Breaking Free of the Spotlight Effect: Harnessing Confidence and Personal Growth

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In a crude laboratory in the basement of his home. Welcome everyone back to another episode of the Monday Mindset.
And today we're going to talk about a psychological effect that holds so many of us back.

And coming off of a couple of recent speaking engagements, I wanted to highlight this particular idea because this is one of the things that I think is so easy to overcome. When you figure this out, when you, what we're about to talk about, when you, when you allow

this to rent space, this concept to rent space in your brain, it will change everything about how you engage with the world. And what we're specifically talking about is the spotlight effect.
And, you know, just, just to give you guys a better idea, this is a cognitive distortion, which basically is when we believe that other people are noticing

or judging us more than they actually are. And this is very, very common, right? We get dressed

in the morning and we think everyone's going to see some tiny little tear or pull or stain or

whatever in our shirt or that our pants shrunk a little bit in the wash or that I wore this same button down last week and even though it's washed, I'm wearing it again. We think that people care about what we say, what we do, what we wear, how we act.
And granted, if you're being disruptive and being a major a-hole or on the flip side, so incredibly positive, engaging, or meaningful. So if you're on one end of the spectrum, yes, you may capture people's attention and what you do maybe see more often.
But for most of us going through our life in most occasions, no one is paying attention to us. No one is watching us.
No one sees every one of our social media posts. No one listens to everything we say.
Even the people who live in the same house as us don't think about what we say all day, right? Like think about the last time you talked to your spouse or to your kids and you're sharing something with them oftentimes. They're not even paying attention to you.
They'll be like, what? When you finish your story and you're like, oh my God, I just shared something with you for five minutes and you weren't even paying attention. And this is because of the spotlight effect.
We oftentimes, and the vast majority of us, drastically overestimate how much attention other people give to us and what we're doing, what we're saying. Okay, so why is this an issue? Well, it's an issue because it keeps us from doing the things that we need to do, right? Let's say you're a single guy and you see a pretty woman.
It keeps you from asking her out because you're worried she's going to judge you if she says no. Frankly, if she does say no, she is going to wipe you from her brain almost immediately and forget that you even exist.
It could be that raise or promotion or you wanting to be a part of a dynamic team or that you're looking to start your own business and you're worried about what other people will think. No one cares what you do.
And that goes for all of us. I'm speaking to myself here too.
No one cares what we do. People are, we're so consumed with our own lives, right? Think about this.
Most average adults spend eight and a half hours a day at work or work-related activities. They spend between six and a half and seven and a half hours sleeping.
That leaves us somewhere in the vicinity of seven and a half to nine and a half hours to actually think about anything else. And during that time, we're so busy with taking care of our children, taking a shower, possibly going to the gym, watching TV, doing the dishes, eating, that we are not thinking about other people all day long.
People are not thinking about us. We create these scenarios in our head where it feels like there's constantly a spotlight on us when the complete opposite is true.
Most of the time, you are walking in the dark. No one can see you.
No one cares because in their world, they are walking around with a big, huge spotlight on themselves, just like you are. So there was a study done by a guy by the name of Thomas Gilovich back in 2000 at Cornell University in which they had participants wear embarrassing t-shirts, like very loud, very crazy, very embarrassing t-shirts.
And the participants overestimated by north of 50% how many people would actually even observe the fact that they were wearing that t-shirt. Like people just simply, they'd interact with individuals, walk away, and those individuals wouldn't even realize what the t-shirt said.
Because at all given times, we are walking around feeling like there is this spotlight on us and thinking so much about the way we move, the way we talk, you know, what is this person doing? How do I look when I'm standing this way? We're so caught in our own heads about what's going on in our own lives, the things that we need to get done that we're not paying attention to others. So if that's the case for us, then it's the case for everybody, which means that when you go through your day, if you can remove that spotlight, if you can act as if that spotlight doesn't exist, it never existed, there's no such thing as a spotlight, you can start to remove the mental barriers that keep you from taking the actions that you need to be successful, right? I mean, this goes for social media.
And if you're listening to this and you post regularly on social media, then you are completely aware of the fact that no matter how many connections or followers or whatever you might have on a social media platform, never do all of them see a particular post, right? Like if you want to reach all your followers on a social media platform, you need to post three, four, five, 10 times a day to make sure that the algorithm catches all your followers. That's what you would need to do.
The algorithm is just never going to show it to everybody. And that's not because, you know, that's not an algorithm related issue.
That's a, they're not on. They don't, they haven't liked any of your stuff in a while.
They scrolled past your stuff. They're not interested in that top.
I mean, there's so many things that go into why somebody, what somebody looks at in social media and social media is a, is a direct reflection of what we're interested in, right? Like if you're, I said this on my Instagram channel and it actually kind of went crazy. If you're not following me on Instagram, it's Ryan underscore Hanley on Instagram.
I encourage you to follow there. I put lots of little sound bites out that are kind of smaller versions of what we're doing right here.
And I put out this take, which was basically like, if you're upset with your social media feed, you need to be mad at yourself, not the social media platform, right? Like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, YouTube's algorithm's a little wonky, but like LinkedIn, those platforms don't show you things that you don't spend time on. If you, if there's like super negative political commentary and you just swipe right past it, it's not going to keep showing you that stuff because they want you to stay on the platform.
They want you to engage with the platform. They want you to comment.
They want you to share. That's how they make more money.
So they're only going to show you the things that you give attention to, right? So understanding that, right? If we're creating and we're worried about what people are thinking about, right? People are only going to engage with the stuff that they're interested in. If they're not interested in this stuff, they're just going to blow past it.
They're not going to judge you. They're not going to think about you.
They're just going to focus on what's interesting to them and what benefits their own self-interest, whatever that is in that moment. So we worry about ourselves.
We're so absorbed in this idea of constantly being in a spotlight that doesn't

actually exist. And there's another piece of data that came out from a guy by the name of David Dunning.
He authored this book, You Aren't at the Center of Everyone's Universe, which I like that. He's a doctor, Dr.
David Dunning. And basically what he said is, we only think about other people other than ourselves for in some cases minutes a month.
Minutes. So that could mean like I interact with this person for a few minutes at a meeting and walk away.
They literally don't think about us again for the entire month. They just, they go back to all the other things that they have on their brain.
In our mind, we're like, oh my God, how was my handshake? What was I wearing? Did I say something that i talked too fast did i talk too loud that i talked too soft uh was that stat that i gave them accurate what what do you think that they're thinking about are they going to want to meet me again and they're they've literally not even thought about you again not because they don't like you but simply because they have 10 bazillion things going on in their own life just like just like we do they're just like all of us do and they're we're not constantly thinking about other people. It is hard enough to be us.
There are people who are gossips. I get that.
But even then, that's such a small part of someone's life versus all the other moments that we are not constantly on other people's brain. So the point of all this is that if judgment, if attention, if other people's opinion of what we do, what we say, how we act, the projects we take on, what we post on social media, if the judgment, if those eyeballs, that idea of being in the spotlight is what's holding you back, understand that that is a completely internally contrived obstacle that when you can just turn that off, and I'm not saying it's necessarily easy.
I think things like journaling, practice, habit, discipline are how you get through that, right? Saying, okay, I believe Ryan, that I'm creating this spotlight effect for myself and everyone's not really paying attention to me. And if I want to launch a new Instagram channel that talks about my favorite right-handed sluggers in the MLB and breaks down their swings, it doesn't matter if people think that's a waste of my time or that it's childish or whatever.
Because I like it. It matters to to me and the people who like that.

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All right, I'm out of here. Peace.
Let's get back to the episode. Stuff will gravitate towards it and everyone else will not even consider it.
It gives us permission to do these things that are meaningful and matter to us because we shouldn't be worried about other people's opinions. We shouldn't be worried about other people's opinions in general because who gives a fuck? Live your life, right? Life is too short to care what other people think.
But this spotlight effect is real. It is almost something that comes pre-programmed in us.
But the good news is we can deprogram it. So how do we deprogram it? Just mention one thing, make it a habit, right? Just say to yourself, if I'm going to do this, regardless of how many likes I get, how many comments I get, what those comments are, who comments, who doesn't comment, I'm just going to keep posting.
Now, if you go to my Instagram channel, you're actually going to find this is what I do. I post a lot of content on Instagram.
It's a lot of personal development, a lot of leadership, mindset stuff, psychology, because I really enjoy this. And working through these ideas, it's like a tester for me.
I'll put stuff out there. I'll try it.
I'll talk about it one way or talk about a certain example or whatever. People seem to enjoy it.
I'm up over 70,000 followers on Instagram now, which is really cool. And the feedback I get from that is what I use to start to create things like, who should I have on for guests for this show? What topics should I talk about in leadership meetings at Rogue Risk? I use that as an incubator for these ideas.
And some people think it's hokey or stupid or contrived. I've had people say, who are you? What have you ever achieved? All that kind of stupid stuff.
I literally don't even care. It means nothing to me because it's not about them.
And that is the idea is that by habitually doing something, creating a discipline around that action about something that we care about. If we just say, look, I don't care who comments, I'm going to post every day on this topic.
I don't care what anyone says, I'm going to start writing this book. I don't care what anyone says, I'm gonna start wearing sweater vests.
I don't know why you'd want to wear sweater vests, but you know, whatever your thing is, I'm being funny. Uh, maybe ish, probably not.
But the idea here is guys, don't ever let the idea that you think everyone is watching you thinking about you, judging you, keeping from you from doing the things that matter from starting that big project, because it is simply not true. Study after study from a million different angles, these studies have been done.
And just in the research that I did for this kind of quick episode, I found over a dozen different episodes, a dozen different studies that supported what we're talking about in this episode, that no matter what we think, what we do, how we act, people are simply just not paying attention to us. And while that may make you feel a little lonely or alone, I promise you when you're getting started, that's a good thing.
When you're getting started, it's a good thing. And then let attention come to you as you start to become excellent at what you do and let the people who appreciate that work opt in.
And now you're getting the attention that is actually valuable and supports whatever mission or goal or activity you're on. And you're not worried about people who may be naysayers or telling you to stop or whatever, because frankly, even if they do say what you're doing is stupid and you're an idiot for starting within 10 minutes, they will not be thinking about you and we'll move on to something else in your life.
And to allow that comment, that person, that moment stop you from starting is an absolute travesty to the universe. Uh, guys, I hope this helps.
I hope you'll get started. If you're struggling in this right now, let me know in the comments on the YouTube channel, come to the YouTube channel.
You can get there. You can just go to YouTube, search Ryan Hanley, search Finding Peak.
You'll find it. Either one of those kind of gets to us.
You can also just go to findingpeak.com and there'll be links there over to the YouTube channel. Would love comments on this idea.
Are you struggling to start? Do you believe that the spotlight effect has impacted you? How, if you were held back by the spotlight effect, how did you overcome it? Right? I talked about habits and routines, et cetera. You know, what were the ways that you overcame the spotlight effect? I'd love to hear from you.
If this content is valuable, guys, please smash that like button. If you're watching on YouTube, if you're listening on, on Spotify or Apple podcasts, then we'll love a rating and review or subscribe there as well we're growing finding peak more

and more people are coming to the brand we have some tremendous guests coming

for the interview portions of the show and I hope you love these Monday

mindsets as well because I love doing them I love talking to this stuff and I

really appreciate and love you guys so So with that, I'm out of here. Peace! Thank you.
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