Nobody is watching you as much as you think

In a classic Cornell University experiment, students had to walk into a crowded room wearing an embarrassing T-shirt. Afterwards they were asked how many people would have noticed. They guessed half. The real figure was less than half of that: most of the people present remembered nothing.

That's the spotlight effect: since each of us stars in our own movie, we assume we also feature heavily in everyone else's. But everyone else is busy with their own script.

The practical side is liberating. The question you don't ask in case it sounds silly, the dance you don't dance, the class you skip "because everyone there is better": the audience judging you is almost always imaginary.

A simple rule: when the brake is "what will they think", remember that almost nobody is thinking about you. They're too busy starring in their own movie — and wondering what you think of them.