Personal approval rating

How popular are you among your friends? What makes you popular? What is your personal approval rating? Why is it important for you to be popular among your friends or colleagues? How popular do you want to be?  

Why do some people need other people's approval to do things that are in total alignment with their core values? So long as your actions are consistent with your ethical standard, what people think about you should be none of your business. Once you have known what you stand for, I encourage you to stand by it. Knowing what you stand for is something you have to learn over several years of searching, re-searching and understanding your deep inner self. Your deep knowledge and understanding of your natural inner self will set you free from seeking the approval of other people to live your life.   

When you have succeeded in knowing who you are, you no longer need anybody to like you. You no longer need anybody to approve what you do. You no longer need anybody to understand you. You live your life independent of anybody’s opinion. If the approval of people is what you need to succeed in life, you can never have enough. Approval seeking is like a person going about on the street with a cup in hand asking people to help him or her fill it up with water. The problem is that there is a hole underneath the up. Each time someone pours water inside, your approval rating goes up. However, as the water drains out through the leaking hole, your approval rating drops and it goes up again once another person who favours you pours water inside it.  This becomes an endless game. I hope you got my drift.

What you need first is to block the hole in the cup. In order words, you have to block your inner urge to feel the need for other people’s approval in order to live your life. This is not suggesting that you do not want people to like you. It is a good feeling to know that people like me.  This is however not the reason for doing what I do. It is just a bi-product. I do not offer help to the needy simply because I need them to like me.  I offer help because I know it is my duty to do so. In the morning, I do not stop at the bus stop to say hello to my neighbour simply because I need him or her to like me. I stop to hello because I know that I need good personal relationship with people for my spiritual nourishment.  In the bus, I do not give up my seat to a person that needs the space more than I do simply because I need people around me to think that I am a nice person. I do it regularly to meet my need to live a selfless life.

Be wary of complements as some are criticisms in disguise. Some people use both to manipulate behaviour but complements are more socially acceptable. Become more wary of both as they produce the same effect. A compliment increases your desire to work harder in order to please the person giving the complement. A criticism increases your desire to work even harder in order to disprove your critic. Both are capable of putting you under pressure.  Pressure is what you get when you do not know what you are doing. People hardly know what they are doing whenever they take actions that seek to meet the expectations of other people. Be yourself. Be true to yourself. Act according to yourself. Do not seek to make people change what they think about you. Rather, seek to change what you think about yourself, develop your own personal approval rating and live by it. Once you have achieved that mindset, you have succeeded in changing your life forever. Think!