What Are You Doing For Approval?
Written by Kate • September 8, 2011 •
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What will you do for approval? If you’re not sure how far you’ll go or if you’re living a purpose-filled life, ask yourself the following questions:
- Do you ignore what your gut and heart are telling you?
- Do you allow someone else to tell you how to live your life? How to spend your day?
- Do you live in fear of disappointing others?
- Do you ignore your own dreams in order to keep the peace?
- Do you play small and waste your life thinking you need someone’s approval before you follow your dreams?
No? Are you sure? The following are 4 ways to know if you’re following your dreams rather than living in order to gain approval.
#1. You know what it’s like to disappoint and worry others and it’s OK. One of the easiest ways to disappoint others or make them worry is by listening to your own internal guidance. If you haven’t regularly disappointed a lot of people in your life, that you’re not living your own life.
#2. The phrase “keeping the peace” doesn’t resonate with you at all. If you’re still working on keeping the peace with your husband, boyfriend, partner, Mom, Dad, or sister about how you spend your time, what you do with your day, and even sometimes what you think about and explore, then you still care more about what they want than what you want. Because when you’ve gotten to the place in your life that you know how to follow your own road, there is no peace to keep. It’s already peaceful because you’re living your purpose. The people in your life are supportive of your path or they’ve fallen silent [or away]. Following your purpose helps you see who supports you and you is holding you back because of their own fears and limiting beliefs.
#3. You have a clear sense of where you’re going and why. To know in your gut, in your heart that you’re on the right path means you’ve veered down a few wrongs paths, turned around, and started again. The only way to have clarity about your purpose, about your why is to have begun to act on the knowledge of what you want to do in this world. When you’ve acted on your beliefs and made changes in your life that are map to your own ideas , you stopped living for another’s approval.
#4. You’re often a little bit scared. You know that you’re expanding your life, living a bit bigger each week, reaching for new and better opportunities the more scared you are. And it’s great to be a little scared with what you’re daring to do. And it means you’re risking disapproval, failure, and change. A little bit scared means you’re exactly on the right path.
If you’ve just realized that you’re sacrificing too much of yourself to keep someone else’s approval, it’s ok. We all start there! Just begin to ask yourself why their approval means so much to you, why their way of living life is more valid than how you want to live, and if their approval is worth the pain of living such a small life. Then take one small step towards living how you want to live. Go out with your friends on your own. Spend the evening in your room by yourself. Get up early and write a poem. And then incorporate another habit that resonates with the life you want to live..and then another and another.
It all adds up to a big, sparkly life that makes YOU happy.*
*Isn’t that what someone who truly loves you would want for you?