Why Do I Need Other People's Approval?

Recognised or directed

There is a clean test for this. When the approval arrives, does it confirm something you already decided or does it tell you what to do next?

Being recognised means somebody notices work you chose to do. It is warming and then you carry on. Being directed means the approval sets the course. You adjust the work, the opinions, the tone of voice, sometimes the whole direction of a career, in order to keep receiving it.

The second one is expensive because it is invisible from outside. It looks like being well liked and doing well. Only the person inside it knows how much of the day is spent managing an impression, and how tired that is.

Whose definition are you performing

Approval is always approval against a standard. When you feel you are falling short, you are falling short of somebody's picture of a good life, and the picture is usually specific enough to name.

It might be a father who valued visible achievement. It might be a school that measured everything. It might be an industry whose idea of seriousness you absorbed at twenty four, or a group of friends whose measures froze years ago.

The audience is often smaller than the feeling suggests. People say they care what others think and then, pressed, can name three individuals, one of whom has been dead for a decade. Writing the actual names down deflates a surprising amount of it.

Where the habit comes from

Children work out quickly what earns warmth in their particular house. Marks, humour, usefulness, quietness, achievement, not needing anything. Whatever it was, that became the route to being alright with the people who mattered most.

A route that reliable does not switch off because you turned thirty. It simply changes venue. The person who earned safety by achieving keeps achieving, and finds that no amount of it settles anything for longer than a fortnight.

This is worth understanding rather than fighting. You are not chasing praise because you are shallow. You learned that a certain performance kept you safe and loved, and nothing has yet convinced the older part of you that it is now optional.

Why the approval never lands

People describe the same disappointment. The promotion arrives, the compliment arrives, the room is impressed. It lasts about a day.

It does not last because approval answers the question was that acceptable, and the question underneath is usually am I alright. Those are different questions and the first cannot settle the second, however many times it is asked.

There is also a mechanical reason. If the standard is external it can move without notice, so no achievement is ever final. You cannot bank it. Anyone who has spent years pursuing an external measure knows the feeling of the finish line quietly relocating.

Having a measure of your own

The alternative to being directed is not defiance. Defiance is still being steered by other people, only in reverse.

The alternative is having your own standard, specific enough to be used. Most people cannot state theirs quickly, which is precisely why the borrowed one keeps winning. A vague sense of wanting to be content loses every time to a clear instruction from somebody else.

So write it down. What do you want a week of your life to contain. What would count as having done the work well, judged by you, if nobody said anything about it. It feels awkward and slightly embarrassing to do this. It is also the only way the outside voice stops being the loudest one in the room.

So what

In practice this comes down to small decisions made differently. Sending the piece of work you think is right rather than the one that will be praised. Saying you disagree in the meeting and finding the room does not end. Not explaining a choice you are entitled to make.

Each of those is a test of the prediction underneath the habit, which is that disapproval will cost you something unbearable. Usually it costs you an uncomfortable ten minutes and a slight change in how somebody sees you, which you survive.

It is also fine to conclude that you value other people's regard highly and want to keep it that way. Wanting to be well thought of by people you respect is not a defect. The point is to know that you chose it.

A short exercise: name the audience

Thirty minutes. Think of a recent decision where you adjusted yourself to be received well.

1. 1Write who you were adjusting for. Actual names, not people in general.
2. 2Write what you believe each of them would have to see to think well of you.
3. 3Write where that standard came from and whether you would choose it now.
4. 4Write what you would have done if nobody was going to know either way.
5. 5Write the smallest real situation this week where you could do that version instead.

The gap between the fourth and first answers is the size of the performance. Sometimes it is small and sometimes it accounts for most of a decade.

Three shapes this takes

Composites. Notice the shape rather than the detail.

Where the book comes in

The Alternative Is Unthinkable is largely about borrowed definitions of a good life. Who decided what success was, why it was never questioned and what it costs to keep meeting a standard nobody agreed to out loud.

It is not a book about confidence and it will not tell you to stop caring. It is a way of working out which measures are actually yours.