It’s the best.
Most of us aren’t taught to believe that we’re already worthy. What we are taught is to believe that we have to perform, achieve, and accomplish in order to feel worthy and valuable. That we have to please everyone and get everyone to like us to feel worthy and valuable.
We were not taught that our own self-approval, self-acceptance, and our thoughts about ourselves are more important than what other people think about us or even what we think other people think about us.
Much of the time, we do things because of what we think other people will think about us.
It’s exhausting, isn’t it?
We’ve been conditioned to do this. But we can’t control what other people think. Not if we do “good” things or if we do “bad” things. They will think whatever they want about us and that’s based on them and not us.
Because everyone has their own interpretations based on their past and lived experiences, their identities, their conditioning, their beliefs and values, their current thoughts, and many other factors.
So if we can’t control what other people think about us, it’s true that we may lose their approval – or gain it – independent of what we actually DO.
But do you know whose approval we can always have? Our own.
We build our self-approval through our thoughts about ourselves. Not through what we do for our work or job, what we do or don’t do for others, or what we do well or don’t do well.
We build our self-approval through our relationship with ourselves. Our relationship with ourselves is built on what we think about ourselves.
What kind of thoughts do we have about ourselves? What do we think when we look in the mirror? What do we think when we make a mistake? What do we think when something goes the way we wanted it to go? When it doesn’t go the way we want it to go? What do we make it all mean about ourselves? These are all thoughts about ourselves.
Once we become aware of our current thoughts about ourselves, we can see whether they’re in alignment with how we want to feel about ourselves. Are we being kind and supportive to ourselves? What do we enjoy about ourselves?
And this doesn’t mean we don’t accept feedback from others – in fact, having our own approval and having our own back helps to OPEN US UP to others’ feedback. Because we don’t take it personally. We don’t let it damage our self-esteem or destroy our self-worth. Because we’re not seeking our esteem or worth from outside ourselves.
We can hear feedback and take it in and decide if we’d like to make adjustments based on what we hear. We can choose to adjust or we can choose not to. But it’s not in order to please others. It’s based on how WE want to show up in the world differently or not.
Your turn: What does it feel like to seek your own approval without worrying about the approval of others? What does it feel like to have your own back no matter what? How much time and energy might you save if you seek your own approval vs. seeking others’ approval? How would your decisions be different?
I talk more about this concept in my latest podcast episode, out today at 3:30pm Pacific! Episode 13: Unconditional Love & Lovability. You can check it out here: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube.
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The Healing Modalities 