5 Things Only You Are Judging About Yourself

1. Your clothing

Unless you show up to a The Dark Knight-style ballroom gala in a penguin costume covered in maggots, I am not going to notice or judge what you’re wearing. No one is scrutinizing your clothing choices as much as you are, I promise you.

The amount of times I’ve spent 12,000 years figuring out the perfect outfit and then was late to the party and missed something awesome were not worth it. Stop having anxiety over wearing the “right” thing. Wear whatever you’re comfortable in and get out your door and into life. If people like what you’re wearing, cool bonus, but it won’t make you more interesting, or funnier, or smarter.

That being said, if you love fashion, go for it. By all means, enjoy dressing nicely or in a certain way. But otherwise, I promise you no one is stressing your clothing as much as you are stressing your clothing.

2. Your pimple

No one cares that you have a pimple. I have never once in my life been like, “Oh shoot. I REALLY liked that person, but now they have a common skin condition that almost everyone on Earth has experienced so I guess I hate them.” If you have thought that, you are a sociopath.

Everyone can empathize with a nasty pimple. It’s not your fault and it’s out of your control. Yeah, it sucks. But the most anyone is doing is going, “Oh, they have a pimple. That’s shitty,” and then carrying on with life. Zits don’t shut down the world. The person doing the most noticing of your pimple is you. Just forget about it. When I have nasty acne, I tell myself that the people that love me would rather have me around than not have me around because I’m hiding out over a pimple.

3. The hair you missed shaving

Did you miss a patch shaving your face or legs? No one cares. Sure, it feels strange and annoying. You probably can’t stop touching it or playing with it, obsessing anxiously about that one little spot. Forget about it. You’ll get it later, and it’s not a big deal.

For women, I have never once known a dude who was rubbing a girl’s legs in prep for sexy time, felt some stray hairs and did a full-stop. They are not noticing and they don’t care. If they do, they’re a jerk. Similarly, I have never known anyone to be like, “Well, that guy missed a spot shaving so I guess he is not smooching material.” No one is noticing your tiny hairs as much as you are. Stop touching them.

4. Pit stains or a small stain

Similarly to acne, pit stains are mostly just a source of empathy and pity. The only thing I think when I see someone has pit stains is “Oh, that must be uncomfortable. I hate when that happens to me.” Here’s the secret to all of these: we are all self-involved. That’s why it’s so easy for us to nit-pick and judge ourselves over things no one else is even taking a second to think about.

A small stain on your clothes post-lunch is the same. To you, it looks like the BIGGEST, GROSSEST outfit-ruining stain in the world, but sincerely, no one can see it unless you point it out. A human eye that doesn’t know about a stain won’t naturally zero in on it. They’re taking in the whole picture. You look fine.

5. Your growling stomach

A growling tummy is an embarrassing noise that sounds SUPER loud to us, so we assume it must be just as noticeable to those around us. Often, this isn’t the case. It sounds worse to you because it’s your own body.

Even if people can hear your stomach, it’s not that humiliating. Everyone gets hungry. No one is thinking you’ve got some weird demon in your digestive tract or that you’re going to blow up into a cloud of farts. People are probably just like, oh that’s funny. If they can even hear it at all.