How to Stop Living for Approval and Start Living for Yourself

For most of my life, I did not know I was doing it.

Living for approval. Running every decision through an invisible filter: will this make them comfortable? Will they think less of me? Am I being too much? Not enough?

I thought I was just being considerate. Being easy. Being a good person.

It was not until I started doing the real inner work that I could finally see it for what it was: a deeply ingrained pattern of needing external validation to feel safe. And it was costing me everything.

My sense of self. My ability to make decisions without second-guessing. My capacity to know what I actually wanted, because I had spent so long asking what everyone else wanted instead.

Where approval-seeking comes from

Approval-seeking is almost always learned in childhood. We learn early which version of ourselves gets love, safety, and acceptance — and which version gets withdrawal, disappointment, or conflict.

And so we become very good at performing the version that is approved of. We soften ourselves when we are too much. We expand ourselves when we are not enough. We edit, adjust, monitor, and manage ourselves constantly, all in service of a feeling of acceptance that, no matter how much we chase it, never quite arrives.

Because the thing about external validation is that it does not fill the hole. It cannot. It was never meant to.

The specific way it shows up in motherhood

Motherhood gives approval-seeking a whole new arena.

Are you doing this the right way? Are you the kind of mother people think you should be? Are you patient enough, present enough, doing enough, giving enough? Are you measuring up to whatever invisible standard is running in the background?

And then there are the opinions. The comments. The comparisons. All of which approval-seeking uses as evidence in a case it has already decided.

I caught myself adjusting my parenting decisions based on what I thought other people would think of them. Not based on what I actually believed was right. Based on the imagined commentary of people who were not even in the room.

That is the moment I understood how deep this pattern ran.

The first step: noticing the filter

You cannot change what you cannot see. So the first step is simply to start noticing when the filter is running.

When you are about to make a decision, who are you making it for? When you say yes to something, is it because you want to, or because you do not want to disappoint someone? When you hold something back, what are you protecting yourself from?

These are not comfortable questions. But they are the beginning of the most important freedom you will ever give yourself: the freedom to live inside your own values, rather than inside someone else's approval.

Living for yourself does not mean living without care for others

I want to be clear about this, because it is one of the most common misunderstandings.

Living for yourself does not mean becoming selfish. It does not mean stopping to care what anyone thinks or losing your compassion for the people around you.

It means your choices come from your values, your knowing, your truth — rather than from fear of what will happen if you disappoint someone.

When you live from that place, you actually have more to give. Because you are not depleted by the constant performance. You are grounded in something real.

You are allowed to take up space.

You are allowed to have opinions, preferences, limits, desires. You are allowed to disappoint someone occasionally without it meaning you are a bad person. You are allowed to be fully yourself, without editing.

If the approval-seeking pattern resonates, I want you to take the Mom Fog Quiz. Understanding which type of fog you are in right now is the first step to understanding the deeper patterns underneath it.

Free, three minutes: Take the Quiz

Juliana 💕

---

Find me on Instagram at @dreamcatchermamas. The A.L.I.G.N. Method is open at $47: See The A.L.I.G.N. Method