Approval by Leslie Fieger

I received an email the other day. "You have been approved." I was ecstatic. At last.

You see, I had been waiting weeks for this approval. I almost had to jump through hoops to get it. It was a very important element in my current project, seLFTech [Ed: April 2003].

The next day, during one of my long walks through the rainforest, I began thinking about approval…why we want or need it; what we do to get it and so on.

I came to the sudden realization that I had spent most of my life looking for approval. It appears to me that so does everyone else. When we receive approval, we get to feel validated. When we do not, our self-esteem takes a serious hit.

It is ingrained in each of us right from our first breaths. As children, approval means everything from survival to love to identity. That is pretty powerful stuff for fresh minds and tender hearts.

And so we proceed through life, habitually seeking approval as if it were necessary for our survival, love and identity. No wonder that peer pressure is a primary motivator of young people or immature people.

Even as adults we still seek our parents’ approval. Even when our parents are dead, we still seek their approval. "Dear old Dad would have approved." We seek approval from our peers, our friends and family, our work mates or bosses, our spouses and even our own children. We seek approval from total strangers. We seek approval from abstract concepts like our society. We even seek approval from our gods.

For we have bought into the belief that without approval, our survival, security, self-image, identity, value, love … the very meaning of our lives is, at the very least, called into question.

Here is something that you will need to know if you ever want to be free to become a full-functioning human being. The only approval you really, really need is your own.

All else is, in its very neediness, a lack of faith in yourself. Only you can ever validate you. Only you can supply meaning and purpose to your life. Only you can determine that you are worthy of love. Self-esteem is the only estimation of your value.

Additionally, you come pre-approved. That’s why you are here.

Now, get out there and show the world just how valuable and important you really are.