The entire world exists outside of you. You exist inside of you. How is it that the inside is so much louder than the entire outside? The mind has a perplexingly strong ability to tunnel its focus down to only those things that it believes have meaning to its own organism.
One could argue that there’s a certain flavor of egocentrism1 to be found in the vast majority of people. We just can’t help but think of ourselves. With reason! At the very root of our primeval brain, we’ve all evolved around the idea of self-preservation. It only makes sense that an animal concerned with self-preservation would think of just that: the self.
Is it really that bad to color yourself with these egocentric tendencies? A 1990 study2 by Baron and Hanna had this to say:
The intent of the present study is to examine the relationship between egocentrism and depressive symptoms in young adults. … As predicted, young adults with high egocentrism showed significantly more depressive symptoms than those with low egocentrism.
Given that, we can conclude that the tendency to worryingly focus on our self-perception leads to poor outcomes. In this capacity, we can then draw parallels between egocentrism and self-consciousness.
Where does that leave us in a societal structure where our interactions with others can bring up these feelings of self-consciousness? For a subset of us, myself included, that internal focus can leave us feeling anxious and scrutinized. Rather than keeping the external perspective in mind, we can’t help but default to the idea that the world is examining us. We’re under a microscope. Perhaps not a single global one, but certainly a revolving door of individual microscopes for each person we contact. At least that’s what our mind wants to think.
The perception of scrutiny can produce an adverse physical effect in the body. Personally, I’ve literally cringed in front of others if I’ve convinced myself that they’re bothered by my presence. For example, if I were seated in an audience, I would attempt to shrink down or slouch in my seat to the extent that the people behind me weren’t “offended by me blocking them”. This is the internal focus at play.
How could I possibly have known that anyone was actually bothered by me? Even if they were, how could I know that it was anything greater than the most mild of inconveniences for them? At most, they were likely to think, “wow, it’s hard to see in this packed audience” and move on. My brain convinced me that I alone was the problem. Out of all 300 people in the room, I was the only one that could possibly have been blocking the people behind me.
With a little reflection, you can dispel the illusion of the internal focus, but it’s so hard in the moment. Despite me not having any evidence that I was negatively affecting those around me, there was also no evidence to the contrary. Your mind will grip little handholds like that and cling for dear life. Even worse, at some point, the internal focus becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Imagine you walk into a room and convince yourself that everyone in the room has stopped talking amongst themselves to stare at you and judge you. How do you react? It’s likely that you physically shrink down. Your gaze lowers to the floor. Your head hangs loosely on your shoulders and you slump in place. Now the room has an actual reason to notice. Who’s this person that entered the room and instantly deflated like a punctured balloon? They’re completely ignoring eye contact and kicking imaginary rocks. That’s definitely odd.
Imagine instead that you pause briefly outside of the room, take a few calming breaths, and then stroll in like you haven’t a care in the world. You don’t make eye contact, but you look straight ahead and carry an easy-going smile. Rather than hiding in the doorway, you make your way to your seat without breaking stride. You’ve produced a completely different vibe.
All of that can be easier said than done. How do you do it? This is where the gradual construction of an external focus comes in. The very first step is to start noticing when you default to an internal focus. What are these people thinking about me? How am I conducting myself? Does anybody notice that I’m having a tough time right now? These little soundbites reinforce the internal dialogue that you’re the center of attention, and not in a good way. Simply make note of them and carry on like normal.
After you’ve spent a couple of weeks noticing the moments you’ve produced this internal focus, then start trying to reshape them into an external view instead. Start with one and build from there. This redirection is actually easier than stopping the old habit completely. As Charles Duhigg writes in The Power of Habit3:
Rather, to change a habit, you must keep the old cue, and deliver the old reward, but insert a new routine. That’s the rule: If you use the same cue, and provide the same reward, you can shift the routine and change the habit. Almost any behavior can be transformed if the cue and reward stay the same.
Start with our first example thought, “What are these people thinking about me?” This is easily redirected into an external focus. “What are these people thinking about?” Hard stop. You’ve now shifted the dialogue away from you being placed under the microscope to a general curiosity about the people and environment around you.
An internal focus doesn’t just stop there. What about those nagging thoughts during conversation that make it hard to even respond? This is level two: internal focus during active engagement. Personally, I’ve spent a lot of time calculating what I was going to say next based on what the person in front of me was actively saying. This is a horribly inefficient process since the overworking thinking is stomping over the active listening. Am I truly hearing what the other person is saying if the only thing I can think about is what I’m going to say next? Nope.
Level two solution: consciously slow the speed of your responses. Take the space between sentences to think about your response rather than trying to parse it out as you’re listening. Take the “what am I going to say?” and redirect it into “what are they actually saying right now?” Worried about seeming weird for pausing after someone has stopped talking? You’d be surprised at how gracious people are with the timing that they’ll give you. Take a full five seconds to think about your response, nobody will bat an eye.
There are limitless variations you can try to keep things lively as well. Gently nod as you take your pause for a physical indication that you’re thinking. Immediately following their sentence, say, “Yeah…” and then take your pause so the other person knows you heard what they said and you’re actively mulling it over. If it’s something especially deep, strike a quick pose of overt processing like running a hand down your cheek or a single slow swipe across your forehead.
All of this seem mechanical? Like you’re some weird robot just going through the motions of interaction? It will be until it’s just a natural part of your interaction pattern. The key part of the external focus is that you won’t even care. You’re too busy thinking about the information you’re receiving from all of the inputs in front of you to worry about how you appear while responding.
Practice this stuff long enough and you’ll even start to notice people with an overbearing internal focus around you. This is level three. You begin to develop the understanding that most people are thinking about themselves. This sounds brusque at face value, but it’s how our brains are wired. The majority of people aren’t narcissists, but our mind will flavor almost any interaction with our perspective alone. It’s hard to sit in someone else’s driver’s seat.
Embrace this as a comforting thought. Everyone you meet will likely spend 80% of their time thinking about their own lives and be largely unimpacted by any brief interaction they have with you. This is especially true of strangers and acquaintances. Hold your head up high with the thought that for every second you spend fretting over how you’re coming across, the other person is basically just going to carry on with their day regardless.
Feed the external focus in yourself to quiet the nagging internal focus. Rather than zooming in on yourself, take the opportunity to zoom out on the world around you instead. Every character you meet is rich with experience and perspective. Feed the habit of digging into these details rather than scrutinizing your own.
- Wikipedia’s egocentrism ↩︎
- Baron and Hanna’s Egocentrism and depressive symptomatology in young adults ↩︎
- Eugene Fedorenko’s The Power of Habit summary ↩︎