Why you shouldn't feel embarrassed 90% of the time

And how to overcome the spotlight effect.

Hey,

I hope you’ve been okay. Sorry I missed writing these letters for 2 weeks. Been making bad decisions about sleeping early and it’s affected my weekends.

It feels good to be shipping letters again and I hope you are doing okay. We’re heading into the final quarter of the year and unlike other years, I feel no pressure to ‘finish the year high’.

This year has been a year of working on improving the little things and my everyday life. Still lots to improve on but it’s been a good year. I wish you all of your heart desires as the year comes to an end.

Stay Jiggy always.

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I've always loved dancing and singing since I was a kid. My elder brothers used to play a lot of RnB and Blues when we were growing up. I got a decent consumption of local dance music as well.

While I was blessed with the love for these two great gifts of nature, I was not blessed with the voice or rhythm needed to express them fully. You might prefer watching a horror movie to hearing me sing. And you might prefer to come to a show of me dancing to going to a Kevin Hart standup comedy.

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I suck at both. And for the longest time, I allowed this 'suckness' and the fear of what people will think/of everyone being focused on me, to stop me from expressing these two things that I absolutely love doing.

In recent years though, I've learned that a lot of this judgement is in my head. When I'm dancing, everyone else isn't leaving their lives to focus on my dance moves that lack rhythm. While I might think so, they're probably occupied without something else that's a worry for them. Perhaps, they don't like the shirt they're wearing and also feel everyone is shaking their head about the shirt.

I recently found out that there is a name for this phenomenon called the SPOTLIGHT Effect.

This effect states that humans often tend to believe that other people are paying more attention to them than they actually are. We tend to feel like we're in the spotlight, ALL THE TIME.

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You know when you go to an event or wedding where there are many people gathered. Let's say you're eating or drinking and you spill something by mistake. You feel very conscious of this and might even feel like everyone noticed.

Or when you are giving a presentation at work or in school and you make a blunder or error. You might continue thinking for days afterwards that everyone who was there remembers the error and it probably hunts you for a bit.

The thing about the spotlight effect though is that it's experienced by everyone. We all have a perspective that we are at the center of the world. Our worldview revolves around us.

Whenever we have guests in our house and I go downstairs to grab water or something. As I return back up the stairs, I feel as though the people downstairs are watching my every move. It's such an interesting phenomenon, lol.

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However, the people we think are gazing at our every action place themselves in the center of their own world too. So even if they're looking in your direction, they are not experiencing it from your worldview, they're experiencing it from theirs.

Hence, we're only in the spotlight of our own world and shouldn't worry that other people are fixated on us.

Another interesting way I found to avoid this effect is to reverse the roles. Think back about how many blunders, stained shirts/blouses, unzipped trousers, presentation errors etc that you remember. You probably only remember yours.

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I started realising this a couple of years ago and more intensely last year. Since then, I sing at the top of my crooked voice freely. I go to a silent disco each month and dance my heart away till my clothes are drenched in sweat.

I find that understanding the spotlight effect can also help us overcome some of our insecurities. Many insecurities are tied to how we think other people watch us or think about us. When you realize that everyone feels they are being watched the same way you do, their opinion (or assumed opinion) stops mattering. You can express yourself freely.

We humans are complex beings. A lot goes on in our heads, consciously and unconsciously, that guide our behaviour and beliefs. Understanding them can help us have lighter heads and live more expressive lives.

This letter was written while listening to Lucid Dreams by Juice Wurld.

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Love always,

Francis.