Your Thursday yThree Things for March 19, 2026
The Ghost You're Still Performing For
I want you to think about something for a second. Think about the last time you held back from saying what you actually thought. Maybe it was in a meeting. Maybe it was with your spouse. Maybe it was on social media, where you typed something real, looked at it, and then deleted the whole thing because... what would people think?
Now ask yourself: who, specifically, were you worried about?
Not “people” in the abstract. Not “everyone.” I mean the actual face that popped into your head. The person whose voice you heard, even if you didn’t realize it. Because here’s what Will and I have found, and what our buddy Andy Riise drove home on this week’s episode of Men Talking Mindfulness: most of us are not trying to impress everyone. We’re trying to impress one person.
And that one person? They might not even be in your life anymore.
A coach from high school. A parent who was impossible to please. A teacher who told you that you weren’t smart enough. An ex who made you feel like you were never going to be enough. We call this person the ghost. And that ghost has been running parts of your life, probably for decades, without you ever really noticing.
How The Ghost Shows Up
The ghost doesn’t announce itself. It’s subtle. It shows up as that little hesitation before you share an idea at work. It shows up as overpreparation... spending four hours on a presentation that needed one. It shows up as saying yes to things you should say no to, because you don’t want to let someone down, because somewhere deep inside you is a version of yourself that is still desperate to be seen as good enough.
It shows up in your parenting, too. Man, this one hits close to home for me. I catch myself sometimes trying to be the “perfect dad” and then I realize... perfect for who? My kids don’t need a perfect dad. They need a present one. But that ghost whispers, “You have to have it all together.” And if I’m not paying attention, I start performing instead of connecting.
And it definitely shows up at work. You’ve seen the leader who can’t make a decision without polling the room, not because they value input, but because they’re terrified of being wrong. Or the high performer who is crushing it by every metric but can’t enjoy any of it because they’re constantly looking over their shoulder, wondering if someone’s going to figure out they don’t belong. That’s imposter syndrome, and at its core, it’s really just the ghost sitting on your shoulder saying, “You’re still not enough.”
Here’s what I’ve learned, both in my own life and in working with leaders and teams: the fear of what other people think doesn’t just hold us back. It makes us into a version of ourselves that isn’t even real. We become a performance. And performances are exhausting.
Why We Care So Damn Much
Let me be clear about something. Caring what people think isn’t entirely bad. It’s human. We are wired for belonging. Back when we lived in small tribes, being cast out literally meant death. So our brains evolved to be hyper-sensitive to social rejection. Dr. Matthew Lieberman, a social cognitive neuroscientist at UCLA, has done brain imaging studies showing that social rejection activates the same neural pathways as physical pain (Lieberman, M., published in The Journal of Science, 2003). Let me say that again. Your brain processes being judged or excluded the same way it processes being punched.
The problem is that most of us aren’t in survival situations anymore. The stakes of sharing your opinion at the Monday meeting are not exile and death. But your brain doesn’t know that. It’s still running the same threat-detection software it ran 50,000 years ago. So it fires up the alarm, floods you with cortisol, and you swallow your words.
But there’s a deeper layer. And Andy really helped us get to this on the show. The people who are most vulnerable to caring what others think are the ones who don’t have a clear internal sense of purpose.
Think about that for a second. When you don’t have your own compass... when you don’t have a clear sense of who you are and what you’re about... you start borrowing other people’s compasses. You start substituting validation for meaning. Someone tells you that you’re doing a great job, and for a few hours, you feel okay. But then it wears off, and you need another hit. And another. It becomes this cycle of performing for approval that never actually fills the hole it’s trying to fill.
It’s a slippery slope. I’ve been on it. I’d bet a lot of you reading this have been on it too.
The So What
So what do we do about this? Because knowing about the ghost is one thing. But loosening its grip... that’s the work.
Here are some things that have actually helped me, and that we’ve seen help the people we work with:
1. Name the ghost.
Seriously. Get specific. Who is the person you’re actually performing for? It might be painful to admit. When I really sat with this question, the answer surprised me. It wasn’t who I expected. But once I named it, something shifted. The ghost lost some of its power. Not all of it, not overnight. But identifying it... that’s the first step to loosening the grip. You can’t fight what you can’t see.
2. Separate your worth from their opinion.
This sounds simple and it’s damn hard. But here’s the thing I keep coming back to: your value as a person, as a leader, as a parent, was never determined by someone else’s assessment. It just wasn’t. People’s opinions of you are filtered through their own experiences, their own insecurities, their own ghosts. When your boss gives you a sideways look in a meeting, you don’t actually know what that means. Maybe they had a rough morning. Maybe they’re thinking about something that has nothing to do with you. But the ghost tells you it’s about you. It’s always about you. And THAT… is a lie.
3. Get clear on your purpose.
When you know what you stand for, when you’ve done the hard work of figuring out what actually matters to you (not what your ghost says should matter), the noise from other people’s opinions starts to fade. Not disappear. Fade. You’ll still hear it. But it doesn’t control the steering wheel anymore. Purpose is like a ballast on a ship... it doesn’t stop the waves, but it keeps you from capsizing.
4. Catch the performance in real time.
Start noticing the moments when you shift from being yourself to performing. It might be when you walk into a specific room. It might be when you’re around a specific person. It might be when you’re about to post something online. Just notice it. You don’t have to fix it right away. Awareness is half the battle. This is what mindfulness actually is, by the way... it’s not clearing your mind or sitting cross-legged on a mountaintop. It’s noticing. It’s paying attention to what’s happening inside you in real time so you can choose how to respond instead of just reacting.
5. Do the thing you’re afraid to do, and let it be messy.
Share the opinion. Set the boundary. Say no. Post the thing. Have the conversation. And let it be imperfect. Because here’s what I’ve found: the thing you’re afraid of... the judgment, the rejection, the awkwardness... it’s almost never as bad as the version your brain has been rehearsing. And even when it is uncomfortable, you survive it. And every time you survive it, the ghost gets a little quieter.
When you stop performing for the ghost, something interesting happens. You start performing better. Not for anyone else. For yourself. Because authenticity is a performance enhancer. When you stop spending energy managing other people’s perceptions of you, you suddenly have a lot more energy for the actual work of your life.
One More Thing
I’m not going to sit here and pretend I’ve got this figured out. I still catch myself caring too much about what people think. I mean, heck, I’m thinking about what YOU (and my ghost) think about this newsletter! I still feel that little spike of anxiety when I post something vulnerable or take a stance on something. I still have days where the ghost is louder than I’d like.
But I’m aware of it now. And awareness changes the game. It doesn’t make the fear go away. But it changes my relationship with it. And that’s really what mindfulness has done for me. It hasn’t reduced the stress or eliminated the doubt. It’s just given me enough space to see it for what it is and choose differently.
I think you can do the same thing. I really do.
This Week on Men Talking Mindfulness
Will and I sat down with our buddy Andy Riise... and man, we went deep on this one. We talked about how caring what people think shows up in work, in parenthood, and all the way back in childhood. We got into the concept of the ghost, we shared some of our own stories (Andy and I also have a Naval Academy vs. West Point rivalry that makes these episodes extra fun), and we talked about how having a clear sense of purpose is the antidote to approval-seeking. This one had a lot of energy. I think you’ll get something real out of it.
Watch the Episode on Valor Media Network (YouTube)
