Nobody Cares

Do it.

Nobody cares. It’s a phrase we often hear but do not think of the dynamics. But it ultimately improved how I changed my approach to being confident.

I wasn’t a confident child. Born into a household filled with only strong, athletic boys, I was the odd one out. At every point, we had at least four male apprentices who worked with my dad at his warehouse for metals; they always lived with us. So, you get the picture: everyone was more athletic and stronger than me; it didn’t help that I was chubbier than everyone else. I got weird nicknames in school and even though I knew football and footballers and tactics more than all my classmates, I wasn’t chosen at football games in primary school as I was not athletic.

Of course, other aspects of our lives chip away at our confidence, but this was to paint a picture of an important one.

I grew up shy and socially anxious. One of my worst moments came in secondary school when I was in JSS 2. I was to recite Psalm 123 in church on a Sunday. Being exceptionally good at cramming, I thought it would be easy. I prepared all weekend and felt ready.

I can’t remember what the event was as I probably have suppressed the memories over the years.

Now, it's D-Day.

It is pertinent to point out that the reason I took on this daunting task, considering I had stage fright, is also a character trait of mine I admire. One of which will come to help me a lot later in life; I don’t settle for a version of me. Even though I had the worst stage fright would I offer myself to talk in front of 300 plus students? Yes.

D Day. I got called. It was time. I went to the front of the hall, looked at the sea of eyes all locked at me, and said the first line and the second line, and wow, I thought it was going to be my day.

It wasn’t.

I froze. The lines disappeared. Everything. I tried again and still got stuck. and then, like in the movies, I sauntered outside the hall and ran far away till I was physically far away from the hall where I had just felt the worst embarrassment I could feel. I expected the ground to open up and swallow me. I expected hailstorms and the entire world pointing and laughing at me. It was the worst thing I could imagine that could go wrong. I missed lunch, still holed up in the school area, before my friend Stephen Idugboe and some friends came to look for me. They laughed and said they imagined I went to unalive myself and had searched for me all afternoon. I just wanted to wipe that memory from everyone who witnessed it, including myself.

Today, I am still shy, but I've addressed packed conferences as a keynote speaker, led sessions with large informal groups, MC’d at parties and facilitated comprehensive corporate sessions. I can get up on most stages and speak comfortably. I am not afraid to post and put myself out there on Social Media and despite how i feel sometimes; my mind is now trained to ignore all of that anxiety. So what changed? I found out that a secret: Nobody cares.

Its that simple as i’s powerful. When I'm with friends and they are about to do something they think is embarrassing, I ask one question: the last time they were out and saw someone do something embarrassing, can they recall what the person looked like?
The person who fell at the bus station?
The cringy person making a loud call on the bus or train?
The last person who had crumbs of food in their teeth?
The person was lifting with a terrible form in the gym?
The person who they saw with very rumpled clothes in the train?
The last person who had a terrible presentation?

Maturing as I’ve grown, I've come to the realization that sometimes we overrate how selfish we are with our attention to others. We dedicate so much times thinking about ourselves and things that concern us that thoughts of random (other) people are so fleeting.

So this is not just my opinion as there is a science to it, called the Spotlight effect.

There’s the odd possibility that you’d do something embarrassing, and there will be the odd laugh here or there. But when you put in context how much information we currently consume, the mindless tapping on story views, the feed scroll, the blank liking of a post and bored comments on social media, we are sometimes fooled into thinking people care more than they actually do.

Most of the attention people show are low-effort actions taken to mean more than it should mean. We are consuming volumes not-seen-before volumes of content on the go. We are witnessing more experiences both online and in person than was seen decades ago.

Attention is too expensive. Too fleeting.

I regularly watch prank videos on social media for laughs when I’m stressed. If I were to walk past these people who were embarrassed in these videos in my daily life, there’s a huge chance that I won’t recall their faces or where I’d seen them before—that’s if I recall at all. It’s just a past time; I don’t care that much.

People won’t dedicate as much time to think about you as you’d imagine. They’d spend a lot more time on their own preoccupations. What people think doesn’t matter, as what you think is what ultimately defines whatever you do.

But as a first step, I’ve quickly used this mindset to tackle social situations.

Some of the other tactics I’ve used to develop my confidence in social settings include

Improving my communication especially non-verbal. Using hands and body language to drive messaging and remembering that 70% of communication is non-verbal. Talk with your body.

I also started attending networking events alone and regularly. Forced myself to uncomfortable situations in talking with new people and failing forward with each conversation. Each new handshake or smile being an opportunity to try out a new version of small talk or intros. Gamify your actions.

As with everything, more deliberate action in areas where we want to improvement and coupled with practice, we get more a little more comfortable pushing our boundaries.

But all of these tactics would not be possible if I don’t remind myself from time to time that Nobody cares, do It.