Do You Seek Approval?

*From my old Friendster Blog site written on Dec 28, 2006.

I recently heard this idea of 'Seeking Approval'.

Okay, I'll try to describe what it is. Seeking approval is an act of trying to get others agreeing with something that we do or think. This is because we feel insecure that others might disagree with something that we feel is right, so we seek their approval to make ourselves feel better when they do agree. But if they disagree with us, then it might affect our stand on that particular subject.

Now, ask yourself. Do you seek approval?

Most probably, the answer would be Yes. This happens a lot all around us but we didn't notice it before. We didn't even know that we're one of the people who does it. Have you ever done one of these:?

Buy new clothes or electronics and wanteed to show it to others how cool that thing is.
Got a compliment from someone and tell others about the exact conversation in detail.
Kissing up on the first date to make the other person 'approve' that we're nice instead of jerks.
Made an achievement or did something good and wanted to share it with virtually everyone.

There's a lot more examples out there, by the way.

I have to admit that I also do some of these things sometimes. But since I already know about it, I've started to try and get rid of it (Now that's an approval seeking line - I wanted to tell people that I've started my effort, or else, I don't feel confident about their perception towards me - Why should I even tell?). It is childish in a lot of ways. When we were small, we'd always wanna show people that new toy we got from the store and we'd be jumping around happily when they say nice things like "oh, that's a very cool toy, !!" You know, you look very cute doing that when you were little, but now......

However, doing this is normal. There is always that 'little kid' part left in us especially when we're in the process of growing up to be mature adults. But it is good to just know about it and try not to do it anymore, or at least to start doing it less. When you catch yourself in action of seeking approval, stop immediately and just beat your head against the wall 10 times.

Approval-seeking happens because we lack confidence in ourselves that what just happened is good enough. So, we look for and need to get input from others to even convince ourselves that it is true. We lack faith in ourselves and we don't acknowledge our capability as the biggest source of confidence in whatever that we do.

Well, until then, hopefully all of us can learn to notice this behavior and start getting rid of it slowly. Take care, friends. Bye.