Tiny Buddha's Guide to Loving Yourself: 40 Ways to Transform Your Inner Critic and Your Life by Lori Deschene
Authors: Lori Deschene
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embody it now. It's not too late to be who you want to be.
4. Ask yourself how you can respond more wisely than you have in the past .
Instead of thinking there's something wrong with you for struggling, consider that mistakes are essential to growth—then use this as an opportunity to show yourself how much you have grown. How can you respond to this mistake more wisely than ones past? What insights can you glean from this mistake that may help you improve going forward? How can you leverage this as a learning experience, essentially making it useful?
CHAPTER 5
When You Focus on Getting Approval: Releasing the Need for Validation
T HERE IS NOTHING MORE FUTILE AND MORE EXHAUSTING THAN trying to get everyone to like you. For one thing, it's impossible; but more importantly, it's counterproductive. When you adapt yourself to please the varied people you meet, you inevitably lose track of who you actually are—which means no one gets a chance to know you and form a genuine opinion. Perhaps even worse, you end up feeling disingenuous every time you say something you don't really think, believe, or feel, which inevitably chisels away at your self-respect—even if you believe you're being a “good person” by agreeing, conceding, and censoring yourself.
You might look for approval from other people because you want confirmation that you're good enough. Maybe you don't trust your thoughts and opinions, so you look to others to back your decisions. Or perhaps it's not just about feeling loved, appreciated, and accepted; it could also be about avoiding the pain of rejection, which stings even more if it confirms your worst fears about yourself.According to German psychoanalyst Karen Horney, the need for approval relates to a fear of helplessness and abandonment. None of us wants to feel excluded, disregarded, or otherwise devalued.
We all look for approval from others in some way or another, whether we consciously recognize it or not. It's how we gauge our performance in life. We look to our bosses to confirm we're doing a good job, our loved ones to ensure we're meeting their needs and expectations, and maybe even strangers to confirm that unbiased outsiders recognize our significance and worth. It's natural to crave some level of external feedback. It only becomes detrimental when we give it so much power that every criticism or negative assessment diminishes our self-esteem.
Unhealthy approval seeking can be a difficult habit to break, especially since it's generally rooted in fear; but it is possible to place less weight on other people's perceptions and more weight on our own. With focus and effort, we can learn to value ourselves whether other people validate us or not.
How can we stop fearing abandonment and rejection? How can we stop obsessing about other people's opinions? How can we feel more confident, so we stop trying to manipulate how others see us, and focus instead on being who we want to be? Countless Tiny Buddha contributors have addressed these issues on the site, sharing their experiences and insights. Some of those include . . .
REJECTION CAN REVEAL HOW WE'RE REJECTING OURSELVES
by Erin Lanahan
Your task is not to seek love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it .
—R UMI
Up to a certain point in my life, I was always seeking approval and validation from everything outside of me. All I ever wanted was to feel loved. I longed for this feeling and wondered how the world could be so cruel as to reject me when I was so loving and available. I have since learned that I was not as available as I thought I was.
It has been my experience that everyone who crosses our path is a mirror. They have come because we have called them into our lives to show us something—to teach us how to be more of who we truly are. Our higher selves crave these experiences and relationships, because ultimately, this journey we call life is all about finding everything we
4. Ask yourself how you can respond more wisely than you have in the past .
Instead of thinking there's something wrong with you for struggling, consider that mistakes are essential to growth—then use this as an opportunity to show yourself how much you have grown. How can you respond to this mistake more wisely than ones past? What insights can you glean from this mistake that may help you improve going forward? How can you leverage this as a learning experience, essentially making it useful?
CHAPTER 5
When You Focus on Getting Approval: Releasing the Need for Validation
T HERE IS NOTHING MORE FUTILE AND MORE EXHAUSTING THAN trying to get everyone to like you. For one thing, it's impossible; but more importantly, it's counterproductive. When you adapt yourself to please the varied people you meet, you inevitably lose track of who you actually are—which means no one gets a chance to know you and form a genuine opinion. Perhaps even worse, you end up feeling disingenuous every time you say something you don't really think, believe, or feel, which inevitably chisels away at your self-respect—even if you believe you're being a “good person” by agreeing, conceding, and censoring yourself.
You might look for approval from other people because you want confirmation that you're good enough. Maybe you don't trust your thoughts and opinions, so you look to others to back your decisions. Or perhaps it's not just about feeling loved, appreciated, and accepted; it could also be about avoiding the pain of rejection, which stings even more if it confirms your worst fears about yourself.According to German psychoanalyst Karen Horney, the need for approval relates to a fear of helplessness and abandonment. None of us wants to feel excluded, disregarded, or otherwise devalued.
We all look for approval from others in some way or another, whether we consciously recognize it or not. It's how we gauge our performance in life. We look to our bosses to confirm we're doing a good job, our loved ones to ensure we're meeting their needs and expectations, and maybe even strangers to confirm that unbiased outsiders recognize our significance and worth. It's natural to crave some level of external feedback. It only becomes detrimental when we give it so much power that every criticism or negative assessment diminishes our self-esteem.
Unhealthy approval seeking can be a difficult habit to break, especially since it's generally rooted in fear; but it is possible to place less weight on other people's perceptions and more weight on our own. With focus and effort, we can learn to value ourselves whether other people validate us or not.
How can we stop fearing abandonment and rejection? How can we stop obsessing about other people's opinions? How can we feel more confident, so we stop trying to manipulate how others see us, and focus instead on being who we want to be? Countless Tiny Buddha contributors have addressed these issues on the site, sharing their experiences and insights. Some of those include . . .
REJECTION CAN REVEAL HOW WE'RE REJECTING OURSELVES
by Erin Lanahan
Your task is not to seek love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it .
—R UMI
Up to a certain point in my life, I was always seeking approval and validation from everything outside of me. All I ever wanted was to feel loved. I longed for this feeling and wondered how the world could be so cruel as to reject me when I was so loving and available. I have since learned that I was not as available as I thought I was.
It has been my experience that everyone who crosses our path is a mirror. They have come because we have called them into our lives to show us something—to teach us how to be more of who we truly are. Our higher selves crave these experiences and relationships, because ultimately, this journey we call life is all about finding everything we
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