Column: Don't waste your worries

We spend — no, waste — too large a chunk of our mental space thinking about what others think of us.

I spent spring break in Seattle, Washington, and if anyone is wondering, it really does rain that much in Seattle. It rained sunrise to sunset almost the entire week. Wild.

While in Seattle, I spent the week at the University of Washington Medical Center and was surrounded by surgeons and a ton of fancy specialists. I was struck and comforted with the realization that they, regardless of their impressive degrees, are average people too. They eat like we do, sleep and poop just like we do.

They sit on Facebook during meetings when they should be paying attention (legit watched a surgeon read through Facebook posts while the transplant team was deciding on the organ candidacy status of a patient awaiting a transplant).

They are not a special subspecies of human. No one is a special subspecies of human.

This is the struggle of college life for many — hopefully realizing that we are way more prepared and capable than we give ourselves credit for. Everyone is worried about looking dumb, and it is not just college students, it is also super fancy physicians — actually, I suspect they are more worried.

Do not waste your time worrying about what others think of you.

To my point, no one cares about anything as much as we all have convinced ourselves that they do. For instance, in class folks rarely answer questions because they do not want to feel dumb or be wrong.

What is the worst that could happen besides the pseudo-shame associated with being wrong? We feel this way because we worry about what others will think, not because we care about being wrong. We are all wrong sometimes and none of us can ever know everything, even fancy surgeons and specialists. As humans we will always be forgetful and it is normal. It is a part of human nature; we can never be perfect.

Something that helps me to address these worries is thinking of every situation as neutral. The wind blowing — neutral. Folks walking across campus — neutral. A situation is neither positive or negative, it is always neutral. What makes a situation positive or negative is the positive or negative emotion we attach to it.

We should choose to openly be wrong and always admit when we make mistakes because no one cares. This is, after all, how we can better understand each other and create humanity.

So I call on you all to talk, to blurt out an answer in class even if it is wrong and be fearless because no one cares that much about anything the way you think they do.

And always, always remember the words of Felice Leonardo Buscaglia, who was a motivational speaker and professor in the Department of Special Education at the University of Southern California: “Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow, it only saps today of its joy.”