Seeking and receiving approval from others is like sitting down hungry to an imaginary meal. You're invited to eat all you want, but no matter how much imaginary food is served, you can never get your fill. Your hunger remains. No fictional feast ever satisfies. But this fact isn't so apparent when it comes to our appetite for approval. We still look to others for our sense of self even thou...

You have always believed that the better people feel about you, the better you can feel about yourself. However, you may have never really considered that the opposite of this belief must hold equally and unhappily true, and that is: The less you are approved by others, the more alone and uncertain you feel. This helps to explain why you think you have to please people as well as why you resen...

Looking for ourselves in the eyes of others throws us behind the walls of a psychic prison. The door slams shut each time we find ourselves feeling good about ourselves simply because someone has given us a needed nod of approval. Let's investigate this strange sequence of psychological events that leaves us in a prison of our own making. Whenever someone approves of us, it gives us a feelin...

Have you ever limited yourself with what you thought was a power at the time you started it? Sometimes you can do something that takes you twenty years before you begin to suspect that it's a limitation and not a power. You think to yourself, "I'm really going to empower myself by getting an education, because when I have that new education, I'll have the approval I want, I'll feel accepted, a...

There is a certain longing inherent in us to belong to something greater than ourselves. That longing that has a natural foundation is stolen very quickly, in fact it never has a chance to get off the ground. What happens? Remember grammar school? Remember how you began to notice that there were certain groups of people that maybe you wanted to belong to but they didn't want you to belong to t...

We go through life looking for approval from others. This unending search for approval runs deep inside of us as we unknowingly nurture a relationship with the idea that if we could just be accepted, then little by little we would come to know who we are. We actually buy into the notion that if we could get enough people to approve of us, then this ache in our soul that is always trying to fig...

There is one heartache we know all too well. And each time it makes its unscheduled, unwelcome appearance it becomes that much clearer we've never really lived without the presence of this grief. It's that familiar to us. But, as quickly as this disturbance in our being can appear, it vanishes again, which leads us to believe that either we've overcome this feeling, or that it's passed. But we...

Whenever we consent to, or otherwise agree with anyone's dark assessment of his or her life, we are telling this person, "Yes, that is true (about you). No doubt life couldn't be any other way; after all . . . what else can you do?" In these sentiments is hidden a secret message that effectively says: "Sure . . . I understand the prison you are in and -- given your conditions -- it's only logi...