Rereading The Schopenhauer Cure by Yalom has reinforced a lot of important things for me. The one that comes to mind today is that when we seek approval from others, whether parents, friends, lovers, love interests, etc… we lose sight of who we are because we often are or consider changing ourselves for the approval of this person. If they already approved of us, why would we feel the need to seek it? This power dynamic is then set up in which you are seeking to please other people and manipulating/molding ourselves into something we’re not. Authentic self expression and flow can never occur this way. This is what we lose when we seek the praise of others:
- Connection with our authentic selves
- Our power
- Our peace
- Our flow of creative energy
- Our focus
We shift our focus from our experience to playing mind games to try to figure out what other people think of us, when in reality what other people think of us is actually none of our business. We can’t change it actually and it isn’t our job to really unless we are trying to make amends with a person and they have agreed that they would like us to make amends.
Let go of the need for praise by:
- Cultivating a life that you want to live
- Letting go of the idea that you can make other people happy
- Seeking genuine connections with people who appreciate who you are NOT what you can do for them
Much love to you
Natalie
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Eternal Ocean of Words 