We all want to be liked, but if you find yourself spending too much energy thinking about what others think about you, you may be creating an unhealthy pattern that can be debilitating to your success.

While it’s normal to care about what others think, problems can arise when the only way you can measure your success is through the eyes of others. And the truth is, we concern ourselves about what others think about us far more than others actually think about us.

Here’s how to avoid the worry:

“It’s only natural that you’re going to start taking the signals that you see and hear about what people think about you,” says Nihar Chhaya, executive coach and president of the leadership development company Partner Exec. After all, humans are social beings, and what others think of us does contribute to our self-identity. Caring about others’ opinions of us can stem from childhood tendencies to look for external validation from parents and teachers.

But as an adult, deciding that what people think has to validate what you do can have you obsessively worrying, and that can be restrictive to your success. “If everything that happens to you is based on someone else giving you the thumbs up or green light, then you’re going to be at the beck and call of external factors,” says Chhaya.

People critique us a lot less than we think they do. Often, what we perceive as our weaknesses feel more severe to us than others think they are. “As human beings with egos and an innate self-awareness of our own feelings, actions, and thoughts, we tend to notice and greatly exaggerate our flaws while assuming everyone around us has a microscope focused on faults, mistakes, and slip-ups,” says Melody J. Wilding, workplace psychology coach and professor of human behavior at The City University of New York Hunter College. The truth is, others don’t notice our flaws nearly as much as we think they do, because they’re too busy noticing and exaggerating their own flaws.

Take some time to reflect and develop some self-insight so you can develop your own internal story as a counterweight to the story you believe others have of you. Often what you think others think of you is your own inner critic speaking to you. We can overcome that inner critic by providing ourselves with evidence to the contrary.