the feedback form

I recently set up this anonymous feedback form, inspired by Cate Hall, who maintains a similar device.

I was surprised to find that several people expressed concern about my mental health when I first shared this publicly. I mentioned this to some other friends, who pointed out that people don’t usually do this sort of thing. Supposedly it makes it seem like I’m doing poorly and trying to expose myself to criticism and/or praise. At the very least, it makes it seem like I care a lot about what other people think of me. After thinking about it, I saw how that can be concerning; it may indicate a lack of self-confidence, a poor sense of self, and a dependence on external validation. Isn’t it usually good advice not to care what other people think?

Well, yes, no, and maybe. It is usually good advice, because for somebody that cares too much about what others think hearing that piece of advice from someone else can (ironically) empower them to care less about what other people think. On the other hand, it’s not good advice to take as gospel; I certainly don’t believe it’s right to completely disregard the thoughts other people have about you. There’s a lot of useful insight in those thoughts, even if just as much (or more) of it is garbage. Which is how we come to the maybe: I believe this is a good piece of advice with a little qualification. You shouldn’t care what other people think of you because it is other people which are thinking this about you, but because this is something which is thought about you by other people.

What? Even to me, that sort of sounds like I’m being pedantic. Really, I mean that you should shift your focus away from the people and toward the thought. The power of social pressure is well-documented, and I’m saying you should totally ignore that. Which is really hard. But I think it’s worth trying anyway, and replacing it instead with how the thoughts other have about you interact with your values and what it means to you to be a good person. Because the key is that other people will think things about you that you would never in a million years think about yourself. That’s really the main point of this post, so I’m repeating it: other people’s thoughts about you are novel data about how you exist in the world.

For someone that wants to live their best life, this data is invaluable, and it should be perfectly natural to want to access it. At the very least, it gives people a way to tell you that you smell, which might lead you to realizing that you need to change your deodorant. And that’s already worth getting a bunch of concerned messages from people, in my opinion.