In my 22 years as a Leading Life Coach, one of the issues I discover when working with my clients, is the need to seek approval from other people.
Sadly, ( for many different reasons) many of us didn’t get the love and approval we so deserved during our childhood years. As a result, we continue seeking approval from other people as an adult. This can manifest in relationships. friendships, career and with family members. It can become like a ‘ fix’ that we seek.
Often we can’t feel good about ourselves until we get that illusive tick of approval.
Seeking Approval from Other People.
In our desperate search to gain approval, we forget our own personal needs and wants. We literally ignore them or are not even aware that we have the right to honour our own needs and desires.
We literally shove our Personal Needs to the side
We say Yes when we really want to say No and we end up agreeing to do all sorts of things we may not want to do. Gaining approval becomes an addiction, the ‘hit’ that we want so desperately to receive from other people.
Only when we receive it do we then feel accomplished, that we have done a good job, or feel like a good person.
People Pleasing
We can work hard to gain this illusive approval from others. We become unconscious people pleasers. We literally turn ourselves inside out in the hope that some approves of us, likes us or throws a few words of praise in our direction.
This idea of seeking of approval from others however, is a flawed premise. You can never rely on seeking the approval from others. People have their own lives, may not even consider the importance of ‘approving of you’. As a result, when we don’t receive the approval we crave, we can become upset, frustrated and feel like a failure. We can feel not good enough and push ourselves to the point of exhaustion seeking approval from other people.
Seeking approval from others never works as you are seeking a positive emotion from other people instead of finding it inside of yourself.
To ditch this disease to please, you need to take your focus away from other people approving of you, and turn it towards your own approval of you. Give yourself some well deserved praise or a pat on the back. Do this at least three times a day. With only a little practice, you will move from seeking approval, to finding it within yourself. Give that inner child inside of you the love and approval they may have missed out on during childhood. A final tip is to give up seeking approval from your parents. You are an adult now so let this go! Remember, some people are unpleasable!
Life Coaching Packages with Lisa Phillips
With over 20 year international experience, Lisa Phillips is an award winning Northamptonshire Life Coach and Confidence Coach. She is also the author of ‘The Confidence Coach’ (Exile Publishing). To find out more about Lisa’s work, please see www.amazingcoaching.co.uk
To see Lisa on National TV, please see her media page.
