How To Stop Seeking Approval

the way to overcome that hurdle is to is to look at the process and say okay I understand that if I do this regularly and enough that the world will move itself to meet me it's just my same with my daughter the world moved itself to say oh you are now self-possessed we will treat you as such yeah or you are now loving yourself so we're going to surround you with people who love you [Music] welcome back to the art of accomplishment where we explore living the life you want with enjoyment and ease today we're

going to talk about how to stop seeking the approval of others and speak your truth and we're going to offer some tips and practices to help you embody speaking your truth and letting go of the need for approval from others how do we stop seeking approval and follow what's true for us you know it it's interesting because I think that the question itself the answer is reversed so let me let me explain what I mean so my daughters both of them went through this at some point they're in their teenage years and there's exclusion and

there's who likes who and did you get invited to the party and blah blah blah blah blah MH and at some point both of my daughters realize that this is like a really painful experience trying to make sure that people like you and and trying to make sure that you're doing the right thing and etc etc is is hard and so recently my youngest came to me to talk to me about this and you know what to do and we had a discussion about it and and this realization hit her in our conversation which was

she wasn't she didn't really have friends if she had to present a certain way and do a certain thing and be a certain person then she she didn't have friends she had like get friends friends who were friends with somebody who she was trying to be but it wasn't friends with who she was and I and when she saw that that was the main cause of the pain her decision was and I have to say with a lot of Courage that she was going [Music] to um just speak her truth just say the thing that

was true to her she wasn't going to try to game the system or worry about what somebody thought her she was just going to be I would call it like self-possessed she was just going to be like Oh I'm going to I'm going to be who I want to be in this situation and let the chips fall where they may and we talked about it a couple weeks later and what she recognized was that she was constantly looking for approval before and when she starts speaking her truth she stopped looking for that approval and the

mechanism there is fascinating to me because if you speak your truth then you're approving of yourself and you don't have to go looking outside for it right if you if you speak your truth you say I this this thing that I'm saying this that I'm feeling this perception of the world is valuable I approve of it I approve of it so much I'm going to speak it I'm going to validate it so I don't need to get validation outside I don't need to get approval outside and if you look around the world you'll see that

the people who aren't really looking for your approval are the people who are also not hedging what they say they're being there they're being self-possessed they're looking for the truth and the idea often is how do I stop looking for approval and speak my truth but the reality is is like oftentimes it's speaking your truth that is the cure for seeking approval this is fascinating I want to back up the train a little bit because you know there's all kinds of all over self-help World there are you know posters with mountains and skydivers on them

that say things like don't seek the approval of others seek Your Truth or follow your truth and it's sort of a like a moral prescription of well this is obviously the optimal way of being but what I'm just hearing is that your daughters the the daughters of a teacher of speaking one's truth yeah were themselves not immune from going through this experience no of we all have to of having you know maybe not a starting point but at some point having the experience of seeking approval externally yeah and then wrestling with that what makes it

that seeking approval is ever a strategy if it's following your truth that seems to be where a lot of optimal paths take people yeah so first of all the morality of it like you said something in there early on which was you know one way is better than the other way I don't know better is just not a great word just one way feels better it feels good and and being conscientious of other people feels good it's just abandoning what's true for you for other people is what doesn't feel good so but let's not do

the moral prescription of it yeah first of all so that that's one thing and then uh the second thing is yeah we are we are geared to be in tribes right we're geared to be in groups and so there is a natural pull for us to a natural tension in our life of how do we fit in and how do we stand out how do we fit in and how do we also be in our truth this is a natural pull of push and pull in in in all societies some bigger some greater you know

America has more let me stand out and some societies have more let me fit in but the but generally that's the that's that's where it comes from is there there's a there's a really normal strategy of it and I suspect that when it's in when you're in a really homogeneous group when you're there's there's a certain sense of fulfillment of fitting in and going along and it and it and there's probably a correspondence in your condition and what you've learned to be right etc etc that that helps with that but in our society where you

know we are that we're not very homogeneous anymore you can find a a group of people who will think anything's kosher and and or anything is not Kosher so it's I think that's that's where it stems from the other way to look at it is that there's a story of Buddha which is very similar to the story of Jesus goes out into the desert you know Buddha sits under a tree he gets the Temptations Buddha gets The Temptations and one of The Temptations was societal Norms this is what Society thinks you should do that's a

Temptation it's it's natural it's as natural as the temptation to be wealthy or be powerful or be wealthy and Powerful to be safe or all of those are Temptations they're Temptations because they feel good in the moment there's a quick fix to them but it's not a really longterm solution I think especially early in life as oh yeah as a baby as a toddler as a it seems that there is a developmental gradient from correct external reference to internal reference exactly yeah especially the first eight years yeah but what's even interesting about it if you

look at the first eight years there's a external reference but there's also this deep connection with what they want MH M so they can do both it it it lets you see that the idea even the idea that there's an external connection and an internal connection is a construction and we live it we've all had the experience of being outwardly focused or inwardly focused but you can be both you can and when you are then that's very much you'll notice that you'll be following your truth and you'll be attuned to other people both both important

both feeling yeah both good feelings yeah yeah every temper tantrum is you could say uh the mixing of the internal external or the wrestling with that frame to begin with maybe not everyone but a lot of them yeah a lot of them yeah yeah yeah that brings up the question of you know so you've flipped it around from you know following your truth speaking your truth is the thing that has the external need for validation fall away because you are validating yourself correct now how would you know that what you're perceiving as your truth is

say Intuition or conditioning or that it's even yours yeah interestingly somatically often when you're speaking your truth it doesn't feel like yours you know it feels more like channeling or following your call or something like that there there's a there's a felt sense of surrender in it almost this is way down the line but there's this feeling of surrender to it because you know following that call speaking that truth being in that surrender to the experience to do anything else is just painful you've done it so many times that you realize oh that's the thing

and I need to do it so that so that's one thing about it that's interesting is that it it it doesn't feel like yours it actually puts you when you're doing this it naturally puts you in a space where the self disintegrates so the identity the strong identity the def this the identity that you have to defend starts to disintegrate and then there's the question of of oh am I in a am I having immediate reaction because I'm following my truth and that's Intuition or am I having immediate reaction and that's conditioning and it's going

to throw me into that hole pattern that I've thrown myself into a dozen times and what I notice is that it's a sematic experience to find that out it's not an intellectual one and so my my recommendation to most people is just every time you make an immediate decision pay attention to your body and see what the difference is between the two for me my experience is that my heart closes down if I'm in conditioning if I'm in unhealthy conditioning some conditioning is great by the way right I I want to be conditioned not to

drink hot coffee that's too damn hot and that doesn't make me close down my heart when I test to see that the that my coffee is hot or not hot or whatever but when I'm in a pattern of say rebelling against Authority when I was 28 years old man my heart had to close down yeah if I'm in a pattern of reacting to somebody the way I've reacted to people when I felt abandoned my heart has to close down yeah that's that's an interesting point or the sematic checking the sematics of it CU if I'm

if I'm speaking something that is that later turns out to perhaps be something I would Define as like the wisdom that came through me in the moment most likely there's a vulnerability and openness to it maybe even a bewilderment of did I just say that yes is that what I really feel here is that what I think is the stand I want to take and that's a very different thing from if I'm channeling say the internalized morality of my tribe in which case it feels a lot more like the shield and the spear in front

of a failen of Warriors behind me and I'm like oh yeah this is true yeah it's a very different sematic experience yeah that's right you have you have to defend that's right and the the the amazing thing is that often times when I'm working with clients and they're talking about how to speak their truth one of the things that I notice is that somatically often times at the beginning there's a pucker to it oh my God am I going to say that that's usually like a great moment to know oh yeah that's the thing to

say it's not like a huge oh my God fear thing it's not like you deregulate yourself disregulated it's just that little bit of a pucker that might be the first available Sensation that you get is that I'm feeling resistance I'm feeling the pucker what's under that what's coming in that it's a very similar feeling to walking out on stage in front of 100 people oh my gosh am I going to do this the other thing is that when I see people speak their truth often times the beginning of it's very bumpy and one of the

things that I teach them is okay really somatically make sure your heart is open yeah the other thing to say about the truth is that there's something incredibly misleading about your truth a baby wants to get a cup of water and they're truth is to crawl one time and then a little bit later their truth is to walk right so it's not about like truth is in this is true and there's never a time when it's not not yours like to to speak your truth is it like I said it's like a channeling there's something

about it that's very non-personal and and it's you can feel it as non-personal and it's actually one of the cool things is when you are doing that on a regular basis when this is your practice one of the things that starts to happen is that you stop taking things personally because you're seeing that like what's happening in your world isn't particularly personal it's more of a calling so to speak so it's a very interesting it's a really interesting practice because it unfolds like a meditation how you meditate on day one is very different than how

you meditate 10 years in opens up a lot of doors this practice is the same way oh I have that calling I know my heart is open I am in myself this is what I'm meant to say even if I'm scared to say it despite the consequences yeah I think I've told this story about one of the things that we've done raising our girls is that we're constantly having them reference themselves for we don't say good job you're smart we say things you know they sayl at what I did and like oh yeah what' you

feel about that oh feels so good like we're constantly put putting like having them reflect on their own experience because there's a TR we have a trust in that that their own experiences is what's going to lead them better than what what we think we obviously there's some stuff you got to do as a parent to hold boundaries Etc it's the same thing when I'm working with clients it's a perpetual deconstruct constructing of the thought process so they can see themselves mhm and so yeah it's just it's such an interesting thing of how do you

become self-referential when you're born self-referential you know it's such a weird such a weird bit yeah yeah it's like coming back around to the initial place on the circle yeah you start self-referential but self-referential in reference to what like you do have an environment you do have a social world But ultimately looping that back to what do I feel yeah so we had talked a little bit about doubt earlier how does doubt show up in reference to Our Truth yeah so I was working with a client recently super successful alcoholic father like me and learned

that every time Dad got mad she could not get mad back so the only Act of control of sovereignty she could have was to say what did I do wrong and I can't tell you I think it's at least 60% of the people work this way somebody gets mad at them either aggressively mad at them or passively aggressively mad at them and they go what did I do wrong well I've been seeing this a lot lately yeah oh yeah and so that's doubt and and by the way doubt requires a closed heart so closed down

your heart the anger should be going outward cuz you should be like you dad what the like I'm your kid don't do this to me but you can't do that as a 5-year-old so you say what did I do wrong anger goes inward you start beating yourself up and that's the doubt or you start questioning yourself if you're the other kind where someone gets mad at you and that immediately makes you angry that's the other the other form of it I fall more into that category um then you then you rationalize and you justify it's

interesting the former there is also there's something interesting in the personal non-personal of it because if I am to blame it's easy to see that as well I'm just looking for what's going on so I'm self- referencing correct I'm referencing what I've done wrong whatever I did wrong to deserve this correct you don't even see it that clearly usually you're just like what did I do wrong I shouldn't have done this blah blah blah blah you're not actually most people don't even hook it to the fact that oh someone yelled at me and that's why

I do this most people don't even put that connection together until they see it if you're listening to this and you have a problem with self-doubt just notice is there ever been any time that somebody has yelled at you and you haven't gone into doubt how many times can you literally point at somebody who's been aggressive towards you or passive aggressive towards you and you were like yeah I didn't do anything wrong that's them I love asking clients that they just blows their mind what wait wait and they can't find it they can't find one

single time so apparently anytime anybody's gotten mad at you it's your fault doubt has a lot to do with oh I'm trying to make sure that people are happy and the reason that doubt is so prevalent there is because you can't make people happy so there's always a reason to doubt you can always churn you can always go no that's not the right decision maybe this maybe I shouldn't have done it this way did because somebody's always going to be unhappy with you always and and and the same person may be unhappy with you if

you do number a thing and the next day you do a thing and they're happy with you and the next day you do a thing and they're unhappy with you because that's how humans are they're happy because mostly because of their own not because of like what you're doing yeah the funny thing is that becomes especially true if that person is doing a whole bunch of comp complicated Game Theory just reference a bunch of other people for what they need in their life so that what they think they need is changing from moment to moment

based on 30 other people and it tends to happen less when interacting with a person who is really deeply self-referencing correct they tend to appear more consistent and there's a level of consistency that develops over time which increases people's trust with them and increases their capacity to lead correct definitely on the leadership side and the other thing it does is it makes the folks around them be more consistent if you're volatile people around you are on eggshells and so they're very inconsistent if you're if you're following your truth and there's a stability to you a

groundedness to you that makes it so that people lean in and trust you yeah and and and so the the the doubt comes in because you're referencing outside the three main reasons that people are not following their truth is one doubt two fear of the consequences and three because they're justifying conditioning they're justifying a bad pattern and calling it truth right those are the things that seem to happen and in the doubt side of it it's a lack of self-referencing and in the the result oriented oh I'm scared of the results that one's that one's

interesting because mhm most people are thinking about a decision as a single decision they're thinking about it as a single bet and it's the whole world is on that bet instead of seeing it as a portfolio of decisions if I'm investing and I'm like thinking about my investment as one investment I am far less likely to be successful at as if I'm thinking about as a portfolio and I know I'm going to have some wins I know I'm going to have some losses so with my daughter she had some losses because some of the things

she said didn't go well or somebody got upset but the overall result the portfolio was good the portfolio was solid and oftentimes what I hear people say is I made a bad decision and you ask what makes that the case because the results weren't goodh that doesn't make any damn sense to me because put you put yourself at a different company with a different boss and that decision would have been great results right it's another way of saying I failed to predict the future right because hold myself responsible for predicting the future which if you're

looking at investing and you know markets if you try to predict the future you're screwed right but what you can do is create a system a process a portfolio that has contingencies and that is likely to lead to better outcomes over time and so in in the realm of doubt it was about going from the external reference to building a deeper internal reference in this case it's kind of going from focus on consequences and outcomes to focus on process yeah it's it's the same thing at its core which is say what's true for you it's

the same that the the thing is the same the the the the hurdle to get there is different and the way to overcome that hurdle is to is to look at the process and say okay I understand that if I do this regularly and enough that the world will move move itself to meet me it's just my same with my daughter the world moved itself to say oh you are now self-possessed we will treat you as such yeah or you are now loving yourself so we're going to surround you with people who love you the

world does react to the how we are it's not magical thinking it's just as simple as if you treat a dog one way they're going to react differently than if you treat a dog another way if you treat your friend group one way they're going to react different mhm yeah so that's an interesting segue to number three because if we're talking about the process rather than the outcomes yeah then what process do we adopt be grounded and openhearted and it's really hard it it will hurt you not to speak your truth there you will feel

the the pain of it you know you're you listen to that person you're like ooo man they just spoke some truth like you feel that in your body so for those listening who want to want to develop a practice or want to take a little homework from this from this episode yeah enter the lives to seek less approval and Trust themselves more what what are a couple of things that people could do yeah the simple thing is to have the practice of speaking your truth even if it's uncomfortable and make it just a little bit

uncomfortable two times a day so I two times a day I jump in there and I drop the grenade and I I run or like what what do I do with it you can't do that if your heart is open and you're and you're grounded say the thing that's scary you it would not feel good to run you'd have to shut that all down to run Mo under circumstances so it's really it's such a thing where there's no you can't intellectually get there there's a sematic component that is required can I be fully in myself

with an open heart undefended and say what I have to say and if I do and I don't defend and I stay grounded what's going to happen and if you do that enough times it becomes is really really apparent when you aren't and when you are and the other thing that you can do is when you make an immediate decision notice how your body feels and so you'll start noticing oh is that Intuition or is that patterning is that negative patterning there's like I said there's lots of conditioning that's great but is this conditioning that

throws me in negative patterns there would be a very specific felt sense to it and so you can feel that when that's happening and you can speak your truth two times a day make it simple stuff and then just get just keep on going bigger and bigger and bigger and what would you add for somebody who says I have a hard time feeling myself especially when I'm in that situation I close down and I can't feel anything you're no I wouldn't say that I would say then your first job is to learn how to feel

your body walk around for the next two weeks keeping 10% of your attention in your body and if you're like I can't feel my body smack yourself on the face and feel your cheek you know like tap your fingers together and feel your fingers you can feel your body everybody can that's like saying how do I see unless you're blind you can see so spend time keeping 10% of your attention in your body as much as possible for two three weeks that by the way that can be an incredibly intense trip for people so be

gentle with yourself if you do that part of me wants to ask a question about weaponization like yeah I do um how do we not walk away from this and weaponize the concept like I just speaking my truth and not recognize we're in like a deeply defensive State around it or you know to your partner why aren't you just speaking your truth stop being so approval seeking right like what what have you seen with cents through this some of the pitfalls that they might get into you got to close your heart to do any of

that stuff again you've got to close your heart it it it can be totally weaponized you know I don't know there's this thing called radical honesty which I really appreciate but there's there's a way you can take radical honesty to a point where you are just being abusive to people and I'm speaking my truth despite the consequences is something I'm speaking my truth in a way with a closed heart and it hurts people is something else and sometimes you speak your truth with an open heart and people are going to get hurt but when they

are hurt if they are like you see it you're like oh whoa I didn't want to hurt you that's not what I would meant to do here then your truth will be like less prioritized connection right yeah awesome awesome thank you Joe pleasure Brett thank you [Music]