The Need For Approval: Part 1

We talk about approval as a learned addiction that quietly trains us to trade our self-worth for other people’s reactions. We use family stories, social media examples, and a parenting study to separate appreciation from identity and move toward self-acceptance. 
• approval as something we try to control through other people’s responses 
• how childhood emotional gaps create a habit of external validation 
• the mismatch between how we want approval and how others show it 
• worth feeling conditional on behavior and becoming a self-regulation system 
• dopamine hits that reinforce people pleasing and performance 
• dropping blame by seeing “programs” passed down with good intentions 
• the protective part that seeks disapproval to justify old pain 
• how roles like “the cook” become identity through praise 
• confidence as peaceful self-trust rather than swagger or self-promotion 
• why reading comments can magnify disapproval and shrink joy 
• using observations instead of praise or criticism to support creativity 
• turning the need for approval into connection and collaboration 

Transcript

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A Quiet Morning And A Big Topic

SPEAKER_01 0:10

We are all on the line.

SPEAKER_03 0:17

On a sunny, wispy cloud day, the water is tiniest ripples. The shadows are strong because the sun is bright.

SPEAKER_01 0:29

The Orioles are eating oranges on deck.

SPEAKER_03 0:33

They do better than me. They get oranges served to them on a plate out on the deck.

SPEAKER_01 0:44

Sorry.

SPEAKER_03 0:45

That's pretty good. They must have more approval.

SPEAKER_01 0:51

No, I'm not so sure about that.

Why Approval Runs Our Lives

SPEAKER_03 0:57

That's the topic today. Approval. Self-acceptance, self-approval, the need for approval, the behaviors we engage in seeking approval, hurt we feel when we don't get it. We're not appreciated. All of this just sort of expectations of others and the way they think of us, like that's something we can control.

SPEAKER_01 1:27

Well, I think too, I don't know where what where we're gonna dive in here, but you know, uh when we have expectations of others, like our version of what is approval for ourselves is very different than might be very different than theirs. They might totally approve of of you, but they're not showing you exactly what you want to see to be to feel approved.

The Dinner Table Approval Story

SPEAKER_03 1:56

I pull an example from my past, it just came to me, and it's it's kind of it's kind of funny, it's kind of melancholy, it's kind of silly, but you know, I was a kid, I grew up, I had five sisters, big kitchen table, eating dinner at night. My dad was a bit of reserved communicator, might be a nice way to say it. He didn't talk much, and generally when he talked, it was mostly sort of an expression of anger. And I remember my mother one night, and this happened on multiple nights. My mother would say to my dad, How's how's dinner? How how's your dinner? And you know, now as an adult, I look at that as you know more my mother's needs than anything else. Back then it was going into my head as just you know my mom's role. Right? She had an obligation, she had a duty here. And and now I see it as my mom, you know, seeking approval from my dad. She said, How was your dinner? And my dad's stellar response. I ate it, didn't I? To him, that was, you know, like, look, my plate's empty. I ate it. That's obvious that it's just great. Thank you very much, right? And I think that's what he's trying to communicate, but he's not doing it very well at all. And he's not doing it from a happy, content place, it would appear. And so it's that that really interesting thing, you know, like what's expected of me, you know. I'm not, you know, am I good enough? Am I doing things right? You know, my mom's desire to simply be told I enjoyed that. Thank you very much. You know, just an acknowledgement that here's somebody went out of their way to feed me. Right? Thank you. You know, and my dad's like, well, what do you want from me? I hate it, I hate it all, you know, like obviously it's just fine, right? Which is not nearly meeting my mother's need for approval in that moment, nor is it meeting my father's need for approval, and he's doing the right thing. He's being a good husband. What's wrong with me now? You know, people turn these things on themselves, and yeah, so approval is something we seek. It's complex because each of us wants it differently, each of us needs it in our own way, each of us yearns to think of ourselves as good enough, and I guess the real the real problem with it is it's become a habit in our own approval of ourselves, to look outside ourselves for that approval.

SPEAKER_01 5:13

Yeah, yeah.

Defining Approval In Plain Terms

SPEAKER_01 5:20

So I think, you know, I wrote a lot for this today, but I don't even know where to start with it.

SPEAKER_03 5:26

Well, let's let's define approval. This is the definition of approval that I I sort of was given. It's the taking of yourself and allowing others to judge it, and then without realizing that they're judging you on their terms, not your terms, you adopt their judgment as your own. And in the moment, on a moment by moment basis, we accept whether we're good enough and we think that that can change.

SPEAKER_01 6:03

Yeah. And I yeah, and that it stems from childhood. I'm just gonna I'm just gonna read a little bit of what I wrote. Because it's hard it's hard to sort of weave a story about it because it's sort of all over the place. It usually appears after a childhood of needs not being met emotionally. The program is that I'm not lovable or worthwhile or enough in this world unless I receive a certain kind of attention. So kind of going back to what we were saying earlier, thoughts being our thoughts now being, I'm in charge of what that attention looks like. And if I don't see exactly that kind of attention or that approval or appreciation, then I'm not approved of, or I'm not lovable, or I'm not enough.

SPEAKER_03 7:00

Let's stop there just for a moment, spend some time on that.

When Worth Feels Conditional

SPEAKER_03 7:06

No, the biggest, I think, the biggest issue is to recognize that we've been trained to think that our worth, that our merit comes and goes. It comes and it goes, and it depends on our behavior, and we regulate ourselves based on the feedback we get. Like that's there's some big pieces there, right? Like the first big idea that our worth or our our value or our lovability can vary. That's a huge idea. And what's an you add to that the big idea that that variance is about other people's opinions of us, right? Our and very specifically our behavior. So we're looking to perform that if we want love, it's about what we do, not about who we are. And then we get in the behavior patterns of what we do to get a specific response. And the specific response we get from mom, who's that first one that really embraces us for most of us, or dad, or caregiver of some kind, that starts to shape what we feel when we get approval. How does approval feel? I think it's different for all of us, right? We feel it in a different place, we feel it in a different way. It vibrates inside us in a certain way, right? So these are three really big problems, right? Because your worth can't be based on a variable idea, on somebody's whim. Yeah. And there aren't specific behaviors that make you worthwhile. And that feeling inside you that you get when somebody approves of you becomes like an addiction. And then you get people pleasers and you get people who don't, you know, we we talk about standing up for ourselves, right? And and I sort of believe that it's not that we need to stand up to somebody else, it's that we need to love ourselves enough that whatever they say or do just doesn't matter.

SPEAKER_01 9:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 9:38

Right. So, like just looking at that complex of three really simple ideas that are just filled with problems, and that they become our method of moving through the world, right? Wanting to feel worthwhile, worthy, good enough, deserving, lovable, wanting to feel that, thinking that that is something that's completely contingent on how we behave.

The Dopamine Loop Of Pleasing

SPEAKER_03 10:12

Now, where do those behaviors come from? They're defined by somebody else. And the reward for those behaviors, the feeling that we're seeking, is defined by somebody else.

SPEAKER_01 10:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 10:25

So our worth, our inherent lovability is basically handed over. And the way we experience any relief is completely in the hands of somebody else as we yearn for a specific feeling that is not the true self-love that we're yearning for. Anyway, I just thought, you know, that's it's really good to break that down and see the pieces there and and recognize those pieces in ourselves, right? The degree to which, the degree to which we're out there seeking approval.

SPEAKER_01 11:03

Yeah. And as we're out there seeking approval, going back to thoughts being uh, I know this is really swinging one way, but like I'm in charge of what that attention, that approval looks like. And if I don't see exactly that kind of appreciation, then I'm not approved of. I think, you know, we have these expectations in our mind of what moving through our day would bring that dopamine hit, right? That that that feeling of lovability, even for a second. And if we don't receive it in that exact way, then we just turn on ourselves.

SPEAKER_03 11:45

Well, and and you see how how you know I I think it it's easy to recognize the addiction aspects to that. Right. Because you can see how people start to take a behavior and they start to associate it with the definition of who they are, right? So let's let's go back to my to my to my lovely mother day after Mother's Day. You know, who she is in part was a mother and a wife, and her job was to make dinner, and that's the way she defined it. She received that definition from her mother and their mothers and mothers that go back generations. She received that and she took that on. And then by that self-definition, she needed to know she was doing that right. Because that was her worth, that was her value, that was her place, and that's the way she defined herself. And then she needed some level of feedback that said, you're doing okay, right? You're doing well, you're doing really well, right? That's what we all want to hear. Because now we've we've now taken our self-worth and put it in this collection, this basket of behaviors that we have to engage in, and we're supposed to be good at them, and we need somebody to tell us we're good at them. And then we've handed over that sense of our worth. If we've defined ourselves that way and we've limited it to those behaviors, we've now handed that over to somebody else to tell us whether or not we're good enough. Now we're powerless.

SPEAKER_01 13:26

Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, what came to me today was this is just a cycle that just keeps going and going and going. To break out of it is I don't want to say it's hard, but it's it's certainly as we're speaking here coming to my attention that this is probably one of the deepest kinds of issues that a human can go through. And I don't know too many people that have this worked out.

SPEAKER_03 14:08

I can't think of any. Yeah, it goes back to who we are.

SPEAKER_01 14:15

Yeah. Yeah. And I I'm I'm sitting here thinking, even if a child is given all the love and attention in the world, they still might struggle with this. In a in a totally, I don't know, totally different way or or the same way, but it looks different uh, you know, in their actions.

SPEAKER_03 14:40

Well, we live in a world, I think, that really focuses on behavior. What you do, how you do it. And we we essentially rant some love to shape what we do, how we do, why we do it. Right. We use that classic, you know, well, a good girl behaves this way, a good boy behaves this way, and a good girl or a good boy deserves love. Yeah, and a bad girl and a bad boy behave this way, and they don't deserve love. Yeah, and that's like huge because our our highest, our highest rewards of love, and you know, when you think about money and safety and comforts, they're all about behavior, they're all about the thing you do and how well you do it. And then that becomes how you define yourself, right? You don't nobody comes up to you at a party and says, Oh, tell me about you. They come up to you at a party and say, What do you do? It's the first question they ask. What do you do? And and in that, immediately there's like a pecking order, right? Because people generally have a knowledge of you know what kind of money you may get, what kind of job, and what kind of future prospects are available for people in certain kinds of jobs.

SPEAKER_01 16:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 16:14

And what are the rewards mentally, emotionally for certain kinds of work and jobs. And we're so predisposed to compare ourselves to others based on what we do and how we behave. And in that, using those terms that were passed on to us, right? Passed on to us quite mechanically, quite innocently, very mistakenly. All these things are passed on to us, and we just simply use them and we perpetuate them as we look at others and compare ourselves to others. Am I a good boy? Am I a good girl?

SPEAKER_01 16:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 16:55

As compared to others.

SPEAKER_01 16:56

Yeah. Yeah. No one comes up to and says, How are you raised? Imagine if that became like no, but they say things like, Were you born in a barn? Yeah.

Dropping Blame And Seeing The Program

SPEAKER_01 17:16

In the chat here, uh a resource. Uh, the book Five Long Five Love Languages talks of the ways we can receive approval and love. And each of us has a language that we best identify with. Someone may offer you love or approval, but it may not be the language that feeds you best.

SPEAKER_03 17:34

That's that third piece where you receive it that approval in a certain way, and you feel it a certain way, and it's not satisfying if it's not received in that certain way.

SPEAKER_01 17:45

Yeah. Yeah. Again, I'm just going in my notes here. Uh maybe getting into the part now. Do you think it's too early for the part?

SPEAKER_03 17:54

Well, I think we're we're still grappling with what the problem is. Yeah, to sort of describe the problem. I think it's just helpful.

SPEAKER_01 18:01

Yeah. It's bad, don't do it.

SPEAKER_03 18:06

Yeah, I think, you know, like we try to take these podcasts. Yes. Bob Newhart. We try to take these these podcasts and spend time sort of focusing on what the problem is and how the problem comes about. And uh mostly we're all normal, and this is all very innocent, and there's nobody to blame, nobody to hate, nobody to judge. None of that is useful. We all, you know, so so many of the things that we are coping with today in the world, as human beings trying to make our way through, were given to us in a program that was passed down generation after generation, always with the best of intentions, because this world is a is a crazy chaotic place and it's hard to make your way through it. And your parents and your family and your teachers and your loved ones were all just trying to get you through and giving you ideas that they thought were the best because they were given to them, and they're nuts. They're not helpful. They're, you know, to to let's just deal with that first piece, that first piece that says my lovability, my worth, my value as a human being, my entitlement to thrive is dependent on other people's opinions. Right? Like that, that piece right there that gets passed down generation after generation, person to person, passively, and just the way we react to other people. Right? We're constantly controlling other people's behaviors by our degree of response, right? Somebody smiles at us, do we smile back or do we frown? You know, the barista hands me my coffee and says, have a good day. And I look in their eyes and I can say they're being pleasant to me. And then I feed it right back to them. You too, buddy. Right. And now there's like a warmth there, and they're feeling better, and I'm feeling better. And we're constantly feeding each other's need for approval and therefore shaping each other's behaviors, right? And maybe, you know, his have a good day was part of a script he was told he had to say, and he's just trying to keep his job. But this time it sort of came out nice and it got him sort of a warm fuzzy, and now the warm fuzzy is moving him through. Like we're constantly feeding each other these tiny little tidbits that continue the myth that my worth depends on other people's opinions of me and how I behave.

SPEAKER_01 20:54

Yeah, yeah. In the back of my mind, I don't know how this weeps into this, but like in the back of my mind, the thought that is pervasive is when someone is like that. I heard a lot growing up that oh, they're they're just being nice. They're just being nice.

SPEAKER_03 21:18

We did a whole podcast on that.

SPEAKER_01 21:19

Did we?

SPEAKER_03 21:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:20

Oh man.

SPEAKER_03 21:21

On being nice.

SPEAKER_01 21:22

Yeah. I remember I got my hair cut and I thought, oh man, this looks amazing. And some people in my life didn't like it. And so I said, people are liking it. People are liking it. They're just being nice.

SPEAKER_02 21:36

That wasn't me. Let's make that clear.

SPEAKER_01 21:40

That was when I was a teenager, exiting my teens.

SPEAKER_02 21:46

Parents have an incredible way of bringing you down to earth quickly, don't they? Oh man.

SPEAKER_03 21:58

As soon as you start to have Have that. Oh, I'm a good person. I I am a good person. I deserve to be happy. I am allowed to express myself the way I want, and I don't need other people's approval, but boy, it's nice to have it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:19

Then a parent just takes their thumb and poop.

SPEAKER_03 22:22

Yeah, they're just being nice.

SPEAKER_02 22:29

Sometimes I just want you to be nice. I'll take nice.

SPEAKER_01 22:35

Or if we're on this subject. I received flowers from first boyfriend and brought them home. Oh, you know what that means. Oh God.

SPEAKER_03 22:50

All right. So and let's let's just let's go back and reiterate that. Like that's that's you know, that's a program. We all have programs, and we all received programs, and those programs have passed down and passed down and passed down.

SPEAKER_05 23:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 23:08

And these programs are not helpful in a lot of cases. They're not protecting us, they're not making us stronger, they're not making us feel more self-love, more self-appreciation, more confidence, more willingness to get out there and act from our heart and act from our true self. And but these are these are programs. And that they were that they were mistaken, that they were unhelpful, that they were incorrect, that's obvious. That they were passed on to us innocently by somebody who didn't know better. We forget that. And blame and judgment is really good, right? Because that's not my fault, right? That's not my fault. It's not my fault that I need to need a lot of approval. It's not my fault. It's not my parents' fault. It's my grandparents' fault. It's my great-great great grandparents' fault because this is just a thing in my family, right? The blame and the judgment just doesn't help, it doesn't get you anywhere. It doesn't take it. In fact, it just sort of locks it in.

SPEAKER_05 24:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 24:15

Right? It makes it something that's unchangeable. When you see it as sort of an innocent passing of bad information, right? Then you can take a deep breath and say, Well, now I know better. Now I know better, and I'm not gonna engage in that. Then change is possible.

The Part That Needs Disapproval

SPEAKER_03 24:35

And now I think the idea of the part really clicks in.

SPEAKER_01 24:39

Yeah, so okay, I'm just gonna read this and wherever you want me to stop to talk about it, I think is helpful. Because it I think it is a lot to wrap our minds around it. Around. Okay, so to begin, it's not just about going back in time and speaking to the younger you about why mom didn't give you a hug at that time, right? Or didn't show love in the way that you wanted it. So here I go. All right. A part of the mind, a part of the mind wants to confirm that it's not approved of so that it can look back in time and make sense of its childhood and the way it was treated. And afterwards, there came a thought of because there is deep down grief and anger in the past, the part is protecting you from feeling that. So it just keeps fulfilling this cycle.

SPEAKER_03 25:46

So it really has no alternative, yeah. Right? Like when you receive a program without an alternative program, there isn't a choice here. Yeah, it becomes normal. That's right. It becomes a choice. And in fact, you know, when if if you love your parents, right, you just open the door to everything they say is the truth, especially when you're really, really young and you don't know anything.

SPEAKER_01 26:10

Yeah. Yeah. So we see this as, you know, people they receive love and then they pull away from it or make up excuses for having to be lovable, which exacerbates the initial pattern. This is, of course, not helpful for anyone involved, but I don't know, I've got a human. I think my guides were maybe doing this. But so this is of course not helpful, but for anyone involved, but a human comes by it naturally seeking safety as a child instills the program. But of course, safety comes in many forms from a hug to being pulled from danger.

SPEAKER_03 26:54

So do do we want to like so there you go. So approval becomes a safety methodology.

SPEAKER_01 27:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 27:02

And you can see how that works in that, right? You follow the rules, you do things the right way, society will take care of you. You do bad things, society ain't taking care of you. That's your problem. You know, and we're really happy that you know, the the focus, you know, you know, I used to be really I used to be really happy when I'd come home and one of my sisters was getting in in trouble, was getting in shit from my parents because I knew I was not the target. Great, now it's not gonna be me. If I kept my head down, it it wasn't going to be me. If I just kept my nose out of it, I went off. And it was just really the truth, right? We we really like it when other people are the target of disapproval, because even just by comparison, we have like this implied approval. Like, oh, I'm the good boy today. They don't know what I've been doing, they don't know what I've been up to, but they got somebody else to call the bad person.

SPEAKER_02 28:06

So I'm I'm almost like getting approved here right now. I'm safer.

SPEAKER_01 28:10

Yeah, yeah. In the chat. We have we have sisters listening. Nice. Les was flying under the radar. Oh my. So as a hypnotist, I guess I'm getting information here, but I think it's important to share, you know, information about how I could help people with it, but I think it's important to share anyway. So do not start with the initial program of not receiving a hug. Okay, just to give you context for people listening. We would fly back in time and go to the moment of feeling like you're not receiving that attention, that that love in the way that you want it. And we would look at it differently. We would apply new meaning to it. So do not start with that. Start with the part that keeps wanting to be unlovable to justify the lack of emotional support in childhood. Okay, so usually parts are protecting us from something. And so what came on like later on was there's this grief and anger in the past, and the part doesn't even doesn't want to look at that. It doesn't want to look at that because that is uh worse.

SPEAKER_03 29:32

It's it's more emotional, it's it's uh it forces you to look at the question Am I really flawed? Is there something wrong with me?

SPEAKER_05 29:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 29:44

And rather than look at it, the subconscious mind just wants to assume it. Here, here's the system. The system is do the right thing, and then you get a hug. So stop arguing with it, just stick to it.

SPEAKER_01 29:55

Yeah, exactly. Excuse me. The idea of wanting a specific response to feel lovable comes from the deep desire as a child to have that kind of response from others. And it goes from I want a hug as a child to I want praise or appreciation for the small things as an adult. Now, I want to add to that praise and caring and appreciation are one thing, they can be lovely, but it takes a turn when the lack of praise or appreciation is attached to your worth, which is what we're sort of talking about here.

SPEAKER_03 30:31

Yeah, that's that's it. If you're constantly looking outside yourself for a reason to feel good about yourself, that becomes a habit. And that habit gets reinforced with those little positive emotions, those little feelings of of satisfaction, those little feelings that make you feel good, make you feel safe, make you feel appreciated. You start to cycle in a in a kind of a habitual way of constantly doing that.

When Approval Becomes Your Identity

SPEAKER_03 31:06

And then it also becomes what's really interesting, it becomes you start taking on hobbies, habits. Let's say as a little kid, you you did some crafty things that got you approval. Now crafts are like everything, and you're posting pictures of everything you create on Instagram looking for likes, and it becomes this massive addiction. You you could, you know, one day you you you you make dinner for the family, and the family says, Well, that was really good. And now you start to think of yourself as, well, I must be a cook. And then you cook again, and that person says, Oh, that was good too. And next thing you know, you feel the responsibility to do all the cooking because that's the way you get approval. And now you're in the habit of cooking, a cooking, a cooking, a cooking, a cooking for others. And that's the thing that defines your worth. And somebody comes over to visit and you can't cook for them. You're like, Well, what value do I have? I I'm I'm supposed to be cooking now, I'm supposed to be providing, right? Even to the point where if you go to somebody else's home, you got to take food with you, you got to take something special, something that nobody else can do. So they could say, Oh my god, that's really good. That need of approval, that definition of yourself as in this example, the cook, the the chef, right? It becomes a personality because it's the thing that gets you your approvals.

SPEAKER_01 32:42

Yeah. And we see this with everything. The biggest thing that comes to my mind is is women and their sexuality. Right.

SPEAKER_03 32:51

And men and their sexuality.

SPEAKER_01 32:53

And men in their, yeah. Yeah, that's right.

SPEAKER_03 32:55

It's the same thing.

SPEAKER_01 32:57

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 32:59

Now that we've said the word sex, do we have to tick off the explicit button on the podcast?

SPEAKER_01 33:04

Possibly. Okay, so what I have here is if the part is not worked with, then even if praise is given, it might be a hit of dopamine for a second, but all the praise and appreciation in the world will not fill the self-loathing that wants to be self-fulfilling. We hear the word self-sabotage a lot around that, so that it can make up its own ideas of why it didn't receive the ideals of safety as a child, the feeling of being lovable and enough.

SPEAKER_03 33:45

It becomes such an association, right? That this positive feeling I have inside me is completely contingent on the way I behave. And most importantly, the way I behave and other people's approval of the way I behave.

SPEAKER_00 34:04

Yeah. And that's all I got. So that's the end of the podcast.

SPEAKER_03 34:12

There's still lots there to break down, right? There's lots there.

Becoming The Voice In Your Head

SPEAKER_03 34:16

I mean, we're just observing the issue right now. We're just observing how it comes about and then how it reinforces itself. I mean, one of the biggest ideas, I think, is how we as human beings become the voice of our parents, right? You know, there's a lot talked about today about the idea that the way you speak to your children is the way they'll speak to themselves in the future. And there's just tons of truth in that. But what we do, and this is in hypno hypnosis terms, this is the formation of the critical factor. The critical factor, at some point or another, your parents hand you over responsibility for yourself. At some point or another, your parents say, You know enough. Now you're in a position to do these things for yourself.

SPEAKER_01 35:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 35:07

And we take on, for some of us, very, very young, we take on that self-parenting role where we are going to impose on ourselves disciplines and methods that we've acquired. And then we start to become the voice that we we heard repeatedly over and over. And that's where these behaviors start to become ingrained. And not only are they ingrained, they become they become singular. And there's to me part of the issue. They become part, not even part, they become the basis for our self-view, our self-worth. They become our self-definition. And there is no one thing that can ever define you. There is no one characteristic, there is no one habit, there is no one talent, there is no one ability that defines you. You are a being of a multitude of talent, of a multitude of abilities, and abilities that can expand and grow and move in new and in unique directions. That's the nature of a human being. But we put ourselves in a box seeking that external dose of approval and love, of self-worth, and we become so well, I think of it as a rut. It's hard to get out of it because it's the thing that keeps getting us approval. It's the thing that keeps getting us that that little hit of love that we yearn for, and that we're now, I think, and this is important, that we're not capable of giving ourselves because we think that it can't come from ourselves, that it has to come from others.

Confidence Versus Performing Confidence

SPEAKER_01 37:13

Yeah, the the the saying, you know, who do you think you are, all that in the bag of chips, you know, and hearing that as a kid sort of makes you feel bad for feeling good about yourself.

SPEAKER_03 37:30

One of the behaviors we see a lot of are people who advocate for themselves in in a kind of excessive way. Look what I did. Look at how good I am. I I deserve some approval here, right? We sometimes mistake that as confidence when people are willing to speak for themselves. And we often see it as confidence, but then when it's it's a little more than enough, we start to see it as conceit or arrogance. And for me, that's the instant I see it as a lack of confidence, a need for approval. They need approval so bad that they need to point out to you what you should be approving. This is this is one of those places where we mistake what confidence looks like. Confidence is not walking around with your chest out and your big swagger. Really truly confident people are peaceful and they're often quiet and they need less approval. They see the truth about approval because the truth about approval is well, that's just your opinion. Yeah, that's the flip side of approval. You can get disapproval. If I'm reliant on approval, I'm also vulnerable to disapproval. It's good to see the two sides of that coin. You know, I I used to I used to say to my students, I'd say, you need to know for yourself the difference between good work and bad work. You don't want to be reliant on somebody else telling you you did good work or you did bad work. You got to know it when you come to the table. Because if you're gonna listen to somebody's praise, you got to listen to their criticism. And you don't want to listen to either. You want to know for yourself the difference between good and bad. And you can see anybody who's taken the time to become really good at something, you know, it's often in sort of work mode or artistic mode. We see people who are good at something. And if they're hyper-critical, they'll point out all the flaws. And if they're hypersensitive to approval, they'll want to show everybody, hoping to get some of that approval. And there are those who create and do in the quiet of their own self and are able to say to themselves, Oh, I like that. I did a good job on that. I figured that out. I feel good about me. And those people are less subject to approval and disapproval. Confidence is a peacefulness, it's an awareness that doesn't rely on others.

SPEAKER_01 40:25

And it doesn't mean that you shouldn't share or you know, show others what you've done or anything, but being okay with however they respond is is the magic.

SPEAKER_03 40:39

Yeah, we let let's tell a story about writing battle.

SPEAKER_01 40:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 40:43

There's a place where we're opening ourselves up to approval, want to explain it.

SPEAKER_01 40:49

I don't know what story it is, but uh that you're thinking about, but it's okay, just explain the whole thing. Okay. So

Writing Battle And Creative Exposure

SPEAKER_01 40:58

I was on Instagram, I don't know, a month and two months ago or something. And it's interesting because I wasn't looking up writing, I wasn't even thinking about writing, but suddenly this this ad came up in my Instagram and it and it said writing battle and something I can't even remember now, but it intrigued me. And so I clicked on it, and it's basically this um this business really is a business out of Halifax, and they hold about once every two months this writing competition between people that have signed up for the competition. So it costs not a ton of money, but a little bit of money to st to sign up.

SPEAKER_03 41:45

25 bucks.

SPEAKER_01 41:46

Yeah, kind of thing. And it's it's fun because you get to choose your genre and then on the evening that the writing battle starts, you have three cards. Okay, so for anyone listening, if you're looking at your computer screen, you would see the three cards like tarot cards. So they use tarot cards actually. As examples, it's really kind of cool. But the three cards on at 10 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on the night of the writing battle start, they flip over for you. Okay. So you know now what you're writing about, what kind of genre, like subgenre of the genre, and then you know your character, and then you have either a place or an object that you have to write about. And so you can switch out your cards, but only to a maximum amount, and and then you have to write about that. Like that's what you have to write about. So it really stretches your imagination. Um, it's fun because Les and I have been have been in the last two writing battles. The first one was 2500 words, and then this one the uh that just closed last night was 250 words. But anyway, it's a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_03 43:14

So you have a short period of time to write your story, and you gotta create your story around the the prompts you get, which is your genre and a specific kind of thing, and then a character and an object or a place. And you're gonna take those and you've got you've got to put them into your story. Uh, you've got to come up with a story that's engaging within the word limit, and then you submit your story, and thousands of people are submitting stories.

SPEAKER_05 43:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 43:44

So then they take all these stories and they just arbitrarily divide them up into groups, and then they get somebody in the first case, they get somebody in charge of they call it a house, and they're going to read all. The stories, and they'll probably have between 35 and 40 stories to read, and then they will put forward the top 10 or the top 15 in each of these houses. So now you've basically cut the number of stories that are battling down to a third. And then these assigned readers will read randomly two stories, and they will pick the better of the two and move it forward. And better of the two, they have a rubric, they have a system, but it's you know, it's largely based on probably, you know, just how the story hits home for the reader. And so that they they move them forward and then ultimately they pair them against each other till one rises to the top in each genre and wins a prize. But what's really cool about it, and this is what I'm really driving at, is that once you post your story, right, everybody else can read your story. And people read each other's stories and offer feedback. And in fact, you have to deliberately put your story available for people to read and be specific as to what kind of feedback you want, right? Do you want them to tear it apart, criticize me? Right, or if you want it to be just positive feedback, thank you very much. You can define that and then you put that out there. And then these writers will basically read each other's stories and take the time to offer feedback. And some of these writers are professional writers, they're writing every day, they're professional editors, and so they're really, really good at feedback because within literary criticism, they've become, you know, talented at that. And others are just people like us who, you know, I know what I like, I'll tell you what I liked about it. Yeah, and that's the best we can do. But to get to the point, to have somebody that you don't know read your story and say something nice about it is a thrill and tells you a lot about your need for approval. Because when you think about it, right, on the one hand, you might think of stories as something that is just your imagination and that's just for you. And quite frankly, I'm being honest, I write all kinds of stories in my head, and I'll even I got books filled with little stories, and I've never shared them with anybody. And now for the first time, we're like writing stuff and putting it out there, and really testing our creative thinking as well as our use of the language, our fluency in our own mother tongue. But the point is that it's really revealing about how much we like positive feedback.

SPEAKER_01 47:06

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And

Why One Comment Can Wreck You

SPEAKER_01 47:11

sort of on the same lines, but I want to take it in the other direction to point out something. When I do, I I do a I don't know, I guess now over the years, a lot of spiritual interviews on spiritual channels on YouTube. And I do the interview and I never check the comments. I never go back. Now I'm gonna eat my words here in a second for those words. But the reason why for a long time I was never going back is because there can be a hundred, a hundred, oh my gosh, she's so lovely, like no wonder she's she's good at her job, whatever. And then there can be one comment that is, who does she think she is? Right, and that will throw me right under an emotional train. And so, yeah, I don't I just don't go back. Now uh saying that, I did end up going back to a spiritual interview I did in January that was released in January. I did go back last week. And you should have seen me. If you if you watched me look at like on my computer, scroll through the comments, it was like scroll, little scroll, little scroll, just seeing like the first line kind of thing of each comment, not opening up like all the comments on my page, just to make sure I was like getting ahead in my mind of like what could be there. But it was really lovely. I didn't come back, I didn't come by any bad comments, so that's nice, but it can really just one little comment out of thousands probably over the years, can just ruin you. And I know a lot of people that have said, Oh, I don't go back to the comments. People that do interviews. Anyway, it just goes to show again, like what you're saying and how susceptible we are to either positive or negative comments and feedback. It's unfortunate.

SPEAKER_03 49:17

Well, I want to add one more thing.

Parenting With Observations Not Praise

SPEAKER_03 49:19

It's all part of the topic, and I think the topic is going to is gonna be carried on for the next couple of days. There was this study done, and I'm gonna dig up the specifics of it today because I want uh to consider it and talk about it. Where they took a kindergarten class, and instead of giving kids approval or disapproval, they just gave them observations. Now, for me, you know, as a parent, I got six kids who are all just incredibly gifted and lovely people, and I'm aware of how much a parent can knock you off what you think you want to do, and how they can limit your expression of yourself through what might be very, very deliberate loving feedback that gets interpreted as criticism or challenge or somehow, you know, the idea that you're not good enough. And what's really interesting uh is some things that I've learned over the years, which is to ask somebody who's brought you something, showing you something, to ask them what they're looking for, right? Hilary will do this to me when she'll send me some of her writings and she'll say, give me some feedback, and I'll say, Well, what do you want feedback on? Right? This is your creative endeavor. I'm not here to tell you it's what weaknesses or or its strengths. What what what kind of feedback are you looking for?

SPEAKER_00 51:06

Praise.

SPEAKER_03 51:06

Yeah, which is really what most of us want, you know. But I've learned to say, Well, what do you uh what do you what are you looking for from me? Because, you know, and I'll say it to my kids, I'll just say, what are you looking for from me? Because I love you and I think you're wonderful, and I see all your talents, and I I'm glad you're pursuing it. So, what is it you're looking for from me? And often they'll say, Okay, you're right, you're biased. I I shouldn't be getting feedback from you. And that's that's the truth of it. But it's approval and disapproval that really uh sets up the guardrails for our kids' behaviors and what they commit themselves to. And you know, that experiment where kids weren't given approval or disapproval, right?

SPEAKER_01 51:56

What were they given? Can you give an example of what you saw?

SPEAKER_03 52:00

So the the observation that I remember was the child draws a picture and it that comes back to the teacher, and the teacher says, Oh, you've used a lot of blue here. And it's just an observation of what's there, not oh, I like the way you used blue or you used a little too much blue. And that what resulted was the kids were much more focused in experimentation and creativity, and that they collaborated together, making, you know, suggestions in a creative basis that had never been before. Because before, you know, it doesn't take much to remember back to kindergarten and remember who the teacher's favorites were and who was, you know, the one getting the teacher's approval all the time, and how much we hated the teacher's pet, whoever that poor kid turned out to be. And the ones that would do whatever the teacher wanted and do it the best often became targets of bullying rather than sort of the leader. And it and it it's a strange thing, this idea of approval and how it shapes us. And yeah, I think that it's worth a little self-examination there.

Trading Approval For Connection

SPEAKER_03 53:24

Looking at what you love, what you love to do, what you love to create, how you love to spend your time, and asking yourself how much of that is shaped by the approval, praise, criticism of others.

SPEAKER_01 53:39

It's interesting with that study. I feel like I've said this before on the podcast. But anyway, I could see how it would work well with kids who don't have like preconceived notions of things, right? So, oh, you've used a lot of blue there, and they go off and and experiment. But as an adult, I don't know who else would feel like this, but if I heard, oh, you've used a lot of blue there, I'd be like, Well, do you like it? Do you like are you saying that you like it? I I hear a tone in your voice, like, you know, are you saying you dislike it? Like my mind would just create this flurry of needing something from you.

SPEAKER_03 54:21

Well, that that becomes the most important thing, doesn't it? Do they appreciate what you've done?

SPEAKER_05 54:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 54:29

Or do they not appreciate what you've done? Yeah, like I had so on, I submitted my story, and I got you know, six or seven feedbacks, and I got this one recently, and the feedback I got was like, holy crap, this person completely gets what I was trying to do, right? And that's really, really affirming, but at the same time, it it reveals to me the extent to which I was writing for somebody else. Right. So for me, what I what I'm driving at is that it's not necessarily this this is a neat little project we do, these writing battles, but you know, we're doing our work every day, we're doing our our thing every day, we're making dinner every day, right? We're we're choosing clothes every day, we're you know, getting haircuts every day, and we are constantly seeking approval, constantly taking other people's opinions and letting it shape our own.

SPEAKER_01 55:48

Yeah. In the chat, there's seeking approval or seeking connection.

SPEAKER_03 55:53

Well, I think that that's what the that experiment shows. What that experiment with the little kids shows is that when they're not programmed to seek approval, when approval or disapproval is not the purpose in showing it, it becomes connection and it becomes collaboration and it becomes almost a partnership of joy where we just experiment and we see how it goes. And what we do is not who we are, and we become free to express without concern of disapproval and without the need that everything we do gets approval because it's no longer who we are, it's just something we did. Yeah, and we need to be free to do, but maybe that's a point to say for tomorrow.

SPEAKER_01 56:54

All right, all right, so yeah,

Final Reminders Without Judgment

SPEAKER_01 57:00

that was good. Have a happy Monday from the chat. Tyke hears the change in my voice and she's getting up. She always does this. All right, so yeah, hopefully that helps. At least create a basis of understanding. We're still understanding it.

SPEAKER_03 57:21

Yeah, observe yourself without judgment. Yeah, there's nothing wrong with you. No, you come by all of this honestly.

SPEAKER_01 57:27

Yeah, we do.

SPEAKER_03 57:29

It's all innocent.

SPEAKER_01 57:31

Yeah. All right, have a good day. Thanks for hanging out. See you later.