How To Stop Seeking Approval

Joe: The way to overcome that hurdle is to look at the process and say, okay, I understand that if I do this regularly and enough, that the world will move itself to meet me. Same with my daughter, the world moved itself to say, oh, you are now self-possessed. We will treat you as such. 

Brett: Yeah. 

Joe: Or you are now loving yourself, so we're going to surround you with people who love you. The world will create something for you that supports your truth. 

Brett: Welcome back to the Art of Accomplishment, where we explore living the life you want with enjoyment and ease. Today we're going to talk about how to stop seeking the approval of others and speak your truth. We're going to talk about the three things that prevent people from speaking their truth.

We're going to talk about doubt. We're going to talk about the difference between intuition and patterning or conditioning. And we're going to offer some tips and practices to help you embody speaking your truth and letting go of the need for approval from others.

Hi, Joe. 

Joe: Hey, Brett. 

Brett: Something that's been popping up in the world around us is the question, how do we stop seeking approval and follow what's true for us? 

Joe: It's interesting, because I think that the question itself, the answer is reversed. Let me explain what I mean. So my daughters, both of them went through this at some point.

They're in their teenage years, and there's exclusion, and there's who likes who, and did you get invited to the party, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And at some point, both of my daughters realized that this is like a really painful experience. Trying to make sure that people like you, and trying to make sure that you're doing the right thing, and et cetera, et cetera, is hard.

And so recently my youngest came to me to talk to me about this and what to do and we had a discussion about it. And this realization hit her in our conversation, which was she didn't really have friends. If she had to present a certain way and do a certain thing and Be a certain person, she didn't have friends.

She had surrogate friends who are friends with somebody who she was trying to be, but it wasn't friends with who she was. And when she saw that was the main cause of the pain, her decision was, and I have to say with a lot of courage, that she was going to just speak her truth.

Just say the thing that was true to her. She wasn't going to try to game the system or worry about what somebody thought of her. She was just going to be, I would call it like self-possessed. She was just going to be like, oh, I'm going to be who I want to be in this situation and let the chips fall where they may.

And we talked about it a couple weeks later and what she recognized was that she was constantly looking for approval before, and when she started speaking her truth, she stopped looking for that approval. And the mechanism there is fascinating to me because if you speak your truth, then you're approving of yourself, and you don't have to go looking outside for it.

If you speak your truth, you say, this thing that I'm saying, this that I'm feeling, this perception of the world is valuable. I approve of it. I approve of it so much I'm going to speak it. I'm going to validate it. So I don't need to get validation outside. I don't need to get approval outside. And if you look around the world, you'll see that the people who aren't really looking for your approval are the people who are also not hedging what they say.

They're being self-possessed. They're looking for the truth. And the idea often is how do I stop looking for approval and speak my truth? But the reality is oftentimes it's speaking your truth that is the cure for seeking approval. 

Brett: I want to back up the train a little bit because there's all kinds of, all over self help world, there are posters with mountains and skydivers on them that say things like don't seek the approval of others, seek your truth or follow your truth. And it's like a moral prescription of this is obviously the optimal way of being, but what I'm just hearing is that your daughters the daughters of a teacher of speaking one's truth, 

Joe: Yeah, 

Brett: Were themselves not immune from going through this experience.

Joe: Oh, yeah We all have to so first of all fuck the morality of it one way feels better. It feels good and being conscientious of other people feels good. It's just abandoning what's true for you for other people's what doesn't feel good. But let's not do the moral prescription of it. 

Brett: Yeah, 

Joe: That's one thing.

And then the second thing is we are geared to be in tribes, right? We're geared to be in groups. And so there is a natural tension in our life of how do we fit in and how do we stand out? How do we fit in and how do we also be in our truth? This is a natural push and pull and in all societies, some bigger, some greater, America has more let me stand out and some societies have more let me fit in but generally that's where it comes from. There's a really normal strategy of it and I suspect that when you're in a really homogeneous group there's a certain sense of fulfillment of fitting in and going along and there's probably a correspondence in your conditioning and what you've learned to be right, et cetera, et cetera, that helps with that.

But in our society, where we're not very homogeneous anymore, you can find a group of people who will think anything's kosher or anything is not kosher. That's where it stems from. The other way to look at it is that there's a story of Buddha, which is very similar to the story of Jesus, goes out into the desert, Buddha sits under a tree, he gets the temptations, Buddha gets the temptations. One of the temptations was societal norms. This is what society thinks you should do, that's a temptation. It's natural, it's as natural as the temptation to be wealthy or be powerful or be wealthy and powerful to be safe. All of those are temptations. They're temptations because they feel good in the moment. There's a quick fix to them, but it's not a really long-term solution. 

Brett: I think especially early in life, it seems that there is a developmental gradient from, 

Joe: Correct. 

Brett: external reference to internal reference. 

Joe: Exactly. Yeah, especially the first eight years. Yeah, but what's even interesting about it, if you look at the first eight years, there's this external reference, but there's also this deep connection with what they want.

So they can do both. It lets you see that the idea, even the idea that there's an external connection and an internal connection, is a construction and we live it. We've all had the experience of being outwardly focused or inwardly focused, but you can be both. And when you are, then that's very much, you'll notice that you'll be following your truth and you'll be attuned to other people.

Both important, both good feelings, yeah. 

Brett: Every temper tantrum is the mixing of the internal, external, to begin with. 

Joe: Maybe not everyone, but a lot of them, yeah. 

Brett: A lot of them. 

That brings up the question of so you've flipped it around from following your truth, speaking your truth is the thing that has the external need for validation fall away because you are validating yourself.

Joe: Correct. 

Brett: Now, how would you know that what you're perceiving as your truth is, say, intuition or conditioning, or that it's even yours? 

Joe: Interestingly, somatically, often when you're speaking your truth, it doesn't feel like yours. It feels more like channeling or following your call or something like that.

There's a felt sense of surrender in it, almost. This is way down the line but there's this feeling of surrender to it because following that call, speaking that truth, being in that surrender to the experience, to do anything else is just painful. You've done it so many times that you realize, oh, that's the thing and I need to do it.

So that's one thing about it that's interesting is that it doesn't feel like yours. It actually, when you're doing this, it naturally puts you in a space where the self, the strong identity, the identity that you have to defend starts to disintegrate. And then there's the question of, am I having an immediate reaction because I'm following my truth and that's intuition? Or am I having an immediate reaction and that's conditioning and it's going to throw me into that shithole pattern that I've thrown myself into a dozen times? And what I notice is that it's a somatic experience to find that out, it's not an intellectual one. And so my recommendation to most people is just every time you make an immediate decision, pay attention to your body and see what the difference is between the two. For me my experience is that my heart closes down if I'm in conditioning, if I'm in unhealthy conditioning. Some conditioning is great, by the way, right? I want to be conditioned not to drink hot coffee that's too damn hot. And that doesn't make me close down my heart when I test to see that my coffee is hot or not hot or whatever, but when I'm in a pattern of say rebelling against authority when I was 28 years old, man, my heart had to close down.

Brett: Yeah, 

Joe: if I'm in a pattern of reacting to somebody the way I've reacted to people when I felt abandoned, my heart has to close down. 

Brett: That's an interesting pointer, the somatic, checking the somatics of it. Because if I'm speaking something that later turns out to perhaps be something I would define as like the wisdom that came through me in the moment, most likely, there's a vulnerability and openness to it. Maybe even a bewilderment of, did I just say that? Is that what I really feel here? Is that what I think? Is this the stand I want to take? And that's a very different thing from if I'm channeling, say, the internalized morality of my tribe, in which case it feels a lot more like the shield and the spear in front of a phalanx of warriors behind me and I'm like, oh, yeah this is true.

It's a very different somatic experience and constriction. 

Joe: You have to defend. That's right. The amazing thing is that oftentimes when I'm working with clients and they're talking about how to speak their truth, one of the things that I notice is that somatically, oftentimes at the beginning, there's a pucker to it.

Oh my God, am I going to say that? That's usually like a great moment to know, oh yeah, that's the thing to say. It's not like a huge, oh my God, fear thing. It's not like you deregulate yours or dysregulate. It's just that little bit of a pucker. 

Brett: That might be the first available sensation that you get is that I'm feeling resistance. I'm feeling the pucker. 

Joe: That's right. 

Brett: What's under that? What's coming through in that? 

Joe: It's a very similar feeling to walking out on stage in front of a hundred people. 

Brett: Yeah. 

Joe: Oh my gosh. Am I gonna do this? The other thing is that when I see people speak their truth, oftentimes the beginning of it's very bumpy, and one of the things that I teach them is, okay, really somatically make sure your heart is open.

The other thing to say about the truth is that there's something incredibly misleading about your truth. A baby wants to get a cup of water and their truth is to crawl one time and then a little bit later their truth is to walk, right? So it's not about like truth is in this is true and there's never a time when it's not. 

To speak your truth is like I said, it's like a channeling. There's something about it that's very nonpersonal and you can feel it as nonpersonal and it's actually one of the cool things is when you are doing that on a regular basis when this is your practice, One of the things that starts to happen is that you stop taking things personally. Because you're seeing that what's happening in your world isn't particularly personal. It's more of a calling, so to speak. It's a really interesting practice because it unfolds like a meditation. How you meditate on day one is very different than how you meditate ten years in, and it opens up a lot of doors. This practice is the same way. Oh, I have that calling. I know my heart is open. I am in myself. This is what I'm meant to say, even if I'm scared to say it, despite the consequences. 

I think I've told this story about one of the things that we've done raising our girls is that we're constantly having them reference themselves. We don't say, good job. You're smart. They say, look at what I did. And oh yeah, what'd you feel about that? Oh, it feels so good. We're constantly like having them reflect on their own experience because we have a trust in that, that their own experience is going to lead them better than what we think. We obviously there's some stuff you got to do as a parent to hold boundaries, etc.

It's the same thing when I'm working with clients. It's a perpetual deconstructing of the thought process so they can see themselves. It's such an interesting thing of how do you become self-referential when you're born self-referential? It's such a weird bit. Yeah. 

Brett: It's like coming back around to the initial place on the circle.

Joe: Yeah. 

Brett: You start self-referential, but self-referential in reference to what like you do have an environment. You do have a social world, 

Joe: Yeah, 

Brett: But ultimately looping that back to what do I feel? How does doubt show up in reference to our truth? 

Joe: Yeah, so I was working with a client recently, super successful alcoholic father like me and learned that every time dad got mad, she could not get mad back. So the only act of control, of sovereignty she could have was to say, what did I do wrong?

And I can't tell you, I think it's at least 60 percent of the people work this way. Somebody gets mad at them either aggressively mad at them or passively aggressively mad at them and they go, what did I do wrong? 

Brett: I've been seeing this a lot lately. Yeah. 

Joe: Oh, yeah, and so that's doubt and by the way doubt requires a closed heart So close down your heart the anger should be going outward because you should be like fuck you, Dad. What the fuck like I'm your kid don't do this to me, but you can't do that as a five-year-old. So you say what did I do wrong anger goes inward you start beating yourself up and that's the doubt or you start questioning yourself. If you're the other kind, where someone gets mad at you and that immediately makes you angry, that's the other form of it. I fall more into that category. Then you rationalize and you justify. 

Brett: It's interesting, the former there is also, there's something interesting in the personal nonpersonalness of it. Because, if I am to blame, it's easy to see that as I'm just looking for what's going on, so I'm self-referencing.

Joe: Correct. 

Brett: I'm referencing what I've done wrong, whatever I did wrong to deserve this. 

Joe: Correct. You don't even see it that clearly usually you're just like what did I do wrong? I shouldn't have done this blah blah blah blah most people don't even hook it to the fact that oh someone yelled at me and that's why I do this. If you're listening to this and you have a problem with self-doubt just notice is there ever been any time that somebody has yelled at you and you haven't gone into doubt? How many times can you literally point at somebody who's been aggressive towards you or passive-aggressive towards you and you're like, yeah, I didn't do anything wrong? That's them. I love asking clients that, blows their mind. What? Wait, and they can't find it. They can't find one single time. So apparently, anytime anybody's gotten mad at you, it's your fault, right? That has a lot to do with oh, I'm trying to make sure that people are happy. And the reason that doubt is so prevalent there is because you can't fucking make people happy. So there's always a reason to doubt. You can always fucking churn. You can always go, no, that's not the right decision. Maybe this, maybe I shouldn't have done it this way. Because somebody's always gonna be fucking unhappy with you. Always. And the same person may be unhappy with you if you do number A thing and the next day you do A thing and they're happy with you and the next day you do A thing and they're unhappy with you because that's how humans are. They're happy because mostly because their own shit not because of what you're doing. 

Brett: Yeah and the funny thing is that becomes especially true if that person is doing a whole bunch of complicated game theory to reference a bunch of other people for what they need in their life so that what they think they need is changing from moment to moment based on 30 other people. And it tends to happen less when interacting with a person who is really deeply self-referencing. 

Joe: Correct. 

Brett: They tend to appear more consistent and there's a level of consistency that develops over time which increases people's trust with them and increases their capacity to lead. 

Joe: Correct, definitely on the leadership side And the other thing it does is it makes the folks around them be more consistent. If you're volatile people around you are on eggshells, and so they're very inconsistent. If you're following your truth, and there's a groundedness to you that makes it so that people lean in and trust you.

And so the doubt comes in because you're referencing outside. The three main reasons that people are not following their truth is one, doubt, two, fear of the consequences, and three, because they're justifying conditioning. They're justifying a bad pattern and calling it truth, right? Those are the things that seem to happen.

And in the doubt side of it, It's a lack of self-referencing, and in the result-oriented, oh, I'm scared of the results, that one's interesting, because most people are thinking about a decision as a single decision. They're thinking about it as a single bet, and it's the whole world is on that bet, instead of seeing it as a portfolio of decisions.

If I'm investing and I'm like thinking about my investment as one investment, I am far less likely to be successful at it as if I'm thinking about it as a portfolio and I know I'm going to have some wins and I know I'm going to have some losses. So with my daughter, she had some losses because some of the things she said didn't go well or somebody got upset.

But the overall result, the portfolio was good. The portfolio was solid. And oftentimes what I hear people say is I made a bad decision and you ask what makes that the case, because the results weren't good. That doesn't make any damn sense to me. Because, put yourself at a different company with a different boss, and that decision would have been great results.

Brett: It's another way of saying, I failed to predict the future, because I hold myself responsible for predicting the future. Which, if you're looking at investing, and markets, if you try to predict the future, you're screwed.

But what you can do is create a system, a process, a portfolio that has contingencies and that is likely to lead to better outcomes over time.

And so in the realm of doubt, it was about going from the external reference to building a deeper internal reference. In this case, it's going from focus on consequences and outcomes, to focus on process. 

Joe: Yeah, it's the same thing at its core, which is say what's true for you. The thing is the same.

The hurdle to get there is different. And the way to overcome that hurdle is to look at the process and say, okay, I understand that if I do this regularly and enough that the world will move itself to meet me. Same with my daughter, the world moved itself to say, oh, you are now self-possessed, we will treat you as such, or you are now loving yourself. So we're going to surround you with people who love you. The world does react to how we are. And so the world will create something for you that supports your truth. It's not magic and it's not magical thinking it's just as simple as if you treat a dog one way they're going to react differently than if you treat a dog another way. If you treat your friend group one way they're going to react different.

Brett: That's an interesting segue to number three because if we're talking about the process rather than the outcomes Then what process do we adopt? 

Joe: Be grounded and open-hearted and it's really hard. It will hurt you not to speak your truth. You will feel the pain of it. You listen to that person, you're like, Ooh, man, they just spoke some truth. You feel that shit in your body. 

Brett: For those listening who want to develop a practice, or want to take a little homework from this episode 

Joe: Yeah. 

Brett: into their lives to seek less approval and trust themselves more. What are a couple of things that people could do? 

Joe: The simple thing is to have the practice of speaking your truth, even if it's uncomfortable, and make it just a little bit uncomfortable two times a day.

Brett: Two times a day I jump in there and I drop the grenade and I run? Or what do I do with it? 

Joe: You can't do that if your heart is open and you're grounded. 

Brett: Ah. 

Joe: Say the thing that's scary. It would not feel good to run. You'd have to shut that all down to run under most circumstances. You can't intellectually get there.

There's a somatic component that is required. Can I be fully in myself with an open heart, undefended, and say what I have to say? And if I do, and I don't defend, and I stay grounded, what's going to happen? If you do that enough times, it becomes really apparent when you aren't and when you are. And the other thing that you can do is, when you make an immediate decision, notice how your body feels.

And so you'll start noticing, oh, is that intuition, or is that patterning? Is that negative patterning? There's, like I said, there's lots of conditioning that's great, but is this conditioning that throws me in negative patterns? There would be a very specific felt sense to it. And so you can feel that when that's happening, and you can speak your truth two times a day, make it simple stuff. Just keep on going bigger and bigger. 

Brett: And what would you add for somebody who says, I have a hard time feeling myself. Especially when I'm in that situation, I close down and I can't feel anything. 

Joe: You're fucked.

No, I wouldn't say that. I would say then your first job is to learn how to feel your body. Walk around for the next two weeks, keeping 10 percent of your attention in your body. And if you're like, I can't feel my body, smack yourself on the face and feel your cheek. Tap your fingers together and feel your fingers. You can feel your body, everybody can. That's like saying, how do I see? Unless you're blind, you can see. Spend time keeping 10 percent of your attention in your body as much as possible for two, three weeks. By the way, that can be an incredibly intense trip for people, so be gentle with yourself if you do that.

Brett: Part of me wants to ask a question about weaponization, like, how do we not walk away from this and weaponize the concept? Like I am just speaking my truth and not recognize we're in like a deeply defensive state around it or, to your partner, why aren't you just speaking your truth? Stop being so approval-seeking, 

Joe: Right?

Brett: What have you seen with clients working through this? And some of the pitfalls that they might get into?

Joe: You got to close your heart to do any of that stuff again, you've got to close your heart. It can be totally weaponized. I know there's this thing called radical honesty, which I really appreciate but there's a way you can take radical honesty to a point where you are just being abusive to people. And I'm speaking my truth, despite the consequences, is something. I'm speaking my truth. In a way with a closed heart and it hurts people is something else. Sometimes you speak your truth with an open heart and people are going to get hurt. But when they are hurt, if they are like, you see it, you're like, oh, whoa, I didn't want to hurt you. That's not what I was meant to do here. Then your truth will be like, let's prioritize connection. 

Brett: Awesome. 

Joe: Awesome. 

Brett: Thank you, Joe. 

Joe: Pleasure, Brett. Thank you. 

Brett: Yeah. Thank you everybody for listening to the Art of Accomplishment.

If you enjoyed what you heard today, please share it with a friend. And of course, please follow us and rate us in your podcast app. The Art of Accomplishment was produced and hosted by myself, Brett Kistler, and Joe Hudson. Mun Yee Kelly is our production coordinator and Reasonable Volume edited this episode.

Joe: Bada bing, bada boom.

Brett: Bada boom.