The Psychology of Approval: Why Being Liked Feels Like Survival

Transcript

There’s a phrase I carry with me—a kind of inner compass I return to when I feel myself bending in ways that don’t quite feel like me. It shows up in those moments when I catch myself softening a truth just enough to make it easier to hear. Or when I offer a quick, polite smile that hides discomfort I don’t know how to name. Or when I start rehearsing a sentence, not to make it clearer, but to make it more palatable—to make sure no one could possibly take offense, or think less of me, or decide that I’m difficult.

The phrase is this: Be independent of the good opinion of others.

I didn’t coin it. Wayne Dyer popularized it decades ago, and he, in turn, drew from the psychological ideas of Abraham Maslow—particularly Maslow’s writing on self-actualization. Maslow argued that emotionally mature people develop an internal source of validation. They don't outsource their identity to whatever feedback is coming at them. They know who they are, even when no one’s affirming it. They trust their compass, even when the external map is full of contradictions.

Dyer made that idea memorable, distilled into something portable. And over time, I’ve made it my own—not just intellectually, but practically. It’s a sentence I say to myself when I feel the heat rise in my chest after someone criticizes me. It’s a reminder I carry when I find myself tempted to contort, to polish, to perform. I come back to it not as a point of pride, but as a practice. Because living that way—truly independent of the good opinion of others—isn’t natural. Not at first. It has to be chosen, again and again.

This episode isn’t going to be about pretending you don’t care what people think. That’s not real strength. That’s a kind of emotional armor—sometimes necessary, but often corrosive. Dismissing the world doesn’t make you self-possessed; it just makes you inaccessible. What I want to explore here is something different: what it looks like to stay present and grounded when approval is offered like a reward, when validation is dangled like a prize, and when silence can feel like rejection. I want to talk about how we root ourselves, not in applause, but in alignment.

Because we live in a world where applause is everywhere—and so is disapproval. Every decision we make—what we say, what we don’t say, how we look, how we lead, how we show up—feels like it’s being observed, and judged, and sorted into categories of acceptable and not acceptable. If we’re not careful, we begin to shape our lives around the imagined gaze of others.

But there’s a different way to live. A more honest, quieter, deeper way. One where being liked is no longer the goal—and being real becomes the reward.

That’s what this episode is about. Not defiance. Not indifference. But wholeness. Even when you're not liked. Especially when you're not liked.

Let’s start with something we all feel, even if we don’t always admit it: we care what people think. And not because we’re shallow or insecure, but because we’re human. Biologically, neurologically, evolutionarily—approval isn’t just a nicety. It’s survival.

If you trace it back far enough, acceptance by the group used to mean the difference between life and death. We’re talking about a time when being cast out of the tribe didn’t just mean emotional discomfort—it meant real, physical danger. Vulnerability. Exposure. You wouldn’t last long alone. So our nervous systems learned to interpret rejection not just as unpleasant, but as threatening. We became wired to scan for signs of disapproval, to track our standing within the group, to adjust ourselves in order to maintain inclusion.

Even today, in a world where physical survival is no longer tethered to tribal belonging, that wiring hasn’t gone anywhere. Neuroscience confirms it: the brain processes social rejection in the same regions it processes physical pain. That sting you feel when someone dismisses you? When you're left out? When you're misunderstood? It’s not just in your head. It’s in your nervous system. It hurts because it was designed to hurt.

Psychologically, this pattern gets reinforced early. As children, we learn very quickly which behaviors bring approval and which lead to withdrawal. Praise becomes our compass. We figure out what earns us warmth, attention, a pat on the back—or simply, what helps us feel safe. And in that process, we begin to shape ourselves. We adapt. Not necessarily to manipulate, but to survive emotionally. We want to be seen. We want to be held. We want to know we matter.

But that adaptation—the very thing that helped us get through childhood—can become a liability in adulthood. Because we start to equate being liked with being safe. Not just socially, but existentially. And that belief follows us into every room we walk into.

We start softening our opinions, not out of empathy, but out of fear. We overcommit to things we don’t have the capacity for, just to avoid seeming unhelpful. We stay quiet in rooms where our voice might make a difference, simply because we’re afraid of being perceived as “too much.” And perhaps most damaging of all—we stop checking in with ourselves. We stop asking: What do I actually think? What do I feel about this? What do I need right now?

Approval becomes a kind of emotional currency, and we begin trading away parts of ourselves to keep earning it. Bit by bit, we lose access to our own voice—not because we’ve forgotten who we are, but because we’ve drowned it out in the noise of who others want us to be.

This isn’t about politeness. It’s about identity. It’s about the slow, quiet erosion of authenticity in service of comfort—ours, and often other people’s. And it leaves us living in a loop where being agreeable feels safer than being real.

So what does it actually mean to be independent of the good opinion of others?

Let’s start by naming what it’s not. It doesn’t mean you stop caring about people. It doesn’t mean you cut yourself off from connection, or decide that being misunderstood is some kind of badge of honor. It’s not about building emotional walls, or taking pride in being the loudest or most polarizing person in the room. And it’s certainly not about posturing as a truth-teller while quietly using that as a license to be unkind.

Independence doesn’t mean you become untouchable. It means you become unruled.

When I talk about emotional independence, I’m not talking about rebellion or defiance. I’m talking about clarity. I’m talking about knowing who you are—even when no one mirrors it back. I’m talking about having a strong enough internal foundation that you can absorb feedback, even hard feedback, without mistaking it for a referendum on your worth.

To be independent of someone’s good opinion doesn’t mean you never seek guidance or reflect on how you impact others. It means your identity isn’t held hostage by how someone reacts to you. Their approval—or their disapproval—might still matter. But it doesn’t own you.

This is where real emotional maturity begins to take shape. Because if your sense of self is built on praise, then criticism becomes something to fear. It becomes destabilizing. Threatening. Even paralyzing. But if your self-worth is built on reflection, on lived values, on consistency over time, then even harsh criticism becomes something different. It becomes information. You can evaluate it. You can keep what’s useful. You can let go of what’s not. It doesn’t have to break you.

And here’s what’s beautiful about that: people who are grounded in this way tend to be the best listeners. Not because they’re trying to perform humility, but because they’re not hungry for approval in every interaction. They’re not scanning the room for signs that they’re liked or respected. They’re able to be fully present, because they’re not secretly negotiating their self-worth while the conversation unfolds.

They can sit in discomfort. They can tolerate disagreement. They don’t need to fix everything immediately just to feel secure again. That’s the mark of emotional steadiness—not detachment, but durability.

It’s a rare thing to witness, because we live in a world that conditions us to live externally—to constantly scan for signs that we’re okay based on how others react. But when someone is anchored internally, they move differently. They don’t over-explain. They don’t beg to be understood. And they don’t collapse the moment they’re not affirmed.

Most people never reach that place—not because they lack the capacity, but because approval is familiar. It’s reliable. And letting go of it feels, at first, like stepping into open air.

But the truth is, everything stable you’ve ever built in your life began with learning how to stand on something solid. Emotional independence is that solid ground.

One of the places I see this most often—this quiet erosion of self—is in performance. Not the theatrical kind. Not the stage or spotlight. I mean the emotional performance so many of us do daily, often without realizing it. The performance of being palatable, agreeable, easy to like. The performance of being less so that others don’t feel discomfort.

We perform for approval. We perform for safety. We perform because somewhere along the way, we internalized the belief that being fully ourselves was risky—and that being liked was a kind of protection.

It’s subtle, but unmistakable once you begin to notice it. It’s the extra polish you put on a story, not for clarity, but to make sure it lands well—to make sure you don’t sound too intense, too bitter, too anything. It’s the way you hold back a dissenting opinion in a meeting because you don’t want to be labeled difficult. It’s the smile you offer even when a comment cuts too deep, because addressing it would make things awkward. It’s the yes you say when your body is screaming no, because you don’t want to seem unhelpful, or worse, ungrateful.

These aren’t isolated moments. Over time, they accumulate. They become a performance so seamless that we start mistaking it for who we are.

But here’s the cost: performing for approval isn’t just exhausting. It’s identity-fracturing. Because while you're focused on shaping yourself into someone they will accept, you slowly lose track of the version of yourself you trust. You become fluent in the language of pleasing, but mute when it comes to your own needs.

I call this emotional outsourcing. And I see it everywhere. In workplaces, where employees quietly conform to unspoken norms to stay in the good graces of leadership. In relationships, where one partner continually edits themselves just to keep the peace. In parenting, where children learn early which parts of themselves are safe to show. Even in therapy rooms, where clients sometimes perform “progress” to make their therapist feel proud.

Emotional outsourcing is the instinct to make someone else the mirror of your worth. Their reaction becomes the proof that you’re okay. Their discomfort becomes your cue to change course. Their praise becomes your reward for shrinking just right.

But here’s what I’ve learned, again and again: no amount of external approval will ever feel as steady as internal alignment.

You can be admired by everyone in the room and still feel hollow if what they’re admiring isn’t actually you.

Being liked can’t make you feel whole if being liked required you to abandon yourself to get it. That sentence is hard to say, and harder to live. Because so many of us—especially those who were raised on conditional acceptance—have spent our lives trying to earn safety by being agreeable, helpful, unproblematic. Palatable.

But eventually, there’s a threshold. You feel it. You either keep shrinking to fit their narratives, or you start expanding—and let their approval catch up, or fall away.

The moment you choose expansion, something shifts. You realize you were never meant to live inside someone else’s comfort zone.

Let me be very clear about something—because this is the part where people often get it twisted. Choosing to be independent of the good opinion of others is not a green light to become cruel. It is not a justification for being dismissive, emotionally unavailable, or chronically indifferent. It’s not an excuse to withdraw into some cold, self-righteous shell and call it strength.

This isn’t about arrogance. It’s not about refusing to care what others think. It’s about not being ruled by it.

Emotional independence doesn’t mean you’re untouchable. It means you’re intact. It means you’re not flinching every time someone around you disapproves. It means you can care deeply, even love deeply, without handing over your emotional steering wheel to whoever happens to be in front of you. You’re not hijacked by other people’s moods, preferences, projections, or stories about you.

It’s a different kind of strength than what we often imagine. This isn’t a loud, defiant posture. It’s quieter. It’s steady. It’s grounded. It’s the ability to stay with yourself even when someone you love is disappointed in you. Even when your boundaries are met with confusion or pushback. Even when someone says, “I don’t like how you handled that,” and your first instinct is to fold inward, but instead—you stay. You hold your ground—not out of ego, but out of self-trust.

That’s the kind of maturity we’re talking about here.

And paradoxically, this kind of maturity doesn’t make you less connected to others. It makes you more connected—because you’re finally showing up as someone real. Not a curated version of yourself. Not a version optimized for applause. Just... you.

See, when you stop chasing approval, you stop treating people like judges you have to impress. You stop performing, and start relating. You stop interpreting every interaction as a test of your worth, and start showing up from your center. And people can feel that. They may not always agree with you. They may not even like you all the time. But they’ll feel something different: presence.

Presence is the opposite of performance. It doesn’t mean you’re perfect. It means you’re here. Consistent. Honest. Not over-explaining, not contorting, not rehearsing your authenticity like it’s a script. Just honest. Just available.

And here's the paradox: when you're not trying to be liked, you're often easier to trust. Why? Because you're not shape-shifting. People can feel the difference between someone who is rooted in something real and someone who is subtly negotiating approval in every interaction.

That’s the kind of person I want to be around. That’s the kind of person I want to be.

Emotional independence doesn’t sever connection. It purifies it. Because when you’re no longer performing for belonging, you finally start experiencing what real connection feels like—when it’s not conditional.

So how do we get there?

How do we start to unhook ourselves from the need to be liked, without becoming hardened or detached? How do we stop outsourcing our self-worth to the reactions of others, without losing our capacity for empathy or connection?

It begins in small moments. Micro-decisions. The subtle ways we betray ourselves every day, often without even realizing it. That pause before speaking when you’re not sure how your words will land. That smile you flash, not because you’re happy, but because you don’t want to make anyone uncomfortable. The yes you offer even though your gut says no. The rewording of a sentence so it sounds softer, safer, more digestible.

That flicker—that moment right before you shift to become more acceptable—that’s the moment to pay attention to.

And in those moments, ask yourself:

• Who am I trying to please right now—and why?

• What would I say if I didn’t need this person to like me?

• What part of me believes I need to be small in order to be safe?

• What would change if I believed I was already enough, without their applause?

These are not easy questions. They’re not meant to be. But they are clarifying. And they’re the beginning of what I call emotional integrity—the ability to stay rooted in your own clarity, even when the room is confused or uncomfortable.

Because emotional independence isn’t built through one big dramatic act. It’s built through a thousand quiet choices. You say the thing that’s harder to say. You hold the silence instead of rushing in to fill it. You risk being misunderstood instead of explaining yourself into exhaustion. You let someone have their opinion about you without trying to control it or correct it.

And slowly—almost imperceptibly at first—you begin to shift. You start to feel less frantic. Less performative. Less dependent on approval as a form of oxygen. You start to feel whole.

You don’t have to be liked to be whole. That’s the truth that so many of us were never taught. You don’t have to perform softness to feel safe. You don’t have to rehearse who you are for an audience that may never truly understand you anyway.

What you do need—what we all need—is to feel anchored in ourselves. Not inflated. Not self-righteous. Just… home. Steady. Clear.

Because that’s where real peace begins—not in being liked, but in being known. First by yourself. Then, if you’re lucky, by others who are capable of seeing you without needing you to shrink.

Being independent of the good opinion of others doesn’t mean you don’t value people. It means you finally stop giving them the power to decide who you are.

It means you cut the cord between your worth and their reaction.

And that’s where freedom begins.

That’s where peace lives.