Do Your Chosen Paths Require Anyone Else’s Approval?
No, only your approval is necessary. The approval of others is unnecessary.
I intended to blog regularly when I started Pathwalking in the first week of 2012. That it would grow to be my life philosophy, and an idea I think might benefit others, was not how I thought it would go.
To be the best me that I can be, I have read, listened to, and gone over lots of different programs, books, blogs, podcasts, and the like. Topics have included lots of self-help, self-actualization, mindfulness, money and financial mindfulness, spirituality, consciousness, psychology, physics, and more.
I’ve studied both modern and ancient gurus, various texts, and worked hard to be the best me that I can be.
But who is that, and what does that mean?
Who, what, where, how, and why I am is known only by me, in full. Elements of myself get shared along the way – sometimes via these posts, sometimes through personal interactions, my podcast, and the like. But the whole story, the in-depth knowledge of me is known to me alone.
Selfish? No, because likewise the only you who knows the whole, complete, and total in-depth story of who, what, where, how, and why you are is you. No matter what or how much you share, only you truly know you.
And this is why you don’t need the approval of anyone but yourself.
Still, as social animals, this can be challenging.
You desire to be liked and accepted
To a greater or lesser extent, most people have the desire to be liked. And with that, a desire to be accepted.
Liked can be as simple as regard and acknowledgment or as complex as constant reassurance and possibly narcissism. Accepted can be as simple as not risking getting kicked off the island of humankind or as complex as needing thousands of likes on social media.
Even the most introverted people I know still desire to be liked and accepted – they just prefer that that includes being left alone as desired, too.
If you choose to take a path in life different from the norm in any way – you risk acceptance. Or at least, it feels that way sometimes.
When I received the opportunity to pursue my writing as a career full-time, I took it. And for the past 5 years or so, I’ve made a great deal of it. I published 3 books in 2020 and 6 more books in 2021. Beyond that, I’ve finished 4 more books, have others in various states of active development, and have been blogging 4-6 days a week.
In my mind, this makes me a full-time writer.
But others don’t approve.
Various parties, friends and family alike – all of whom I know mean well – feel that I’m wasting myself. That I’m taking advantage of my wife’s incredible generosity allowing me to work like this, and should give up this silly dream, grow up, and get a real job.
I can’t argue that I haven’t as much to show for my work as I’d like. But if I lived only for the approval of others, who would I be? And would I be content with that life?
Would you?
Approval is unnecessary
The truth is that you don’t need anyone else to approve of you, your plans, your goals, your life choices, or anything else you do for yourself. The only person’s approval you need is your own.
What lights you up? What do you do that makes you feel the most empowered, excited, and energized to live your life experience?
Whatever that might be – you alone need to approve of it. Because it’s your life, and your experience – and the approval of others truly has no impact. It might feel as though it does, but it doesn’t.
No, this isn’t a permission slip to act like an entitled ass or otherwise mistreat other people. You most likely desire kindness, compassion, empathy, and gratitude from others. And you must give it to get it.
The importance of recognizing why you don’t need the approval of others is that it frees you to stop worrying about whether other people approve of your life choices.
Likewise, it frees you to give less time and attention to the choices of others. And that they don’t need your approval, either.
There is, of course, an important caveat to this. If you share your life with someone – like a spouse, and/or children, and/or act as a caregiver for a parent, relative, or such – they must be factored in. This is not the same as approval – but if you have a shared experience, and they will be impacted by all that you do, it’s a matter of kindness, compassion, and empathy to include them in the choices of your life paths.
Approval or not, please observe rule number one
One of the biggest issues I have with The Secret and notions like various prosperity gospels is how they imply you can create from a vacuum. With little to no effort and just the right amount of mystical energies, you can manifest this, that, or the other thing.
Further, they imply you can manifest and consciously create the reality of and for others. This is utterly untrue, however. How you see the world is not the same as how I see it. My reality and yours might have shared elements, but like each of us, they’re different.
The only person you can control in any way, shape, or form, is yourself. You can do nothing for anyone else apart from yourself. Thus, you can’t do anything for anyone else because you cannot live anyone’s life but your own.
This is part of why getting the approval of other people isn’t important when all is said and done. Because you can only live life for you.
But there’s still a very important rule that my friends and I often have referred to as Rule #1. That rule? Don’t be a dick.
Even if you find that crude, I think when you look at the world today, a lot of problems we have come from someone simply being a dick. And other words using stronger language.
Be the kind of person you prefer to interact with in your life. Because the only approval you need is your own. And if you are being genuine and true to yourself and the life paths you desire – your approval of yourself should be easy to obtain.
Be kind, compassionate, and empathetic along your life paths – and please don’t be a dick.
Can you see how the approval of others can be a trap?
This is the five-hundred and seventy-second exploration of my Pathwalking philosophy. These weekly essays are my ideas for – and experiences with – using mindfulness and positivity to walk along a chosen path of life to consciously create reality.
I share this journey as part of my desire to make a difference in this world and empower as many people as I can with conscious reality creation.
Thank you for joining me. Feel free to re-post and share this.
The first year of Pathwalking, including expanded ideas, is available here. Check out Amazon for my published fiction and nonfiction works.
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