The reality is that people just aren’t thinking about you as much as you think they are — even when you actually are the center of attention. And if they are, there’s nothing you can do about it anyway. All you can do is hit the ball. This is called the spotlight effect, and it’s one of the most enduring and widespread egocentric human biases — to feel that people are paying more attention to us than they actually are . . . and usually in a bad way, not a good way.
