"Stop caring what people think" is the worst advice someone could give you

Every dancer thinks that not caring about the opinion of others is the golden ticket to embodiment and freedom when performing. And yet the most embodied dancers I know walk on stage with the intention of connecting with their audience.

Imagine living your whole life as a fly on the wall, and then finally having the opportunity to be center stage. You’ve fantasized about this your whole life. But then you think about all the people who will see you and what they might think…and so you turn the opportunity down.

You decide to hide, just like how you decide to leave class early so you miss the part where everyone dances in front of each other. Or how you decide it’s better to keep all those videos in your drafts than to actually post any of them.

Hiding isn’t the only thing the fear of judgment causes you to do. Maybe you do take that opportunity to be seen. But it’s so nerve racking it completely kills the experience. You end up overworking yourself for months striving to be perfect for the moment you take the stage. Then the moment comes and you black out for the whole thing.

Or worse, you get so nervous you lose track of your body and the fruitless struggle to get back into it causes you trip up and perform worse than you’ve ever performed before.

So of course you think, “if I didn’t care about other people’s judgment I’d be so much better off.” It’s easy to believe that if you didn’t care, you’d be able to show up with ease, with presence, and perform your best.

I spent all of 2022 trying to not care.

It didn’t work, lol.

It’s like trying to ask a kind person to be intentionally rude or a mother to stop worrying about her child. The fear of rejection is a primal, survival instinct and trying to work against this is like trying to change your evolution.

More importantly, not caring is dismissive. It’s not empowering. It’s just you rejecting others before they can reject you. You lose the “for” part of “performing for an audience”. If you didn’t care, why perform in front of an audience? Why show others your expression at all?

The beauty of caring and being nervous is that you get to overcome that fear by performing despite of it. Letting yourself be seen when the stakes are high is where the growth is. There’s nothing empowering about pretending you’re better than everyone else.

When you don’t care, you’re checked out. Whatever you end up sharing falls flat because it’s lost the passion and energy that make it resonate. You’re barely present, lazy, and unmotivated. There’s no spark or desire. Just think about it…what are you willing to do and how far do you go when you don’t care?

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When I first started telling people I pole dance, I got hit with a lot of judgment I wasn’t prepared for. At first, their judgment hurt because I thought it said something true about me. But then I realized I had confused their opinion with my identity. Who I am doesn’t change based on someone’s opinion. I think many of us forget this.

We can care about someone’s opinion, but also not let it affect how we feel about ourselves. The easiest way to do this is to zoom out. When you’re zoomed in, someone’s opinion can feel very personal. When you’re zoomed out, it’s easier to see how their opinion is more about them than about you.

If someone says, “she has no idea what she’s doing.” On a personal level, that’s an insult to the level of effort we’ve put into what we shared. On a zoomed out level, we see so much more. Maybe it’s a reflection of their own insecurities, of a time when they struggled and failed. Maybe it’s rooted in concern. Maybe they just suck at conversation and needed something to say. WHATEVER the reason, nothing has changed about the performance or the performer. Zooming out shows ups that we can all think whatever we want, intentionally hurtful or not, and it doesn’t change the reality.

When we get personal about others’ opinions, we absorb what they say as a narrative about ourselves. When we zoom out, we can care about someone’s opinion because they are a human just like us. We see that their thoughts matter, they matter—but that their thoughts do not change us.

Caring is the golden ticket to embodiment and freedom when performing. You just have to care about the right things. Right in this sense, are the things that actually serve you. And I can’t think of anything that serves you more than your own approval.

If you heard that and immediately thought something along the lines of, “I’ll get my own approval when I reach a certain level”—that’s not your approval. That’s just others’ approval that you’ve disguised as your own. YOUR approval, comes from meeting your joy, desire, and enjoyment. These are feelings and not circumstances.

When we think a circumstance will change how we feel, we’re living off of a narrative and not our truth. Your own approval will be rooted in a feeling that’s always available to you if you choose it. Approval that comes from your ego will feel conditional—like it needs to be earned. Approval that comes from your truth will feel free—like it’s already given and you just need to reach out and take it.

There’s a saying that I love, “you can’t take care of others until you take care of yourself first.” It’s why they always tell you on the airplane to put on your oxygen mask before helping others. You can’t save anyone if you’re already dead. Caring about yourself IS caring about others.

When you’re performing, this means care about everyone’s opinion, but care about your own opinion more. Care about their experience, but care about your own experience more. Care about your own enjoyment, because when you’re enjoying it, everyone else is enjoying it too. I’ve always believed that if you’re having the best time, there is no way that everyone else watching isn’t having a good time either.

The real solution to overthinking and anxiety when performing isn’t indifference. It’s caring about the things that actually serve you. Caring about others and caring about yourself are not in conflict; they’re the same thing. When you think about it, you are the most important thing for the message that you want to share with the world, which means no one can receive the message without you.

You’re not trying to feel less. You just need to choose what to feel the most.

Caring deeply about you,

💋 Mimi