The call has to come from inside the house

Every one of us possesses an unquantifiable component of human value. There is no algorithm and there is no scoreboard.

Simply being alive is proof enough. It’s a choice we can make every day.

Instead of desperately treating approval as a scarce commodity, we can stand firm in our own worthiness.

Instead of living through our false persona to gain love from strangers, we can remove uncertainty about our value in this world by loving ourselves.

Instead of falling for the fool’s gold of getting everybody to give us the nod, we can trust our inner resources to tell us that we are already good enough.

Southpark wrote a provoking parody about this very issue. Butters makes a music video that goes viral, but in order to claim his money, he must wait in line behind other internet video sensations.

But then, in an argument over who is more famous, most of those celebrities them kill each other. The boy advances in line, and he receives ten million theoretical dollars, which are printed on clear plastic checks with no monetary value.

How much approval would you have to accumulate to make that kind of fake money?

It’s a satirical reminder that we don’t need to wait for some governing body to bestow approval upon us. That call comes from inside the house.

Besides, even if all of our approval seeking did pan out, it’s not like we can cash in all our social currency for legal tender.

Perhaps the approval of every person in the entire world doesn’t need to be the goal of your work. It’s true, demanding that you are anointed by other people probably has its evolutionary advantages.

But choosing personal integrity over publicly sanctioned success is way less labor intensive. 

Somov reminds us in his book that the paradox of approval seeking is, our very attempt to prove our worth and value means that we feel our worth and value can be proven.

The call has to come from inside the house.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
Would your fulfillment increase if you were driven by worthiness rather than approval?