Don’t feel bad if you have a hard time tuning out other people’s opinions. The tendency toward fitting in just may have helped your ancestors survive.
It’s easy to say, “Don’t worry what other people think,” but in practice it’s not as simple. Have you ever wondered why that is or even felt glum that you can’t just set aside other people’s view of you? Fitting in might not matter so much now, but long ago it was critical for survival.
Tim Urban at Wait But Why dove into the evolutionary reasons behind our desire to fit in, and what he discovered was fascinating. He calls the anxiety around fitting in “a defining paranoia of the human species.”
Today, fitting in isn’t tied directly to our survival. You work at a job where you earn money, and you use that money to pay for food, shelter, clothing, and other basic (and not-so-basic) needs. Theoretically, you can do this without fitting in. Sure, it’s a good idea to have a rapport with coworkers, but even that isn’t a requirement for staying alive.
According to Urban’s piece, though, this is a very new situation for us. Humans have spent thousands of years evolving for survival, and before we had agriculture and grocery stores and money and Ikea, we depended on each other a lot more. Not fitting in could very well mean being rejected from your tribe. And that almost certainly meant that you would die.
So we spent thousands of years evolving to fit in, and suddenly we did have agriculture and grocery stores and money and Ikea. But our brains haven’t been able to evolve to keep up with those changes. We still have the base instincts that help us survive in a tribal setting. Urban argues that this isn’t just a relic, but a handicap.
Our deep need to fit in makes us timid about approaching other people for fear of awkwardness. It makes us try on 15 outfits before heading out of the house. It makes us compare our kids to other kids, seeing problems where none exist. We’re stuck with this deeply-rooted anxiety that doesn’t serve anymore.
Beyond Fitting In: Finding Our Authentic Voice
The worst part about this desire to fit in, Urban argues, is that it keeps us from finding what he calls our Authentic Voice. When we get preoccupied with what other people think, we lose ourselves.
Your Authentic Voice is who you really are, and it isn’t influenced by societal pressure. But how do we find it? Urban breaks it down into handy steps:
1. Self-examination. He’s talking about serious soul-searching and identifying your fears. It also means figuring out where you most yearn for acceptance and permission from other people.
2. Work on taking those things less seriously. Let go of that feeling that everyone is examining your decisions, and try to stop worrying about pleasing everyone. Urban reminds us that when people do say bad things about us, it doesn’t really matter, because we can gravitate away from people who judge us and toward people who accept us. We have choices, because we don’t live in a small tribe anymore. Other people’s judgements don’t matter, because they are just a handful in a sea of people. The folks who really love you will still love you when you follow your Authentic Voice.
3. Be yourself. Urban calls the need for acceptance a “Mammoth,” and he says there’s a key thing to remember that helps diminish that Mammoth’s power. He says that, “Almost nothing you’re socially scared of is actually scary.” He stresses that this Mammoth will always be with you, but remembering that it’s there and that it doesn’t really matter helps you push past it to your Authentic Voice.
This might look like a simple three-step program, but it is by no means easy. Ignoring all of those hard-wired instincts takes practice, and you’re going to give into the Mammoth sometimes. That’s OK! Finding your Authentic Voice in the middle of thousands of years of evolution is no easy feat, so don’t beat yourself up when you let your social fears drive you once in a while. We can only do our best, and the cool part about finding your Authentic Voice is that you decide what “best” means for yourself.
