Approval Addiction

A fear of loneliness leads to desperate actions initiating pain. Enjoying the peace of solitude is breaking free from this chronic condition; and provides the realisation that if you are already complete in yourself, then there is more love in you to share. If you are indifferent to other people’s opinions about you:

·       You don’t need to pretend or hide anything;

·       You don’t need to worry about impressions or what was said;

·       You don’t need to conform to rigid or mistuned expectations;

·       You don’t need to be offended or hurt by words;

·       There is no need to show off and chase false, empty priorities;

·       You break an addiction to the approval of others;

·       You break free from inhibitions;

·       You have freedom to be who you are.

To be ultra-confident you can either be a deranged narcissist or you can be yourself completely. The former is fragile, needing lies and selfishness to delay its inevitable demise; the latter invites a playful, open curiosity to life and what is. For there is no desire to convince others that you are happy when you are actually happy. There is no desire to show off to others when you have a sense of fulfilment. There is no hunger for external validation if you appreciate yourself.

Negativity, like a virus, will attack you and attempt to feed on your energy. A thick skin is some defence, but is fragile and needs constant fierce protecting in a battle that will be eventually lost. Rather than becoming one of the infected, with it eating away at you from the inside and spreading or intensifying the infection of others, it is better to be immune. When you don’t need validation by anyone else’s good opinion, you have the chance to be who you are.

There is a greater chance of releasing your magic if not consumed by self-aggrandisement or conforming to other people’s expectations, especially if the current norms are harmful and wrong. If you are not trying to appease anyone; if you are not trying to appeal to a market demographic; and you don’t need anything: watch out, you might actually do something worthwhile. The challenge is to release what is within you, uncorrupted by falsity and lies.

Success in transcendent goals is not the same as success in negotiating positions of status in the current society, which of course will change with the relentless passage of time. It just so happens, however, that those people who were motivated mainly by intrinsic value, rather than by their individual psychological desires, produced the best long-lasting examples of beauty and creative human potential.

Original thinkers, artists, and spiritual figures often had some of their best insights in the wilderness, in periods of solitude outside of bustling society. Distance from the current melees gives a person a better perspective of the whole picture; whereas insiders of the throng who are unaware of their predicament are generally condemned to behave as they think they are supposed to, blind to anything more than the current array of behaviours, even in extreme cases where it is insane. It is a trend in history that the most interesting creators tended to be outsiders for defining periods in their lives; and sometimes the untamed spark that made them great was dampened when invited in from the wilderness—for it is a usual human failing to be carried away by expectations and hype. There were a certain set of conditions in place that instantiated quality; and once personal perceptions change, the conditions change too.

Creating something great isn’t the same as temporary popularity, as the latter can be mere pumped up, generic mania—and not necessarily correlated with merit. To do anything well, the basics need to be mastered; this involves studying how the best do what they do, and, initially at least, learning by imitation. When you fully commit to bringing an understanding of yourself and your idiosyncrasies into how you live, using all the tools you have gathered, you then have the freedom to break the constraints and to produce something worthwhile in the world.

From brain teasers to magic tricks, it is usually a wrong assumption that hides the answer. Beliefs, and accepted ways of doing things, are full of assumptions, both conscious and unconscious.