Something that has played a huge role in my life, and I know I’m not the only one, is a strong desire to get the approval of others. At times this can take a genuine form where you feel inspired to do right by those you care about and make them proud, but at other times it can take on a destructive form that steers you out of alignment in your life.

It’s perfectly fine to care what others think about you. In fact it’s hardwired into our evolutionary past to be altruistic and consider how we contribute within a larger tribe. This is what makes humans so powerful as a species. It generates a pull to seek the approval of others and in doing so, we become very extrinsically motivated. All this means is that we find reasons for doing things from sources that are outside of ourselves.

Extrinsic motivation itself isn’t a bad thing, but there are a few applications of it that lead to us getting our needs met in unhealthy ways. For example, someone who lacks a sense of self-love may seek the validation of other people to meet that needs, which may pull them to behave in ways that aren’t representative of who they are.

Or someone who lacks confidence might ask a friend or loved one for permission to make a certain decision, opening up the possibility that they’ll be steered away from doing what they really want to do.

Sometimes it’s easier to get your needs met in these superficial ways. The validation is more readily accessible. But over time, this may create a dependency on something outside of yourself to get your internal needs met.

This, in a sense, can be considered an addiction to approval, and the cost of it is significant. It can lead to you be less definitive about pursuing what you want in life. It may slow you down and keep you stuck in the same old things. And it may force you to be okay tolerating things in your life that aren’t the best fit for you.

It becomes a difficult balance to strike, so here are some of my recommendations:

Seek perspective over approval as it will help you make the right decisions for yourself.

Understand that most mistakes can be corrected, so as long as you stay open to feedback you’ll get there.

And when people try to impose their own expectations and preferences on you, remember that they have different goals, experiences, and worldviews than you and that’s a beautiful thing.

At the end of the day everyone want you to be the best you that you can be, and superficially seeking the approval of others in everything you do will hold you back from it.

Do you know that person who always seems to find a way to interject in conversation, dropping in an extra tidbit or humblebrag or namedrop? Without trying to place judgment on them or criticize those who do it, because I’m guilty of it too, let’s think about how this might apply and what we have to learn from it.

Speaking from my own experience, sometimes I find myself trying to add into a conversation just to try and sound smart. Especially if it’s in a social environment where I feel like I’m out of my league or have something to prove, I want to make it clear that I belong and can keep up with the conversation.

Being self-aware, I know some of the things motivating this behavior. It’s feeling like I’m not good enough or not successful enough. It’s trying to sound impressive so that I can get external validation from someone else to appease my ego. It’s putting that extra sugar coat on top of who I am because I don’t have the confidence to own who I am and expose myself to rejection.

Those all sound like negative things, but it’s perfectly normal and common! What I just shared about is something that many people go through, maybe even you, which is why I wanted to add some perspective to it and suggest some ways of relating with it.

So instead of coming off as a know it all, with a fragile facade, we can approach these moments more authentically. When you have something to add, put it through a quick filter to determine if it’s actually adding to the conversation or if you’re saying it for your own reasons. If it’s the latter, you’ve just discovered an opportunity to learn more about yourself and the root of an insecurity or limiting belief you might have.

Having said that, there are strategic times to demonstrate your knowledge. Especially if you’re trying to make things happen and you want to generate some credibility, it may be appropriate to say something that puts you in a positive light. 

But again, it’s being self-aware of the intention behind it. We all need to hustle, I get that. So if there’s a real purpose behind it then go and do your thing. But if you’re flexing your knowledge to fill a hole inside you, being a know it all will feel good in the short term but do more damage in the long term, separating you from your self-belief. 

My intention today is not to be a part of any ‘toxic positivity’ messaging, but rather demonstrate how we can create more positive lives while still remaining authentic to how we’re feeling. It's a fine line that deserves exploration.

And the way we'll do that is in this quote - “Optimism is a choice.” 

Our reality is created by our perspective, which serves as a filter to understanding the world around us. This means that everything we perceive is just a representation of the meaning that we took from it, which comes from years of biases, prejudices, beliefs, and experience. In every moment all of this history creates an unconscious filter we see the world through, and we’ll continue to see the world through this filter unless we change it, good or bad.

The issue with toxic positivity is that sometimes, we try to change this filter in inauthentic ways. We try to force ourselves to see the world that doesn’t feel true to ourselves. The rejection of the truth can cause us to neglect the real emotions that come up as part of life - anger, disappointment, sadness, fear, worry - which leads to them going unaddressed, unprocessed, and unhealed.

Tying this into one of Simon Sinek’s take core philosophies, he has a clever differentiation between positivity and optimism. He says positivity is seeing that everything is good in the present moment, and optimism is a belief that things will be good in the future. 

This nuance is important because it suggests that you don’t need to be positive to be optimistic. You can be deep in anger, disappointment, or sadness and still be optimistic that someday soon it won’t be that way. Optimism gives hope.

So bringing it back to the quote “Optimism is a choice”. It allows you to be authentic about the way you feel in the moment while at the same time shaping your filter for how you want things to be.  

The future is uncertain and incomplete. There’s no authentic way to represent the future because it hasn’t happened yet. So you can choose to see that things will get better and are always getting better. It’s no more or less true than any other alternative, so why not choose the one that supports you the most? 

The cool part about it is that when you do, you’ll start feeling the encouragement and inspiration you need to take action in ways that makes it much more likely to be so. That’s within your power, and it’ll change your life when you harness it.

That’s what we mean by positivity. It’s doing the things that support you in relating with your life more positively and in authentic ways.

This is a heavier topic, and in no way am I an expert in this but I think it’s a valuable thing to think about and I appreciate you holding space for it. 

Unfortunately, a lot of us are self-deprecating. We point out all of the flaws we have, the mistakes we’ve made, and the wrongdoings we’ve been a part of. It gets to the point where we relate these things with our character and who we are at our core. It might even make you believe that there’s something wrong with you because no matter what you do, there's something that just keeps getting in the way.

That's a really deflating thought. It can make us question if we’re capable of our hopes and dreams, if we can impact the world in the way that we want to, or if we’re wasting our time focusing on things that will never work.

Whether we’re experiencing something like this right now, or we can relate to a time when we’ve all been there, it takes a number of different forms. It could be within your mental health and how you sometimes go to dark places. What’s wrong with you that’s keeping you from being happy and enjoying what you have? 

Or maybe you just can’t get your health where you want it, lacking consistency within your diet and exercise. What’s wrong with you that’s keeping you from being more self-disciplined?

This is where I want to inject a transformational suggestion. Maybe it’s not that there’s something wrong with you, but rather that there’s something wrong within you.

Read that again.

Maybe it’s not that there’s something wrong with you, but rather that there’s something wrong within you.

It’s not that you can’t be happy or find joy, it’s that there’s something happening within you that is preventing you from it. Or with your health, it’s not that you’re not capable of doing what it takes to get healthy, it’s that there are other factors influencing your experience of it. Things like physiology and brain chemistry, beliefs, or past trauma.

If this is the case, then a weight has been lifted. There’s nothing wrong with you. Your character, your integrity, your potential is all intact. Now you can go fix the other things going on that are keeping you from being who you want to be. That’s the work. It’s not easy, but at least it presents a path forward.

A thought from Nithya Shanti - “Give and forgive not get and forget”.

Clearly, there’s a strong and clever contrast painted in this. It makes you reflect on the difference between giving and getting, which we’ve thought more about, and then expand that into a more unique contrast between forgiving and forgetting.

First, to establish that foundation, the world operates through the transaction of giving and getting. You cannot give your money, expertise, contacts, energy, or anything in any capacity unless it in some way is being received somewhere else. 

Within this contrast, understand that ‘getting’ is not a bad thing itself. It’s very important actually because it allows someone else to give and also it allows us to get our needs met so that we have more to give. The encouragement is to focus on the priority, which is giving, because when you give you then grant yourself more permission to receive and facilitate the flow of value.

What’s interesting about this is most exchanges involve both parties giving and getting all at the same time. For example someone buying groceries: The grocer is giving food and getting money for it, while the customer is giving money and getting food. They’re inseparable.

Now this second piece, the contrast between forgiving and forgetting. When you forgive, there's a record of what happened. It is not being avoided, neglected, or lost. The facts remain the same but the perception of it has changed. You choose to accept what happened and tell a new story about it, one of forgiveness, gratitude, empathy, and understanding.

When you forget, what happened is gone. It means that you’re susceptible to it happening again because you didn’t process it, you simply deleted it. This allows the same old story and meaning to be tied to it, keeping you right where you are.

As you can tell, there’s a lot to think about in this concept - Give and forgive not get and forget. And I’d love for you to reflect on it and figure out for yourself why it’s true, or not!

I heard a really interesting framework around how to limit negative communication. Often times we say things we don’t mean, that we’ll later regret, and wonder why we even said it in the first place. We wonder what caused us to not have the self-control required to show up better in the moment.

When it comes to things you wish you wouldn’t have said, or said in a certain way, it’s usually a matter of feeling emotional. Our emotions bias our logical reasoning as an environment that shapes our thoughts. It happens unconsciously in emotional moments causing us to misrepresent our truth.

So before you communicate, especially when you’re feeling impulsive, halt. Pause. Take a minute to audit how you’re feeling. In particular reflect on these 4 things:

HALT is an acronym - Hungry, angry, lonely, tired. When you’re feeling any of those things you’re more likely to make mistakes in your communication. When you feel any of these ways, you become more likely to say something you didn’t mean because your mind is fixated on addressing specific needs in the short-term that conflict with what might be best in the long term.

This is in my mind humanity’s fatal flaw - We have evolved to do the things that serve us in the short term (immediate gratification) but that often does more harm than good in the long term (rejection of delayed gratification). 

But once you can label what’s happening, understand that in the moment you’re feeling hungry, angry, lonely, or tired, you can decrease this unconscious force. Simply by calling it out, you give your logical mind the information it needs to make the right decision, knowing how certain factors and feelings might be motivating things in certain ways.

Bringing this back to you - The next you time you feel agitated or like you’re getting impulsive or confrontational in a conversation, halt. Pause to reflect on how hungry, angry, lonely, or tired you might be. Connect the dots around how that might be causing you to relate with things a certain way. And if you feel like it’s not allowing you to represent your best self, now you know and you can choose to do something different.

Do you identify with being an all or nothing kind of person? It’s time to get fit so you commit to 5 days a week in the gym, a new nutrition plan, and maybe even a personal trainer. Or you want to meditate more so you dive into 30+ minute long advanced visualization sessions.

If so, and I did for a long time it’s a great characteristic trait. It means that you’re willing to be uncomfortable, you’re prepared to take bold action when you feel inspired, you’ll push yourself to levels far beyond where the average person could go, and you generally run life a high-speed.

Until you don’t…

What I’ve found to be a weakness of 'all-or-nothing' people is the relapse. While the momentum can pick up really fast, it’s volatile, fragile and can crash really quickly. You miss a day in the gym, or have a cheat day in your diet and you get really hard on yourself to the point that it all falls apart. You travel for a few days, get out of your new mindfulness routine, and have a really hard time getting back into any version of it.

That’s why it’s called all or nothing - You can be flying high one day to go back to square one the next. With all of that in mind, let’s talk about how to harness the positive sides of this mindset while managing the downsides.

On the first side of the mindset, think about applying the energy toward something sustainable. When you take the conviction of an all or nothing mindset and focus it on something more basic, you trade intensity for consistency. This works because intensity is something you can adjust in the moment whereas consistency is more foundational and baseline. 

An example of this is committing to working out in some capacity for 15 minutes a day, anything from a walk to a full sweaty gym session, knowing they all count the same.

Then on the other side of the mindset, there are two things to consider. First is how you can be aware that the ‘come down’ is coming. It requires a consciousness around your behaviors and circumstances to know how things are going and how they might be changing. The tool I use, that I teach about in the Best Self Breakthrough Challenge, is to have a daily reflection routine that helps you to pause and think about how things are going. 

Once you’ve done that, the second piece to navigating the potential fallout of an all or nothing mindset is to have contingency plans. When you lose consistency or make a mistake or overlook something (which you certainly will), do you have a plan in place to get back on track? Instead of trying to figure it out in an emotional, disappointing moment, how about you have an idea already prepared around how you might want to respond. 

Let’s say you have a cheat day and miss your diet. Instead of feeling bad about yourself, you can journal on the reasons why it happened and move forward into the next day with a renewed commitment.

Anyway, all that to say that if you have an all or nothing mindset, there’s a lot of opportunity in it! But also some pitfalls that might keep you stuck where you’re at. So be intentional about how you work with it so that you can make real improvements to your life!

if you know anyone with an all or nothing mindset, who runs at a high strung fast pace, share this article with them!

We all can think back to when we were kids and asked to make a wish before blowing out our birthday candles. Many people joke that instead of thinking hard about your one wish, you can just wish for more wishes. Yet we don’t. For some reasons, something that is so simple and logical to do feels like it’s cheating the system. Why is that?

While this is just a basic example it’s representative of a larger trend. For all of our lives we’ve been taught that we can’t do things. You can’t just quit your job and start your own business. You can’t move to a new town just because you want to. You can’t just go on a trip at a moment's notice. 

Are you sure you can afford it? Have you considered the consequences? Is this the responsible thing to do?

But the truth is - We can. All of those things - going into business for yourself, moving towns, going on a spontaneous trip - are extremely doable. In fact people do it every single day. 

What keeps more people from doing it is this learned tendency that we can’t, which has been handed down for generations infusing itself in our subconscious belief systems.

Just like you can’t wish for more wishes, right? Well of course you can! And you should.

Someone who is telling you that you can’t have what you want is just projecting their insecurities and limitations on you. Do you want to believe them, or do you want to believe the voice of possibility in your head that is telling you to go after your dreams?

The main thing keeping people from pursuing their dreams is taking the small first step of committing to doing it. They don’t have the courage to go against the fold and wish for more wishes. 

I say it every single day on the podcast - Yes you can! Maybe it’s time you start challenging the constraints that you’ve allowed into your world and probing into the unlimited life you want to live. Allow yourself to dream big. Listen to your intuition and path over the critical voices around you.

It’s okay to dream big and get what you want in life. You deserve it! And you can create it for yourself once you stop getting in your own way and start playing your game of life and not anyone else’s.

If this helped you have a perspective shift today, please share this article with someone you care about and invite them onto this journey with you.

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