Approval Seeking?

As a card carrying member of the approval seekers club, I can tell you a few things about the pitfalls of the game. Us approval seekers generally got our start early on trying to persuade some meanie to like us. Once we learned the game we could wield powers over people by making sure everyone we knew loved us. We were always very popular. How could we not be living life in cater mode? After all, what’s most important is that you were happy. But, after awhile we started to notice that acting a role is tiresome. And, despite your popularity people sort of got the idea they could say any old stuff to you. You never get angry! Then, a little age, a little wine, a little introspection and you begin to wonder how you ever got roped into traveling down that road. What childhood trauma sparked that kind of behavior and worse what did it say about who you thought you were? Making folks happy is very cool, but having to do it to be okay or to gain value is not okay. The approval you need to obtain is your own.

There is certainly nothing wrong with having a good personality, being kind, loving people, wanting to care for people’s hearts. Those are godly characteristics. And, rightfully, everyone loves these folks. It’s really not the behaviors at all. It’s your motive. Are you living your best life and seeking to take everyone along with you for the ride? Or are you spending days, months seeking validation from others? Let’s be real, how could someone else ever validate you? That would make life far too whimsy for my liking. Yet, here we all are fitting in, doing our best to be accepted and dreading rejection. We don’t owe these other humans anything but to love them. We have no debt to pay and we certainly have no need to earn anything from them. Approval seeking is a desperate attempt to earn value. Yet the irony is palpable. Your life is the value. Your value is in yourself. The issue is that someone convinced you, you were broken. Some unhappy soul unburdened themselves on you. They sent you the wrong message. They got you to believe a lie, likely the same lie they believed. You get the picture. The person from whom you must begin to derive some value is you. It is called self-esteem or better, how you esteem yourself. What value are you assigning to yourself? In reality, you only get to assign one value. What kind of self-opposition would decide to value its own self lowly? Approval seekers are not broken, none of us are, they just learned some ways of being that were not healthy. You get healthy by learning to love that guy in the mirror again. You start to break free when you have kind thoughts of that lady staring back from the mirror. If there is one thing that all of us need, it’s to love ourselves again. In the words of Jen Sincero, “We are all perfect in our own, magnificent, fucked-up ways. Laugh at yourself. Love yourself and others. Rejoice in the cosmic ridiculousness.” Get back to loving you and you can quit participating in that ridiculousness. Love yourself anyway.

It is always a good day when you gain clarity about the things that matter most. I believe God lets you in on it when you are ready and not a moment before. One day you wake up and think, what the hell am I doing? And like any sneaky trick you are finally in on, you get to call bullshit. You realize, or maybe start to realize, that you are the architect designing your own space and you are quite free to change the design. You can switch it all up over night. You can even tear it all down and start fresh. And while you are building your dream life or an even dreamier life, you stop seeking people’s approval and free yourself to just be. Do what you like and how you like to do it. Their opinions and never ending judgments reflect their own hearts, not yours. They wouldn’t be so desperate to categorize you if they didn’t feel so inadequate themselves. So let ’em size you up, draw their conclusions and maybe even say some harsh words. At the end of the day, what they think has nothing to do with who you are, that is unless you let that happen. You have the grand and glorious privilege to be exactly who you want to be. Do you even remember what things you like? We live with other people, not for them. There is an unparalleled freedom that comes from setting yourself free from societal expectations about what you do, when you do it, how you do it and why you can do it or not. You answer to a party of One. Otherwise you will spend your whole existence trying to fit into everyone else’s world. That’s not life, it’s servitude. You don’t need to seek anyone’s approval. You are wonderful just the way you are…

Just some good thoughts.