What Happens When You Stop Seeking Approval?

What changes when you stop showing up with a need to be validated? Through a conversation about someone who transformed her entire work experience by seeing her own wholeness, this talk explores how seeking approval creates its own prison — and how letting go reveals life as an open playground.

Transcript

You know, This reminds me, I was having a conversation yesterday with someone that I. . . Talk to on a regular basis. And she was sharing with me her experience in her new job where she's noticed this profound shift over the past couple of years. And this shift is essentially. . . Going into her job. With a space of openness and adventure. Rather than going into her job while being afraid of not being enough. And again, This points back to what I was saying earlier about. We're not really experiencing the experience. We are experiencing our perception of the experience. We are experiencing what we bring to the experience. And so she's been recognizing how She used to be in this space of constantly trying to be validated. By people in her work, Associates. Bastards. Always looking for that sort of approval. To validate her worth and value. And the more she has seen her true nature. Mostly that what she is is inherently whole and complete and the validation that she's looking for could actually never be received in the world and can never be gotten from somebody. That's more of a synthetic version that we think we get from others, Which just ultimately becomes its own prison. And so the more she realizes this, She then goes into work. With a playful attitude, Because there's not the fear of not being approved of. There's not the fear of what other people are going to think. And so she's just there ready to embrace the challenge as if it's a game. And it really speaks to just how we show up in life in general, Yeah? Or even show up in our relationships. Cause so often. . . Given our conditioning. We show up with a particular agenda to get approval. Find our worth and value? And we're looking for those things in the world. And it's a disaster. And the spiritual invitation. Which is the spiritual impulse to truly know yourself. Is the invitation to see the truth of what you are, Which in many ways heals the fear of not being enough. Or heals the fear of. Not getting approved of in the world. Into what happens. When you go out into the world. Without needing to be validated. It's a completely different world. It's a completely different landscape. And we can see this clearly, Right? Like if we take a moment to. . . Notice how much additional content we put into experience. Through our imagination. And we ask ourself, What's really there beyond all that noise? Beyond all of my thinking and thinking and thinking and all of my fears. What's really there? What's really there is an open landscape. It's almost like life itself, Nature itself, Is this gift of experience. And it could be said that that gift of experience is a gift of play. Right, To come in and embody this human experience. You are playing in human form. But we forget that. We get so lost in the mental commentary. Because we can't discern the difference. We think that what we think is reality. And so we get lost in our thinking, Thinking that we are engaging life. That's not life. And so much of that thinking and thinking is revolved around seeking validation. Trying to get something in the world that you can't actually get. And it's frustrating. And I don't know to what degree that you can see that, But. Can you see a little bit of it? Can you be open to the possibility that even amidst all of the perceived chaos in the world, That actually this life thing is a playground? This life thing is a. . . Playground that allows the experience of you to be experienced. And can you see that the fundamental difficulty? Isn't actually in the playground. But it's what's going on inside of the mind. It's kind of like seeing that. Behind all of our suffering and emotional disturbances is fear. You can't be emotionally bothered without the element of fear. And then furthermore, To see that that which we fear is to only fear content in the mind. Which I think is wild. I'm never actually afraid of something in reality. I'm only afraid of the mind's content. And I've spoken endlessly about this. And it shows me that, My goodness, Life is not the problem. Which is to also say, Other people are not the problem. Which is to ultimately say, And again, I'm just speaking for myself here. But it's to say that my problem is my own innocent misunderstanding of my experience. I'm not seeing things clearly. And it's not a judgment, It's an invitation to be still. It's an invitation to be still and get radically honest about what's going on. And you know what this is like? It's like in relationships, If there's some sort of conflict and drama, The invitation is for me to get still. Become honest with myself. What's really going on here? What's the real problem? Because the mind can tell so many stories. About what the problem is. Which is pretty much just blaming the other person, When really, Underneath it all, In some way or another, My problem is that I'm afraid of not being enough. And I'm turning it into something that it's not in order to hide from the reality of that problem. There's such beauty in that simple question, What's really going on here? And to what degree can we be honest about it? Because I find that it heals all. The truth. Of what's really going on. Heals all of the conflict and drama that I might be experiencing. Which again, How spiritual is that? The truth is the salvation.