Need Approval? Look Inside

What can separate you from the love of being yourself? Fear, or prejudice, or societal standards, or religion, or hate, or shame? Look closely at this list and you will see that everything listed comes from outside of you, at least initially. Even feelings, like fear and shame, are brought about by outside influences or experiences. A child can’t fear a hot iron until he/she has been burned by one; and nobody can know what shame feels like until he/she has experienced and learned it through being shamed by someone outside of him/herself.

There is great danger in seeking approval from outside of yourself. Yet, as children, we are rarely taught to look inside and to seek our own inner-approval. Most of us learn early in life to seek approval from outside, and this way of thinking can easily separate us from the love of being ourselves.

Whenever we seek approval from outside sources, we give away our emotional power to the very people whose approval we are seeking. It’s like giving them a big rubber stamp and total power over our value. If they give us their stamp of approval, we are OK. And if they give us their stamp of disapproval, we are worthless rejects. Our whole sense of self-worth is then determined not by us, but by others.

We are at the complete mercy of the world around us as long as we seek validation from outside of ourselves. So if we grow up black-skinned and Hindu in a predominately white-skinned Christian society—and we look to that society to validate our worth—it isn’t likely to happen. Eventually our inherent need to belong may then begin to separate us from the love of being ourselves. We may begin to feel less-than equal to those white-skinned Christians who are validated by societal opinions of acceptable vs. non-acceptable. The same can be true of gay people in a largely straight society, or of women in a largely male-dominated society, or of immigrants whose language and cultural experiences clash with their new homeland.

Everyone needs to look inside of themselves for approval. We are all temples of the Holy Spirit, of the universal Spirit that breathes throughout all of the universe. Thus we all have equal value; and when we are needing personal validation, we need only look inside to that Spirit to find our wellspring of approval. God created us just as we are and so we already have God’s seal of approval. We need no one else’s—except for our own.

It’s time that we all valued our own opinions of ourselves more than we value the opinions of others. No one outside of us can determine our value unless we give our power away to them. So today listen to your heart and give yourself a big stamp of approval. It’s all you need and it’s a necessary step in allowing your soul to shine!