What Happens When You Stop Chasing Everyone’s Approval: Chapter 1

A few years ago, I caught myself doing something I had done for most of my life without even realizing it.

I was rewriting a message.

Not because it was rude or it was wrong. But because I was worried about what the other person might think. I changed one sentence.

Then another.

I removed a joke because it might be misunderstood. I added an apology for something that didn’t need apologizing. By the time I hit send, the message barely sounded like me anymore.

Nothing dramatic happened. The person replied politely.

Life moved on. But I sat there wondering something that had never crossed my mind before.

How many decisions in my life had I made simply because I wanted someone else’s approval?

That question stayed with me for weeks. The more I paid attention, the more I noticed it everywhere. I wasn’t the only one doing it.

Friends accepted invitations they didn’t want. People stayed in exhausting jobs because they didn’t want to disappoint their parents.

Someone posted a vacation photo—not because they loved the moment, but because they hoped people would admire it. Someone else bought a car they couldn’t comfortably afford because they wanted to look successful.

It seemed as though millions of us were living for an audience that wasn’t paying nearly as much attention as we imagined. And that’s when something quietly changed inside me.

One of the strangest prisons isn’t built from concrete. It’s built from invisible expectations.

You wake up wondering whether people liked your post. You replay yesterday’s conversation in your head. You hesitate before sharing an opinion because someone might disagree. You apologize for taking up space.

Eventually, you stop asking,

“What do I actually want?”

Instead, you ask,

“What will make everyone else happy?”

The frightening part is that this prison feels normal. You don’t even realize you’re inside it.

Several years ago, I was sitting in a crowded coffee shop.

At the table next to mine sat a young woman scrolling endlessly through her phone. Every few seconds she refreshed one social media app.

Then another. Then another.

She smiled whenever a notification appeared. Her face dropped whenever nothing happened. After nearly twenty minutes, she quietly sighed and whispered something I wasn’t supposed to hear.

“I guess nobody cares.”

Those four words stayed with me. Nobody had insulted her or rejected her.

She had simply connected her worth to other people’s reactions. It made me wonder how many of us do exactly the same thing.

Maybe not with likes.

Maybe with compliments. Promotions. Relationships. Parents. Friends. Colleagues. Strangers. We slowly hand pieces of our self-worth to people who never asked to hold it.

In interviews over the years, Oprah Winfrey has spoken about spending years trying to meet other people’s expectations before realizing that fulfillment came from living according to her own values rather than constantly seeking validation.

That idea sounds simple.

But living it is incredibly difficult.

Because from childhood we’re rewarded for pleasing people. Good grades. Good behavior. Good manners.

Approval becomes our first currency.

Nobody teaches us where healthy consideration ends and unhealthy people-pleasing begins. So we grow older believing approval equals safety.

A friend once shared a story with me that I still think about. He had spent nearly fifteen years building a career his parents admired. Good salary. Respectable title. Nice office.

Everyone congratulated him. But every Sunday evening he felt physically sick thinking about Monday morning. One evening during dinner, his daughter asked him a question.

“Dad... do you actually like your job?”

He laughed. Then stopped laughing. Because he couldn’t answer.

A few months later, he left that career and started something completely different. It wasn’t easy. Some relatives called him irresponsible. Friends questioned his decision.

People whispered.

For the first time in years, not everyone approved of him. Ironically...

It was also the first time he felt free. Years later he told me,

“I realized I had spent my whole life earning applause from people who weren’t living my life.”

That sentence hit harder than almost anything I’d heard. Because it’s true. No one else wakes up inside your mind. No one else carries your regrets. No one else lies awake wondering what might have been.

Yet somehow we let them decide what success should look like.

When Steve Jobs delivered his famous commencement speech at Stanford, one line stood out more than any other:

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.

People often quote that sentence. Few actually think about what it demands.

Living someone else’s life rarely happens all at once. It happens one small compromise at a time. You laugh at jokes you don’t find funny. You agree when you’d rather disagree. You choose careers you don’t love. You hide opinions that matter to you.

Years pass.

Then one day you wake up feeling strangely disconnected from yourself. Not because you became someone new.

But because you’ve spent so long trying to become everyone else’s version of you.

There’s an older man who lives a few streets away from me.

Every morning, before sunrise, he waters a small garden outside his house. It’s nothing extraordinary. Just flowers. Vegetables. A few trees.

One day I asked him why he spent so much time there. He smiled and said,

“Because flowers don’t bloom faster when strangers approve of them.”

I laughed.

But later I realized he had unknowingly described one of the biggest problems of modern life. We keep waiting for applause before allowing ourselves to grow. We wait for permission.

Permission to start. Permission to fail. Permission to change. Permission to be ourselves.

But flowers don’t ask for permission. Neither should we.

The hardest part about letting go of other people’s approval isn’t losing their applause. It’s discovering who you are without it.

And that’s exactly where the real journey begins.

The need for approval doesn’t appear overnight. It begins long before we’re old enough to understand it.

As children, praise teaches us what is “good.” We learn that a smile from a parent feels safe. A teacher’s compliment feels rewarding.

Being accepted by friends feels comforting.

There’s nothing wrong with that.

The problem begins when approval stops being something we appreciate and becomes something we depend on. Without realizing it, we hand other people the keys to our happiness. A compliment can make our day. A criticism can ruin our week.

Silence can make us question our worth. That isn’t confidence. That’s emotional outsourcing.

And the more people control your emotions, the less control you have over your own life.

One of the strangest things about modern life is that we’re performing for people we don’t even know.

We post a photo. Then check it ten minutes later.

We publish an article. Then refresh the page again and again.

We share an opinion. Then wonder how strangers will react.

I know this feeling because I’ve experienced it myself.

After publishing something I genuinely cared about, I found myself checking the numbers more often than I wanted to admit.

How many people had opened it?

Did anyone comment?

Did someone unsubscribe?

At first, I told myself I was just being responsible. But if I was honest, I wanted reassurance. I wanted proof that what I had created mattered.

One day I caught myself refreshing the analytics instead of working on my next piece. That moment taught me something important. Validation can become procrastination in disguise. Instead of creating, we’re constantly measuring. Instead of improving, we’re constantly comparing.

And comparison is a race with no finish line.

Researcher and author Brené Brown has often spoken about the difference between fitting in and belonging.

Fitting in means changing yourself so you’ll be accepted. Belonging means being accepted without pretending to be someone else.

At first glance, those ideas sound almost identical. But they’re worlds apart.

When you fit in, every interaction becomes exhausting because you’re constantly performing. When you belong, you don’t have to remember which version of yourself you showed yesterday.

There’s a quiet freedom in authenticity. You stop acting. You simply become.

Several years ago, I met a man during a train journey.

He looked like someone you would walk past without noticing.

As we talked, he told me that for nearly thirty years he had worked in a profession he never enjoyed.

“People respected me,” he said.

“But I didn’t respect the person I became.”

I asked him why he never changed. His answer was painfully honest.

“I was afraid people would think I had failed.”

He paused for a moment before adding,

“You know what’s funny? When I finally changed careers at fifty-eight, most people didn’t even care.”

That sentence stayed with me. We spend years fearing judgments that never arrive. The audience we’re trying to impress is often too busy worrying about their own lives.

Imagine carrying a backpack. Every time someone criticizes you, another stone goes inside. Every time someone disagrees with you, another stone. Every time someone doesn’t understand you, another stone.

Eventually the backpack becomes so heavy that you stop climbing altogether. Not because you’re incapable. Because you’re exhausted.

Approval works the same way.

When your happiness depends on everyone’s opinion, every disagreement feels personal. Every rejection feels permanent. Every criticism feels like proof that you aren’t enough.

But here’s something I wish someone had told me earlier.

You can be kind without needing everyone to like you. You can be respectful without agreeing with everyone. You can disappoint people and still be a good person.

Those ideas sound obvious.

Living them takes courage.

For years, saying “no” felt uncomfortable. I worried that people would think I was selfish.

Unhelpful.

Difficult.

So I kept saying “yes.”

Yes to work I didn’t have time for. Yes to conversations I didn’t have the energy to continue. Yes to obligations I secretly dreaded.

Eventually I noticed something. Every unnecessary “yes” was becoming a quiet “no” to something that mattered.

A “yes” to someone else’s priorities.

A “no” to my own.

The first few times I politely declined requests, I expected people to react badly. Most didn’t. Some respected me more. A few disappeared completely. Oddly enough, losing those relationships didn’t make my life smaller.

It made it lighter.

There’s an old idea that says if you wear a mask long enough, people will eventually believe it’s your real face. The greater danger is that you begin believing it too. I’ve seen people become experts at pretending.

Pretending they’re confident. Pretending they’re happy. Pretending they’re successful. Pretending they’re okay.

The performance earns applause. But applause cannot replace peace.

One of the saddest moments in life is realizing that people love the version of you that isn’t real.

That’s why authenticity feels risky.

But pretending is even riskier. One costs you approval. The other costs you yourself.

Have you ever noticed that trees don’t compete with flowers?

The oak doesn’t try to become the rose. The sunflower doesn’t apologize because it’s taller than the daisies around it. Nature seems completely comfortable with difference.

Only humans spend years comparing their path to everyone else’s.

Someone buys a house before you. Someone gets married before you. Someone starts a business before you. Someone becomes successful younger than you.

We see their highlight reel and quietly question our own journey. But every meaningful life follows a different timeline.

The moment you stop racing against everyone else, you begin moving at the pace your own life requires. And strangely, that’s when progress often becomes much faster.

People often imagine freedom as having more money. More time. More opportunities.

Those things matter.

But there’s another kind of freedom that rarely gets discussed. It’s waking up without wondering whether strangers approve of your choices. It’s expressing an opinion without rehearsing it a dozen times. It’s creating something meaningful without obsessing over whether everyone will applaud. It’s choosing your path, fully aware that some people won’t understand it.

That isn’t arrogance.

It’s maturity. Because somewhere along the way, you realize something incredibly simple:

Not everyone has to agree with your life for it to be the right one.

And once that truth settles into your heart, you begin making decisions from conviction instead of fear.

That changes everything.As I was writing this, I realized something.

Breaking free from other people’s approval isn’t the end of the story.

It’s only the beginning. The real challenge starts afterward.

What actually changes when you stop living for applause? Do your relationships change? Does your confidence grow? Do people treat you differently?

And what happens when some people don’t like the new version of you? Those questions deserve more than a few paragraphs.

So, in the next chapter, I’ll explore what life truly looks like after you stop chasing everyone’s approval—and why that decision might be the most liberating one you’ll ever make.

To be continued...