Have you ever had a weird hobby that you've kept a secret?

Or maybe there is a song or a TV show that you only watch when you're alone, because you don't want your friends to know about it.

These are all things that would happen to me.

And it's because I used to care deeply about what other people thought about me.

But there was one moment in my life, where that feeling of caring just went away forever.

And I'm gonna tell you about it right now.

Back when I was living in Melbourne, Australia, I met this really popular YouTuber named Adrian Gee.

And he would film these crazy YouTube pranks.

And I remember one day, he asked me to help him film a video.

And I said, "Sure."

And he told me the title of the video was going to be "Making Inappropriate Noises In The Library Prank".

Where he would basically pretend to talk dirty to his girlfriend in a public library.

And even though I thought the video was silly, stupid and obnoxious, it taught me a really valuable life lesson.

When he was making all of those noises, people obviously cared at first.

But after a couple of minutes, people kind of just stopped caring.

They would go back to reading their book, watching their YouTube video, or back to scrolling through Facebook.

They would act as if nothing had happened.

And at first, I was shocked by this.

I couldn't believe it was happening.

But after I started learning more about people and about human psychology, it actually started to make more sense.

The average person is incredibly self-absorbed, and they don't really care about you.

They are much more concerned with their plans for the weekend, or how many likes their last Instagram picture got.

They're so wrapped up in their own world;

That they don't have the mental bandwidth to think about anyone else but themselves for more than five minutes.

And it's kinda funny, because I think, to some extent, we all kind of know this.

Yet, we're still hesitant to go and ask out that person who we find attractive.

Or just talk openly about some weird interests that we might have.

And, I think, some of you are probably thinking, "Well, Mitch, I don't care about what random people think about me."

"I care about what my family and my friends think about me."

And here's my answer to that.

If you're talking to a friend about a hobby that you're actually passionate about, and they're not open to it.

Or they, I don't know, want to immediately end the friendship because of it.

Then they probably weren't really your friend in the first place.

So it's actually good to get rid of the wrong friends, to make room for the right ones.

The less you care about what other people think of you, the more people will actually like you.

It's why we're all so attracted to people who come across as authentic or real, and we're so turned off by fake people.

And authentic and fake are just fancy words for people who are comfortable and not comfortable expressing who they really are.

So, even though we consciously know this, it is still hard for us to be ourselves.

And this is because we're all afraid of our true self getting rejected by the world, which will really hurt our ego.

So, we would rather keep up our fake public persona.

I've said this before, but my all-time favorite analogy for how you should live your life, is the songbird.

Imagine you're walking down the street, and you hear a bird chirping, and you think to yourself, "Wow, this bird sounds amazing.

"I love this bird."

But your friend next to you thinks, "God, this bird sounds terrible, I hate this bird."

That bird does not care about your love or your friend's hate.

That bird is just gonna keep doing what he does best and sing his song.

Be like the bird and keep singing your song.

Not everyone is going to like the way you sound, but the ones who do like you, will like you for you.

And the connection with those people will be real and meaningful.

Check out my last video about the one habit that will make you happy and successful, and I'll see you there.