Daily Gratitude: “A life run entirely by the imagined verdicts of others is not your life.”

Why are we so driven by the need for approval? It’s thought to be because we are a tribal species and if the rest of the tribe didn’t approve of you or what you were doing, you were ostracized, kicked out of the tribe and left to fend for yourself. Way back when that was a recipe for disaster. Nowadays it may feel like a psychological disaster but you will survive physically.

Our primitive brains don’t realize this though. So, they continue to operate as they did in ancient times.

Once we recognize this and remove the emotional overlay from any “possibility” for rejection, we can analyze the situation and then figure out what the best thing to do is.

The key is taking the time (the “pause” I write about so much), allowing yourself to feel whatever is stirring up inside you, and then putting on your analytical cap and figuring out whether you really really really need that other person’s approval. Focus, too, on the word “need”. You may want their approval but that’s a totally different thing than “needing” it.

Once you’ve looked at it that way, you should be able to decide what you need to do or not do regardless of what others think.

Pause, Feel, Analyze.