The Truth About The Spotlight Effect
The Amplified Impact Podcast
June 14th, 2023
In this episode, I dive into the topic of how much people actually think about you and the impact it has on your life.
We all tend to think of ourselves as the center of the universe, creating our own perceptions and believing others revolve around us.
However, the reality is that most individuals don’t spend much time thinking about us….even close friends and family are often preoccupied with their own lives.
This realization can be both liberating and disheartening.
On one hand, it’s liberating to recognize that people’s opinions of us don’t hold as much weight as we may think.
On the other, it’s disheartening to acknowledge that many of us live our lives based on other people’s expectations and desires.
While it’s true that there are people out there who judge and watch our every move…their opinions shouldn’t have the power to alter our journey.
We shouldn’t allow the opinions of others, whether positive or negative, to influence our trajectory.
TWEETABLE QUOTE:
“And that creates a life of discontentment and dissatisfaction and inevitably will lead to a place later on filled with either regret or it’s going to be the catalyst for some massive trauma as you look back and you realize, I didn’t live my life, I lived somebody else’s life.”- Anthony Vicino
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Episode Transcript:
Anthony Vicino [00:00:00]:
What’s up, everybody? Welcome back to the pod. So a while back, Ryan Holiday, who’s this stoic author who’s written a bunch of books I really like. Like the obstacles, the way discipline is destiny. I haven’t actually read that one, but it’s his newest book. He wrote a book called Paranoia the story of Peter Thiel. Conspiracy. Conspiracy, I think is what it was called. Wait, is that even right? I don’t know what’s called.
Anthony Vicino [00:00:23]:
Anyways, he writes a lot in this kind of like stoic mindset vein. Love his stuff. I think he’s a great thinker. But he said something a while back that I fundamentally disagreed with, which was that nobody is thinking you’re an imposter. They are too busy thinking about themselves. And I was reminded of this again recently when my buddy saw Hill Bloom, he created a post about the spotlight effect, which is we vastly overestimate in our own minds how much people are thinking about us. And there’s a lot of truth to this. We live our lives thinking in a very real way.
Anthony Vicino [00:00:54]:
We are the center of our own universe, right? Like, if you think about the entirety of your human experience is occurring within your skull, within this couple of inches of gray matter, you are generating an entire perception of the universe. And everybody is like the locust of their own universe within their own little brain. And so it makes sense that we think that everybody else revolves around us, that they’re thinking about us, that we are the main characters in this movie and that everybody else is an NPC and that they are only there to move us further on our hero journey. The reality is that’s not the case. Most people don’t spend any time thinking about you. Even people who really love you, friends and family, really close people. It’s just that they’re so wrapped up in their own shit thinking about them being the main character of their life, and they think that you’re thinking about them when in reality, you’re just thinking about them thinking about you. And so it’s like this interesting push and pull.
Anthony Vicino [00:01:46]:
So on the one hand, I think there’s a lot of truth that humans just generally don’t spend a lot as much time thinking about you as you think they do. But the other side of this that I disagree with is that there are still a lot of people that think about you and will judge you and criticize you, because a lot of people are afraid to put themselves out there, put out content, to put out their business, like, to build these things because they’re afraid what others will think. There’s the trolls on social media. They’re going to tell you that you’re ugly, you’re fat, you should shut up and you have nothing worth sharing. A lot of people like that. Yeah. Have any idea how many times per day I get called a clown or a rich asshole who doesn’t know anything a lot. But if I let that stop me from creating, then I’m allowing somebody else’s opinion of me to dictate my actions.
Anthony Vicino [00:02:31]:
And the reality is this, that there are plenty of people out there judging you, but the truth is their opinions don’t matter, right? So what if some person out there that you’ve never met before or even somebody that you love and care about, so what if they think what you’re doing is stupid? Or they have a judgment about your life and that you’re not living in alignment with their values? Doesn’t matter. It’s your life. And their opinions only affect you if you allow it to. And we give people this power over us, especially our loved ones, our family. And this is why we go down career paths or life paths that we don’t necessarily love, that we don’t want for ourselves, but we do because our parents want us to be a doctor. They want us to get married to this particular person or this type of person. They want us to live in this particular way. So we live in alignment with other people’s dreams for our lives and not necessarily our own dreams for ourselves.
Anthony Vicino [00:03:25]:
And that creates a life of discontentment and dissatisfaction and inevitably will lead to a place later on filled with either regret or it’s going to be the catalyst for some massive trauma as you look back and you realize, I didn’t live my life, I lived somebody else’s life. And that’s not a way to ever get to the end of this game and then feel any kind of fulfillment or satisfaction. So this idea that there are people out there who are watching you and judging you is true. But Alex RamosI said it really well. He said the people who are further ahead of you, who are more successful, they’re not spending any time thinking about you, right? They’re looking ahead. They’re looking at the mountaintop and where they’re going. The only people who are really looking at you and judging are the people who are behind you, who are further behind you on the journey, right? Like they’re looking up the hill. They see you on the hill and they’re fixated on your butt as you’re further ahead on the journey.
Anthony Vicino [00:04:17]:
And the truth is, their opinion doesn’t matter because if you let it, they will just try to pull you back down to where they are. And why would you ever go back down? So that’s all? That’s all I got. Just two thoughts. One coming from Ryan Holiday, the other from Saw Hill. Bloom and these ideas, they can all be true simultaneously. It’s a paradox, right? Like, the idea that people aren’t thinking about you, but then that they are. And what do you do with those opinions and perspectives? And I say, don’t let it alter your journey. Decide that for yourself.
Anthony Vicino [00:04:49]:
Outside of whatever else anybody thinks of you or wants for you in your life. So hope this brought you guys a little bit of value. If it did, as always, do me a favor. Drop a review, drop a like, leave me a comment. It reach out, connect. I’d love to hear from you guys, and as always, I’ll see you back around these parts tomorrow. But until then, stay hyper focused, my friend.
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