When I realized that most people really don’t even think about me let alone care about me. I’m not trying to sound mopey and dark. We (people) tend to assume that others are thinking about us. When the reality is most people aren’t thinking about us at all.

Test it on yourself by keeping track of how many people you cross paths with and how many of them you actually spend time thinking about.

Here is an actual example : I was in a coffee shop working and I noticed one of the baristas has some pretty heavy scarring on her forearms. I wonder how she is doing now, what circumstances brought her to that point, if she is still at risk, is she has a decent support network, and so on. I spend maybe 5 minutes out of 3 hours thinking about her and her health. In the meantime, there are four other baristas, a dozen other customers, and my coworker who I haven’t thought about at all. That one barista doesn’t know and probably doesn’t even care that I was thinking on it.

I regret that I spent so many years worrying about what people thought of me. It was so much wasted time and energy.