Stop Approval Seeking

Your life changes when you stop seeking approval. You stop caring what others think. You stop tiptoeing around people. You can finally breathe.

Changing yourself to meet someone else's expectations never ends well. You can only keep up for so long. Play pretend. Phony conversations. Change the way you dress. The way you talk. For what? In the end you gain nothing. All you've done is based your self worth on someone else.

I did this once. I fell for this guy and I tried to modify myself into what I thought he wanted. Suddenly I was a nun that basically had no sexual relations in the past. I tried to deaden my personality in case I looked too wild. Put my phone on silent in case it rang one too many times.

Cause God forbid it was a male human calling. Why do you have so many guy friends? Why can't you be like the other girls? None of my friend's girlfriends are like you. Blah blah blah.

And sometimes I'd have a few drinks and let loose. Dance. Laugh. Give piggyback rides. Yes, piggyback rides. Hell, he'd even enjoy himself. But then the next morning he'd call me a 'party girl' and stare at the ceiling for two hours wondering what he'd gotten himself into.

I didn't help myself. I was pretending to be someone I'm not, which then turned into telling lies, which then made him doubt me more, which then made me lie more for him to believe I was the person I wasn't.

Pretty fucked up right?

If I hadn't been seeking his approval to begin with, I could've saved us both a lot of pain.

And it doesn't matter if we're talking lovers, friends, parents or colleagues. I understand that sometimes it gives you satisfaction to have someone liking you. Or being proud of you. But that feeling is temporary and soon enough you'll be searching for your next fix. Instead of looking for approval in others, look for value instead. Value means more than approval. When you're valued, you're appreciated as you are.

Back in college I picked subjects that I hated to make my mum happy. If I wasn't going to be a doctor, I would've ended up becoming a broke stripper that smoked crack for breakfast. That's probably what she thought anyway. But I ended up bunking most lessons and had siesta's during my exams. I wasted a year of my life trying to make my mum happy. And in the end she only ended up more disappointed.

You see where I'm going with this?

After that year I gave myself a break and went to London School of Beauty Therapy. I had no intentions of becoming a beauty therapist but I had fun. My mum nearly had a heart attack but she got over it.

Last week I had an interview at Queen Mary to get into Dental Therapy and Hygiene. Oldest medical school in England and Wales. Ranked 1st. More than 600 people applied and they only invited 70 for the interview. Little old me was one of them.

Didn't turn out to be a stripper after all. Or a pauper. Crack for breakfast though..

That was a joke.

The more you force something, the more it has a negative effect. It's like forcing like poles of two magnets together and trying to make it stick. The harder you try, the more it repels. I learnt that the hard way. Don't try and be someone's archetype. Be you. You'll turn out better for it. I'll never make that mistake again. Because I'm pretty fucking fantastic just the way I am. If you don't like it, you know where the door is. Here, I'll even hold it open for you.

Don't trip on your way out.