Mantra with Jemma Sbeg - I Embrace the Courage to be Disliked
Episode Date: May 19, 2025This week's mantra is I Embrace the Courage to Be Disliked. People-pleasing can feel safe—but it often comes at the cost of your authenticity. In this episode of Mantra, we explore what it means to ...stand firm in your truth, set boundaries without apology, and let go of the need for universal approval. Being disliked doesn’t mean you’re doing something wrong—it often means you’re doing something real. This Mantra will empower you to live more boldly, speak more freely, and honor the version of yourself that doesn’t need to shrink to fit in. Mantra is an OpenMind Original Podcast, powered by PAVE Studios. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. For ad-free listening and early access to episodes, subscribe to OpenMind+ on Apple Podcasts. Don’t miss out on all things Mantra! Instagram: @mantraopenmind | @OpenMindStudios TikTok: @OpenMind Facebook: @0penmindstudios X: @OpenMindStudios YouTube: @OpenMind_Studios To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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This is Open Mind.
Welcome to a brand new week.
Here is your mantra.
I embrace the courage to be disliked.
I'm your host, Jemma Speck, and I'm here to guide you toward a more centered
and fulfilling life. Each week I'll share personal stories and insights that are focused on a specific
mantra, plus general prompts and a weekly challenge for all of us to help put it into action. Think of
mantra as your mental reset button, a way to stay centered as you juggle work, school, family, whatever else
life throws at you. Each mantra is a simple, powerful phrase you can repeat to re-focus
your thoughts and bring a little bit of calm into your day. It is a small tool with hopefully
a big impact, clearing your mind, lifting your mood and rooting you in the present.
If you've listened to my other show, The Psychology of Your 20s, you'll know I'm
all about those little nuggets of insight that make a really big impact.
So whether you're looking for some extra inspiration or you're just trying to ground
yourself amidst the chaos, you have come to the right place.
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Podcasts. This week, I'll catch you up on what's been going on in my life
and then we'll dive into today's mantra,
I embrace the courage to be disliked.
I'm really excited about this one
because I truly think it's a mantra
that we could all benefit from.
This is a really powerful reminder
that being true to yourself will always matter more
than being approved by everyone else.
So stick around, we'll be right back
after this short pause.
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for details. Welcome back. We're going to get into this week's mantra in just a few, but before we
do, it's time for my highs, lows, and who knows. This one's kind of a funny one. It's a who knows. I did like a talk at a school the other day, and I know that sounds so random, but it was
to all these junior and senior high school students.
And oh my God, I was terrified.
I was absolutely terrified.
I got up in front of this huge room.
There was probably like 300 of them.
And I was just like quivering.
And I felt like I had to make all these cool and smart jokes
and I needed to impress them.
I got off the stage and I was like, oh my God, did I do well to their teachers or whatever?
I was like, do you think they liked me?
I want to know if this is anyone else's experience.
Are you scared of high school students?
I feel like this is really on theme for this episode of embracing
the courage to be disliked. But I think it's this keen awareness of like, you guys are so cool and
you are going to judge me and I am not cool and I'm easily judged. So I don't know. I feel like I
needed this mantra because why am I letting a 16 year old change my entire day? It was a fun
experience actually. I had a really, really great time,
even if I was nervous.
But this is a great segue into what we're talking about today.
A fun segue into this week's mantra,
I embrace the courage to be disliked.
Let me start by saying this,
all jokes aside, being disliked is not optional.
Not everyone is going to like you,
and that is a fact of life.
That is something you cannot control.
Our perspective on being disliked though,
is within our control,
and therefore, it is what deserves our focus.
It might be strange to hear me say that you
can't force everyone to like you.
You may be thinking,
oh my God, why not?
Why can't I do that? What am I going to do then if I can't make everyone to like you, you may be thinking, oh my God, like, why not?
Why, why can't I do that?
What am I going to do then if I can't make everyone like me?
But I think being able to tolerate this reality is actually a huge mindset win for us.
People don't like us for thousands of reasons. Quite literally, you could make an endless list.
Some of those reasons are our fault. You know, we misstep, we miss up our first impression in a crucial
way, we do something wrong. Some of them aren't our fault. You know, they've heard things,
they formed an opinion too soon. They don't like you because of your identity. Some of
them we could change, like the clothes you wear, you could force yourself to act the
way they want you to. And some of them we can't change and we don't want to, like our values, like our
authenticity. Trying to make everyone like you is opting into suffering because you've
become a reflection of everyone else and what they want from you. Therefore you lose complete
touch with what's at your core, what drives
you and makes you happy and sane. That's a pretty miserable circumstance. You essentially
become a patchwork quilt, I guess, of everyone's opinions. You know, like, I'm going to borrow
this identity for when I'm with these people. I'll speak up for these things, but only
in that situation. I'll wear those clothes, but only when I'm around him or her. An amalgamation, never
steady. Before we get any further into the consequences of this, because I think some
of them are already quite obvious, I want to talk about where this obsession with being
liked comes from when we consciously do know that it's harmful. The first explanation you've probably heard is,
we find a lot of safety in groups.
Historically, from the point of evolution,
being part of a group meant survival.
If you were liked, accepted, valued,
you had access to protection, food, and support.
Now, these days it's quite different,
but you have to remember,
that part of your brain
that still feels that way is part of what we call the old brain. It is one of the longest surviving
structures in the kinds of minds and brains we have today and it still acts according to the
blueprint that was set thousands of years ago. And because of that, to our minds, rejection still symbolizes and does mean isolation,
which thousands of years ago was a literal death sentence. That fear is still impacting us at the
same severity level as it would have before. The second component of this is that we don't
just want to survive, we also want to belong. According to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, love and belonging,
they come right after our basic survival needs.
It's not just that the group could give you food and water and shelter and safety,
it's that they could give you love,
and they could give you acceptance and comfort,
and that's equally important for our wellbeing. So the idea that someone doesn't like you
confronts that very need that we have.
There's also a large part of this
that comes down to childhood conditioning.
Many of us, myself included,
were raised to equate being liked with being good,
if we behaved, if we pleased others, if we got
good grades, if we were likeable and passive and made people happy, we were praised. And
because of this, we have internalized this idea that likeability is a measure of success
and goodness, and it means that we are worthy. We think it means we have value as a person,
because we've subtly been taught to prioritize
other people's opinions and perceptions of us over our own expression and comfort.
It's why you may find yourself offering to do something you really don't want to do,
or letting someone walk all over you,
or reconsidering your outfit
or your opinion.
We learn if everyone likes me, I'm safe, I belong, and I have worth.
The final component of this is ego.
Ego meaning self-confidence, self-worth, self-esteem, the desire to feel important, feel admired,
feel accepted.
When someone doesn't like us, it threatens the image we've created for ourselves.
It threatens our sense of self, which we obviously want to protect.
And so we scramble to fix it and to be liked again and to restore our self-concept.
So a lot of this desire to be liked is coming from quite a deep, unconscious place that
has very conscious and easily felt consequences.
When we know someone doesn't like us, we feel really gross, we feel really scared, we feel
icky.
This can create some pretty difficult behaviors to overcome, particularly people pleasing and
self abandoning. Now I'm not going to give you any sort of lecture on people pleasing
today because I think we've all been exposed to the perils of this, but essentially people
pleasing is a form of self abandonment. And when we self abandon, we essentially sacrifice
our own autonomy and needs to make someone else happy.
And most of the time, they don't even care and they don't even realize this.
We are the ones left with the consequences.
When we habitually self-abandon and we consistently prioritize the comfort, approval or expectations of others over our own, we initiate a very subtle but
very profound form of what we call self-erasure. Each instance may seem very minor, but cumulatively,
they create a psychological distance between us and our authentic self. This disconnection can manifest in
a chronic resentment towards people.
You feel so much disappointment and frustration towards
this person for making you into someone that you're not,
not realizing that you're the one doing that.
Hate to break it to you.
You are the one choosing to be liked over feeling like yourself.
Over time, that compulsive pursuit of harmony and ease
and likability leads to
a lot of internal dissonance where we can't trust ourselves,
and we feel like we don't have any respect.
We feel like we can't be the captain of our own ship
and that becomes instinct, that becomes second nature.
We want to reverse that instinct before it gets too far.
There is real power in letting people
have their opinion of you,
whether it is inaccurate, unfair, wrong,
and knowing you can't, nor do you want to change it.
You've got more important things to do, and the power comes from appreciating what you
can and can't control.
It's quite a stoic philosophy, isn't it?
But the stoic's got it so right.
You can fight against and for others' opinions.
You can spend every day pushing yourself, molding yourself, critiquing yourself.
But the day you realize this is pointless, that the goalposts are going to constantly
shift and you let go, it's just a wave of relief really.
It's so profound.
And yet we fear this.
We naturally do fear living authentically because of disapproval, embarrassment, but
also because somewhere deep down, maybe we know that there are relationships built on
a personality we have shape shifted just for that person, and if we were to replace that
artificial personality with a real one, you know, people might walk away. In fact, the
chances are that they will. That's really scary. But this is a good thing because the
person they liked, they weren't real anyway, were they?
That wasn't really you.
Perhaps those relationships are keeping you back.
But also, maybe you will be surprised about how willing people are to
embrace realness in a culture that likes to make
everyone put on a mask and perform niceties.
Being real, being true,
people actually really like that.
You know what, if you're too much for them,
they are welcome to go and find less as the saying goes.
They are welcome to make their life
narrower and shallower and less colorful without you in it.
That is their choice.
But it's not your job in this life to make
people simply comfortable at your expense.
I often say as well, if people don't like you, sometimes that is a sign that you're doing
something right, that you are doing something cool, that you are setting boundaries because
you're at a point of expansion that they simply can't understand and nor do they want to. And that's really telling for them.
You know, you do not owe someone the person they want you to be.
That is not your job.
Their opinions are their problem.
And honestly, they're not your business.
Coming up, let's get personal.
I'm going to share how this mantra has been hitting me lately, really hitting me,
because spoiler alert, it's definitely showed up in my life in the last couple of weeks and I want
to share that with you. So stay tuned. We'll be right back after this brief pause.
Now that we've looked at the meaning behind today's mantra, I embrace the courage to be
disliked. It's time to get personal with you guys and
share some of my own insights and reflections about this phrase.
I have a story for you today.
I have a story I want to tell you
because it's happened quite recently.
It still stings a little bit.
But I'll be honest, it's been the situation
I've been secretly referring to and reflecting on this whole episode because it is such a prime
example of this mantra in action. So the other day I was having dinner with this really, really
good friend and I was like, oh, I saw that this person is in town, a mutual friend of ours.
I really like to see them. I'd really like to catch up with them. It's been so long. I want to give them a copy of my book. And my friend
is like, oh, really? And I'm like, yeah, yeah, like, I really like this person. And you know,
we have a history and we've known each other for a while on and off. Like, it'd be great
to see them. And she goes, I don't want to be the one to tell you this. And I'm like,
what do you mean? She's like, oh, she really doesn't like you very much. I don't want to be the one to tell you this." I'm like, what do you mean? She's like, she really doesn't like you very much.
I don't want you to reach out to her.
I don't think it's fair what she says about you,
but she really doesn't like you.
I don't want you to be embarrassed by that.
Now, I was not mad at my friend at all.
This is a very close friend of mine.
Her saying that was actually quite relieving.
But she goes on to tell me the reasons why she doesn't like me,
and it has to do with the fact I run a podcast and that I don't have
a real job and all these other things that I don't work very hard.
Totally fair, she can have that opinion.
A couple of other things that I'm not going to share that were quite personal,
and it was previous things I told this person about
relationships I've been in that she was kind of holding against me.
And as soon as my friend said that, I really appreciated her telling me and not just in
the fake way, I really did.
I just felt this emotional and physical response.
I felt this hot embarrassment.
I felt this drop in my stomach.
I felt myself wanting to know more.
And I was asking my friend more and more questions like, when did she say that? Who to? What about? Where? When? What?
Who? Why? All these questions. I just started going back over and over, every single interaction
that we had and what I'd done wrong or what I'd done to upset her. I was so self-conscious
and I felt so terrible. My friend was like, should I have told you?
Didn't want you to be embarrassed.
I was like, no, you really should have.
I didn't stop thinking about it for days.
At some point, I had to interrupt that rumination loop
because it wasn't helping me and just be like,
okay, this is not useful.
Your entire life and your entire mood
cannot be dictated by this individual.
This is how I broke the cycle.
Hopefully, it will be a useful blueprint for how you can do as well.
Firstly, I actually had an honest chat with myself about whether what she said was fair.
I was like, is there something contained in this that my ego is just too bruised to appreciate?
I was honest with myself and I was like,
maybe things could have come off that way, but actually no.
No, I don't think what she's saying is fair.
I know myself well enough to know that she's misread this.
Then I had an honest chat with myself being like,
okay, do you like yourself?
Are you happy with where you are now?
Are you happy with what you're doing? Are you happy with the work you put in? And the answer was, yeah,
I do really like myself. You know, this person's opinions aside, like, does this make me like
myself more? I hate myself more. Thinking about what this person had to say, does it
make me feel worse or does it make me feel better? And obviously it made me feel terrible.
And I was like, okay, that makes me feel terrible.
I know I can't change this person's opinion.
I need to let go of it because if I continue to hold it,
I am taking on all the bad energy and
the negativity that this individual intended for me.
So I did some cognitive reframing.
Instead of thinking, why doesn't this person like me and
trying to find a reason that I will probably never discover,
I kept focusing on,
why does their opinion matter so much?
I shifted away from self-blame to self-inquiry and curiosity.
Why did it hurt so much?
Because it was a projection of insecurities I already had.
Insecurities I already had about past relationships, insecurities I already had, insecurities I already had about past relationships,
insecurities I already had about an unconventional career path,
an imposter syndrome, and the things that she had said
really struck a nerve.
I ask myself this hypothetical, and this is an important one.
If I only had 10 thoughts a day, would I spend any of them
on this person?
If I could only think about 10 important things in my life, my family, my friends, my job,
my future, my mental health, my everyday routine, would I spare a thought for this person?
And the answer was no.
The answer was, I don't see this person enough.
This person doesn't know enough about me for them to be taking such a huge slice of the
pie.
So that was the first cognitive reframing part of it.
I then immediately after this went for a run.
I went and did an activity where I felt confident, where I felt capable, where I felt like myself.
Because I feel like as soon as we are hit with
someone's negative projection on us or their negative opinions,
our confidence does take a blow.
We need to make sure that before we make any decisions,
we get back to a stable point.
So I went for a run and then I spent time with my friends.
Because I knew that my reaction
came from a deeper insecurity around self-worth and imposter syndrome.
But I knew my reaction also came from a desire for inclusion and a fear of rejection.
So reminding myself, actually I do have friends and I have friends who really, really like
me made this opinion feel a lot less dangerous and scary.
I think in general, what we need to do when we are clouded by
the judgments of others is really work on developing a sense of security in yourself.
It's very hard to tear down a wall with a lot of reinforcements.
Those are the kind of walls we are building around our mind.
If someone says something negative or critical online in person,
I want you to be able to say,
actually no, I don't believe that, that's not true, and doesn't matter.
I'm like safely protected behind this well-enforced wall in which I do things,
contribute to things, make things that make me feel confident,
create friendships that make me feel confident, create friendships that make me feel confident,
do activities that make me feel amazing,
and I'm working on myself and I have goals,
so you can't tear me down.
Also, try and identify where your approval seeking comes from.
I know for me, I've spoken about this before,
it's because I was really badly bullied as a child and so for a long,
long time up until this point
still, I have always seen rejection as something that really, really hurts and can lead to
a lot of isolation and solitude and it's not a life I want to relive.
So for me personally, that's why it really stings.
For you it might be because of another reason.
And this has become very popular recently and I love it.
It's incredible, it's practical.
It's called rejection sensitivity therapy or training.
Basically, you need to find opportunities to be rejected.
You need to find opportunities to put
yourself out there and have someone say,
no, have someone judge you.
Some of the examples I've seen people do are like singing on a train.
It feels so uncomfortable, right?
But if you can do that,
you can do quite a lot of other things and not feel scared.
Ask someone a date, even if you think they're going to say no.
Why not? Apply for a job you really, really want.
Yes, you're probably not going to get it if it's the dream job you want in 20 years time,
but practice being
rejected and realizing that, okay, you were rejected, you were judged.
What actually changed in your life?
Find opportunities to practice being disliked and then the spontaneous moments where you
are disliked as we all are, won't sting as much.
Finally, and this is a really important component and I touched on it briefly before, you have
to take accountability for the moments where someone else's judgments may actually be accurate.
We've spoken a lot in this banjo, in this episode, about people who decide to have incorrect
opinions about us and letting them do that.
Sometimes criticism is really,
really valid. And that's why that first question I posed is really crucial. Is there some truth
in what they're saying? Sometimes criticism judgments come from a place of actual care for us.
Like, I don't like how you're treating your friends. I dislike you because you've fallen away from your values.
I dislike you because of some action that is not like you and against your character.
If this is a close friend, a family member, someone you care about, and they are saying,
this is unfortunate, this isn't like you, I don't like this behavior, this attitude,
whatever it is.
Sometimes you do really need to listen.
Embracing the courage to be disliked also means embracing the fact that sometimes someone's
dislike or disapproval contains important information and you have to be able to accept
that.
When we go through this process, I think it changes us.
I think it allows us to be a lot more brave and out there
and vulnerable and real to who we are. And there are so many people who never get that
opportunity, who spend their entire lives wanting to please and then get to the end
of their life and look around and are like, wow, I only had one shot at this and I did
everything for somebody else. I did everything for other people's approval. That is not going to be you.
You will also find you have so much more mental space and time to actually do
fun things and to put into projects and to do enjoyable things.
That time becomes yours and I think that's incredibly powerful.
You feel more free.
You feel more free in the strangest of ways.
Like you'll be out on the street, you'll be on the train, you'll be on the bus.
And a lot of that self-consciousness that used to dominate your life, you'll
find it slowly fading and you'll find that everything becomes a lot more
effortless and easy social interactions, choosing outfits in the morning,
choosing what jobs to apply for, choosing who to go up to and be friends with, it becomes less threatening to you.
I think this mantra really does force us to sit with uncomfortable truths, but I also
feel like it's helped ground me more in who I actually am, not who I think I need to be,
and definitely not who others think I need to be.
So with that in mind, I'd like to share our deep thought of the day and it comes from
none other than Kurt Cobain.
He said, I would rather be hated for who I am than loved for who I am not.
Honestly, the reason I love this quote is because it reminds me you only have so much
energy to give each day. You only have so much time in your life to spend on the things you enjoy
with the people who love you and hopefully being happy with yourself.
You let this person sink their teeth into this precious time,
tear a chunk out of your day, and for what?
Seriously, ask yourself this question with me.
Is their opinion really that helpful?
Does it really change things? And would your life and your confidence be better if it did
change for them? If you stopped being you, if you did what they thought you could do
or should do, would you be happier? Or would you feel more like a phony? Would you feel
less fulfilled? An opinion doesn't have to change anything if you don't let it.
People are entitled to their own judgments and their own thoughts.
We ourselves probably have had negative thoughts about others.
They come up.
It's natural.
Those thoughts though, we need to recognize our burden and responsibility alone.
We choose to live with them.
And I often think, there's these people I come across
every now and again, especially online, who just hate and hate and judge and dislike,
and that's their entire personality. And I used to feel so threatened by things that
they would say, and then I realized, would I want to live even a day in their mind? What
an ugly, miserable, cold place to be in the mind of someone who was constantly
critical and judging, where everything they see in the world is grey and ugly and dark.
You know, it would just not be a place any of us would want to spend any time in.
So don't let their opinion and judgment create that environment in your mind. Now, I'd like us to take a few moments to really
pause and sit with this mantra.
In just a moment, you'll hear a custom music track to
help create space for you to absorb today's insights,
and just consider how you might bring this mantra into your week,
maybe even beyond.
If this practice isn't your style,
if it doesn't resonate with you,
I totally understand.
Feel free to skip ahead about 30 seconds, but as you settle in, keep our mantra in mind
today.
I embrace the courage to be disliked.
Let it guide your thoughts as the music plays and just give yourself a moment to reflect
and connect with what this mantra means for you. How lovely.
After this break, we are going to take all this insight and turn it into something tangible.
I'll share some journal prompts and our weekly
challenge, so stay tuned.
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Welcome back. Let's talk about how to incorporate this week's mantra
into your real everyday life.
Starting with a few very intentional,
very helpful journal prompts.
Now I say this every time,
you don't need a journal to do this.
If it's not nearby, if this isn't your thing,
if you're driving, if you're cleaning, no worries.
Just take a moment to really think about these questions.
Maybe even pause the episode between them if that's something you'd like to do.
But here are our prompts to help you reflect and connect more deeply with this week's mantra,
I embrace the courage to be disliked.
First, where in your life are you still trying to be liked more than trying to be real?
Next, when have you silenced your truth to protect someone else's comfort?
How did that feel afterwards?
Did it have the intended effect?
Third, can you think of someone you deeply respect who isn't universally liked?
What does that reveal to you?
And finally, what does being disliked actually mean to you?
Is it actually as threatening as it feels?
Every week I also share a challenge inspired by our mantra to help you take what we discuss
and turn it into real actionable steps in your life.
And I'd love to hear how it's going so you can reach out to me at Mantra Open Mind.
Each month, you guys know this, I respond to your questions and comments in our special
bonus episode available exclusively on Open Mind Plus.
I'm really looking forward to this month's episode actually.
But this week, this is our challenge.
I want you to do something that's true to you,
even if it's unpopular.
I want you to wear the outfit, share the post,
make the choice that you would normally question
a million times over to see if everybody else would approve.
Let yourself be seen for you, not for who people think you are.
And I want you to notice how that makes you feel, probably scary and then so
liberated. What's the worst that judgment can do to you?
And as a reminder, reach out to me at March
or Open Mind to share how this challenge is working for you.
I know that this one is so deeply personal, but I'm really excited to see what you do with this challenge. If you
are doing the outfit part of this, send me a picture of your outfit. I want to see it.
Send me the post that you decided to share, even though you thought it over way too many times.
Let's like have some two-way communication with this one. I'll do it as well. I promise.
some two-way communication with this one. I'll do it as well, I promise.
All right, as we wrap up this week's episode, I want to share a few final thoughts about this week's mantra. I embrace the courage to be disliked. This is something I have always struggled with,
but I'm getting better at it and I'm noticing changes in myself.
I am noticing so much more freedom, yes,
but also just so much more ease.
My choices just come so much easier to me.
I think about people a lot less,
and it's meant that I've really been able to identify
the people I truly care about, want to spend time with,
and who make me feel amazing.
That's something that's taken me a while to get to.
I want to remind you that you
won't put on this earth to be digestible to others.
That is not your goal,
that is not your purpose or your mission.
You were put here to find out who you are,
to enjoy yourself and be
unapologetically true to that version of you.
The courage to be disliked is ultimately a choice for authenticity,
even when it doesn't align with external expectations.
Not everyone will get you. That's actually a good thing.
Not everyone is meant to get you.
And the more you're able to stay rooted in who you are,
the less approval you'll need from others to feel whole.
Thank you for joining Mantra, an exclusive Open Mind original powered by Pave Studios.
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we invite you to subscribe to Open Mind Plus on Apple Podcasts. I will share another insightful
and introspective mantra with you next Monday. Until then, keep showing up for yourself and
your journey. I'm Gemma Spegg. See you next week. Mantra is hosted by me, Gemma Spegg, and is an open mind original powered by Pave Studios.
This episode was brought to life by the Mantra team, Max Cutler, Kristin Acevedo, Ron Shapiro, Stacey Warren Kerr, Sarah Camp, and Paul Leberskin.
Thank you for listening.
How can one tiny clue change everything? Liba Skin. Thank you for listening.