learn that might help me connect with people more deeply?

I didn’t need to know what everyone else thought of me to begin making a change.

That, to me, is the interesting part.

I had noticed a problem in my own experience, but I didn’t yet have the awareness or the skill to understand what might help. Coaching practice gave me a way to see something new about myself.

I wasn’t trying to become someone else to win approval. I was learning how to do something I genuinely wanted to do better.

And it made me wonder how often we miss that opportunity because we’re too busy trying to figure out what other people think.

What If You’re Asking the Wrong Question?

Imagine you’re at a party, talking to someone you’ve just met. You ask a question, they give you a short answer, and then the conversation fizzles out.

On the drive home, you decide they weren’t interested in you.

But what do you actually know?

Maybe they weren’t interested. Maybe they’re shy. Maybe they had a terrible day. Maybe the two of you didn’t have much in common. Or maybe you were so busy wondering whether they liked you that you weren’t fully present in the conversation.

You don’t know yet.

And notice how quickly the question “Did they like me?” puts you in a position where you’re waiting for someone else’s invisible verdict.

What if you asked a different question?

Was I interested in them? Was I curious? Did I listen? Did I give the conversation a chance?

Those questions don’t guarantee that you’ll connect. Relationships require two people, and you can’t manufacture chemistry by asking better questions.

But they give you something you can actually work with.

The same thing happens at work.

Imagine you share an idea in a meeting and your boss responds with, “Okay, let’s think about that.”

You spend the rest of the day wondering whether your idea was bad, whether your boss doubts your abilities, or whether you’ve somehow damaged your reputation.

But perhaps the idea needs more development. Perhaps your boss genuinely wants to think about it. Perhaps they’re distracted by an entirely different problem.

Or perhaps they don’t agree with you.

Even if that’s the case, disagreement isn’t necessarily a verdict on your intelligence or your value.

You can ask for feedback. You can clarify what they meant. You can consider whether there’s something to learn from the interaction.

Or you can decide that you don’t have enough information to draw a conclusion and get on with your day.

The point isn’t to replace every negative assumption with a positive one. It’s to stop treating your first interpretation as the only possible explanation.

Sometimes the most useful question isn’t “What are they thinking about me?”

It’s “What do I actually know, and what can I learn from this?”

Curiosity Isn’t the Same as Blame

Now, I want to be clear about something.

Turning inward doesn’t mean assuming every problem is your fault.

Other people have their own behaviors, biases, limitations, and responsibilities. Sometimes people really are judging us. Sometimes we’re in environments where we’re undervalued or treated unfairly. Sometimes the healthiest thing we can do is recognize that a relationship isn’t working and stop trying to make it work.

Self-awareness isn’t about finding a way to blame yourself for everything.

It’s about distinguishing between what belongs to you and what doesn’t.

You can’t control whether someone likes you. You can’t guarantee that every interaction will go well. And you can’t make every person understand your intentions.

But you can examine your assumptions. You can learn to communicate more clearly. You can become a better listener. You can ask for feedback rather than inventing it. You can decide whose opinions deserve your attention.

And you can recognize when you’re trying to manage someone’s perception of you at the expense of being yourself.

There’s a difference between caring about how you affect other people and constantly monitoring how you’re being perceived.

One helps you build better relationships. The other can turn every interaction into a performance review.

You don’t need to stop caring what people think. You need to stop treating every possible opinion as a problem you must solve.

Your What If? Experiment

So here’s what I’d like you to try over the next 24 hours.

The next time you catch yourself thinking, “They must think…” pause for a moment.

Maybe you think your colleague doesn’t respect you. Maybe you’re convinced a friend is annoyed with you. Maybe you leave a conversation wondering whether you made a terrible impression.

Instead of immediately believing the story, ask yourself three questions.

First: What do I actually know, and what am I assuming?

Separate what happened from the meaning you’ve attached to it. Someone gave you a short response. That’s an observation. Deciding that they’re disappointed in you is an interpretation.

There may be evidence for that interpretation. There may not be. Give yourself room to tell the difference.

Second: What am I feeling that might be influencing how I see this situation?

Are you feeling insecure, rejected, overlooked, or frustrated? Are you bringing an old fear into a new interaction? Are you looking for evidence of something you already suspect is true?

You don’t need to criticize yourself for what you feel. Just notice it.

Third: Is there anything here I genuinely want to learn about myself?

Maybe you realize you were so busy trying to impress someone that you forgot to be curious about them. Maybe you want to listen more carefully, speak up more confidently, or ask for clarification instead of assuming you know what someone meant.

Or maybe you discover that you did nothing wrong and you’re simply uncomfortable with not knowing what someone thinks.

That’s useful information, too.

You don’t have to find a flaw in yourself every time something feels uncomfortable. You just have to be willing to investigate before deciding you already know the answer.

Then take one small action, if there’s something worth acting on.

Ask the follow-up question. Request feedback. Acknowledge someone’s emotion. Or let an awkward moment pass without turning it into a three-act drama about your personality.

See what happens when you approach the situation with curiosity instead of a conclusion.

You Don’t Have to Solve Everyone Else’s Mind

I think one of the more liberating things we can learn is that we don’t need a complete understanding of what other people think of us to live the lives we want.

We can care about our relationships without constantly evaluating ourselves through someone else’s eyes.

We can accept feedback without seeking universal approval. We can work on ourselves without assuming we’re fundamentally flawed. We can be willing to learn without making every interaction a test of our worth.

And sometimes, we can simply let people have their opinions.

They might misunderstand us. They might not like us. They might form an impression that doesn’t capture the whole person we are.

That’s uncomfortable, but it doesn’t mean we need to spend our lives trying to correct every possible misunderstanding.

We can be thoughtful about how we show up and still accept that other people get to decide how they see us.

What we don’t have to do is invent their opinions for them and then organize our lives around those inventions.

So, the next time you find yourself replaying a conversation or wondering whether someone likes you, try a different approach.

Instead of asking yourself to solve the mystery of what they’re thinking, get curious about what you know, what you’re feeling, and what you might want to learn.

You may discover something about yourself that you hadn’t seen before. You may realize the story you were telling yourself wasn’t supported by the evidence. Or you may decide that, whatever the other person thinks, you know how you want to move forward.

You don’t need to know everything about someone else’s mind to make a meaningful change in your own life.

And you certainly don’t need to win everyone’s approval before you give yourself permission to be yourself.

If you’ve been making career decisions based on what you assume your boss or your team thinks of you, start with what you actually know. Take the Career Signals Quiz. It takes two minutes and names what you’re actually dealing with.

So here’s the question I want to leave you with:

What might become possible if you spent less time guessing what other people think of you and more time getting curious about what you can learn?

Keep questioning the assumptions, stay curious about what’s possible, and remember: you don’t have to know everything to take your next step.

This post is adapted from Episode 75 of The Bold Life podcast. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or at theboldlife.coach/podcast.