Why do I care so much about what other people think of me?

Rabbi Landau explains that much of what we worry about is a version of ourselves that lives only in our head: who you think others think you are. “That’s the paranoia, the voices in your head.” In truth, people are not thinking about you. “They’re stuck thinking about their own five versions of themselves.”

And what others really do think of you is mostly projection, he says: their filters, their jealousy. “It’s more about them than about you.”

So you are not the mask, the stories or the noise. Rabbi Landau teaches that you are a piece of Hashem, sent to reveal what no one else can, and the work is to live that, not the image.

Going deeper: Rabbi Landau's teaching, level by level

Surface claim

Worry about others’ opinions is mostly imagination and projection.

Deepest human truth

In the book Rabbi Landau writes that the gap between how I look and how I feel is a signal that the soul is knocking from inside, wanting to breathe.

More questions from this teaching

• Who am I really, beneath the masks I wear?