The Approval Trap

This is going to be one of the most difficult truths for you to come to terms with, but it is one of the most important truths for you to come to terms with if you'd like to build anything meaningful, if you'd like to have a happy, fulfilling, successful life. Popular is usually wrong. We have been conditioned to do what's popular. We have been conditioned to do what's likable, to keep the peace, to avoid conflict, to make everyone comfortable. Society has taught us that success comes from playing nice, following the rules, never making waves. And there's a moment in everyone's life when they realize that they've been living for an audience that doesn't even care about the show. The sad thing is, for many people, it's just really late in their life. But for me, it happened when I was 25 and I found myself explaining to my parents why I was quitting a job that looked perfect on paper and the conversation lasted about three hours and they used words like practical and realistic and I used words like authentic and meaningful and we were speaking very different languages. But what struck me wasn't their disappointment. I'd expect the disappointment. It was my own desperation to make them understand. And even as I argued for my right to choose my own path, I was still performing for their approval. And that conversation taught me something very important. The desire for approval doesn't disappear just because you intellectually know that it's limiting you. It's wired into us at a biological level and for most of human history, social rejection at death, your nervous system still can't tell the difference between disappointing your family and being exiled from the tribe. And this is why most advice about being yourself misses the point. The problem isn't that people don't know what they want. The problem is that they know exactly what they want and they also know it will disappoint the people they care about. But here's what nobody tells you about living for approval. It's not actually keeping anyone happy. Not them and definitely not you. And this is why we have to fix it. Now let's talk about the math that nobody ever does because we obsess over the cost of disappointing other people. But we never calculate the compound interest of disappointing ourselves. Let me tell you a story. I know a woman who's been about to leave for marriage for six years. Not because her husband is abusive or terrible, but because they've grown into completely different people who want completely different lives. Now she stays because divorce would devastate her parents, confuse her kids, and basically disappoint her friends who see them as the perfect couple. Meanwhile, she's becoming someone that she doesn't recognize. More anxious, less creative, increasingly resentful, because the energy that it takes to maintain a life that isn't yours is enormous. And she's not just staying in the wrong marriage. She is actively killing off the person that she could become. Every single day when she chooses their comfort over being real, a little piece of her dies. Not in some dramatic way, just this slow wearing down like water on stone. And this is what living for approval actually costs. Not just the stuff you don't do, but the person you never become. And when she finally filed for divorce at 34, you know how long her parents stayed mad. Three months. Three freaking months. She spent six years stressing about the reaction and it lasted 90 days. But those six years of pretending to be someone else, that damage took way longer to fix. You are not protecting anyone by living a lie. You're just delaying everyone else's adjustment to reality. Now, you may avoid some temporary discomfort for a period of time, but eventually reality always catches up with you. Now, here's what's really crazy about popular advice, about playing it's safe, about not making choices that go against the grain. Most popular advice isn't designed to help you succeed. It's designed to help you fit in. So be realistic. Don't get your hopes up. Do what's practical or rational, having a backup plan. Think about what people will say. This isn't wisdom. It's social control disguised as concern. Popular advice is popular because it keeps people from making choices that threaten the status quo. Think about every piece of conventional wisdom that you've ever heard about careers or relationships or money or life goals. Almost all of it is designed to keep you from standing out and taking risks and making anyone uncomfortable with your success. The people giving this advice aren't trying to hold you back. They genuinely think that they're helping, but they're operating from their own fear of judgment. Their own need for approval and their own attachment to doing what's expected. So when you ask for advice, understand that you're usually asking people to help you avoid this approval. And that's exactly what you're going to get. But where it gets really twisted is that most people secretly want you to follow the popular advice because your success makes them question their own choices. So when you take the safe job, they feel better about taking the safe job. When you stay in the okay relationship, they feel justified staying in their okay relationship. When you follow a conventional path, they don't have to examine why they're following it too. So you're willing this to seek approval, validates everyone else's need for approval. And this completely changes how you should look at the advice that you're getting and giving. Now, why do we listen to this bad advice? Why do we accept it so easily? We lack courage. Now most people think courage means facing physical danger, but real courage is choosing disapproval over mediocrity. Let's look at a historical example. Churchill understood this. In the 1930s, he kept warning Britain about Hitler when everyone else was promoting popular opinions about peace and appeasement. His own party basically kicked him out. People called him a war monger. The media said he was washed up, but Churchill trusted his judgment more than he feared being unpopular. And when World War II started, suddenly everyone realized he'd been right the whole time. The courage that made him unpopular during peace made him essential during war. So the decisions that matter, the ones that matter the most, they don't require you to be fearless. They just require you to be more afraid of following popular opinion and standing alone. Here's something that'll blow your mind. Track how much of your week is spent managing other people's opinions of your choices. How much time do you spend explaining yourself? How often do you check whether people approve of what you're doing? How many decisions do you run by other people before making them? And I've done this before and I spent some weeks over 20 hours managing my parents opinions about my life choices or getting my friends input on decisions that I've already made or adjusting my behavior based on what I thought people expected. 20 hours a week. That is half a job spent on approval management because you don't have the courage to do what you know you need to do and act in your own best interest. And the first step to break out of this is to remove yourself from the popular opinion echo chamber because the people that are closest to you, your friends, your family, they are probably reinforcing your need for approval instead of challenging you to think differently. If they are challenging you to think differently, you have a very good group of friends. But look at your five closest friends. When you tell them about an unconventional idea, do they get excited about your potential or do they immediately start listing the reasons why it might not work? When you express frustration with following everyone else's expectations, do they encourage you to break free or do they help you rationalize staying where you are? If your friends, if your family, if your peers aren't making you question popular wisdom, they're helping you follow it. And this is not about being a jerk or ditching people that you care about. It's about understanding that most social circles are echo chambers for conventional thinking. If everyone around you is seeking the same kind of approval from the same kind of people, that becomes your normal. And when you share a goal that goes against popular opinion, your friends are going to try to protect you by talking you out of it. They're going to use phrases like, I just want you to be realistic or I don't want to see you get hurt. But what they're really saying is, your willingness to risk disapproval makes me uncomfortable with my own choices. Because most people would rather have friends who validate their need for approval than friends who challenge them to think differently. And this friend audit, it will naturally force you to face the hardest part of rejecting popular opinion loneliness. Because what happens when you start choosing what you actually think and what's actually good for you over what's popular, you're going to be lonely for a while. Not this romantic kind of loneliness where you're misunderstood by the world, but the practical kind where you have fewer people who understand your choices. Loneliness isn't the price of rejecting popular opinion, but it's the gap between your old social circle and your new one. And most people hit this phase and then they run back to popular thinking. Because it's easier to have opinions that everybody agrees with than to think independently while you find people who appreciate original thought. But the thing is that the loneliness is temporary. Following popular opinion is permanent. And when you consistently choose what you actually think over what's socially acceptable, you start attracting people who value independent thinking. Not because you're contrarian for the sake of it, but because they respect people who form their own opinions. Remember that woman who got divorced? Her kids initially struggled with her choice to go against everyone's advice about working on the marriage. But six months later, daughter actually said something to her that was beautiful. She said, I'm proud of you for choosing what you thought was right instead of what everyone else thought was right. I didn't know that was allowed. Now I just want to leave you with one final thought. Your life isn't a democracy. Other people don't get to vote on your choices just because they have popular opinions about them. You're the only one who has to live with what you decide. You're the only one who has to wake up in your life every morning and you're the only one who has to look in the mirror and respect the person who followed or rejected the advice they were given. Everyone else gets to have opinions. You're the only one who has to live with the consequences. But here's a question that'll keep you up at night if you don't answer it honestly. What if the life you're protecting by following popular advice isn't worth protecting? What if the relationships that depend on you seeking approval, they're not actually serving you? What if the social acceptance you get from following conventional wisdom comes at the cost of thinking for yourself? What if the safety that you get from doing what's expected is just as comfortable prison? Most people spend their whole lives following popular opinions about what they should want, how they should live, and what they should prioritize. They're so busy making sure their choices are socially acceptable that they never ask whether their choices actually make sense to them. Remember, popular advice is popular because it keeps people from threatening the status quo. Following it guarantees that you're going to get the same results as everyone else. If approval you get for following popular opinion today, it's going to be meaningless tomorrow. But the life that you build by thinking independently, that is yours forever. The choice is very simple. Think for yourself, not because you want to be contrarian, because you understand that the best thing you can give the world is your actual thoughts, not a regurgitation of everyone else's opinions. So if you want what most people have, follow what most people think, if you want what most people will never have, be willing to think what most people will never think, because you're going to disappoint people either way. The question is whether you're going to disappoint them by thinking for yourself or by thinking what they expect you to think.