Don't seek approval. This may be the toughest suggestion for you to follow -- and the most important. Whether you'te a teenager seeking approval from your peers, a middle-aged parent seeking the approval of your kids, or a man or woman seeking the approval of a partner, it all amounts to the same thing. You're giving your personal power away every time you seek validation from someone else for who you are.
There was one point in high school actually when I was on the chess team, marching band, model United Nations and debate club all at the same time. And I would spend time with the computer club after school. And I had just quit pottery club, which I was in junior high, but I let that go.
One thing that did happen to me, though - in high school, there was a club to help prepare people for scholarships and they wouldn't let girls take the class. But I studied for it, and that year I was the only one from the high school who got the scholarship. That was my vindication.
My earliest thought, long before I was in high school, was just to go away, get out of my house, get out of my city. I went to Medford High School, but even in grade school and junior high, I fantasized about leaving.
I really had a rough time in middle school. Middle school to me was the way most people explain high school. Then in high school I had a blast. I basically did everything that you would do in high school or in college, so it really wasn't a difficult thing to pull out.
So long as you are still worried about what others think of you, you are owned by them. Only when you require no approval from outside yourself can you own yourself.
Hey, are you okay?”he asked “Nickamedes told me what happened with Preston. He and the others were worried about you. They’re out looking for you, along with Daphne, Carson, and Oliver.”I let out a bitter laugh.“I must have really freaked them out if Nickamedes was worried about me.
I started dancing when I was about 15 or 16 in my high school drama club, and then I liked it so much that they offered dual enrollment classes. So my senior year, I ended up taking college dance courses while I was in high school because I had good grades.
When I dropped out [from a law school], everybody was disappointed... But I found that disappointing people is a good thing, because disapproval is freedom. Before that, I never realized how much I sought other people's approval. Once I figured that out, I was free to move on and seek the approval of other people, in comedy clubs and showbiz meetings.
The people who receive the most approval in life are the ones who care the least about it--so technically, if you want the approval of others, you need to stop caring about it.
Acceptance is approval, a word with a bad name in some psychologies. Yet it is perfectly normal to seek approval in childhood and throughout life. We require approval from those we respect. The kinship it creates lifts us to their level, a process referred to in self-psychology as transmuting internalization. Approval is a necessary component of self-esteem. It becomes a problem only when we give up our true self to find it. Then approval-seeking works against us.
I was in high school, trying to get out of high school. The only thing slowing me up was grades.
From middle school to the first year of high school, I went to a school in Miami that seemed like a private country club. The whole cheerleader, football player, clique-y thing there was terrifying. Those people were so scary. They're the scariest kinds of people because they are idolized by their peers.
I never felt comfortable in my own skin, and I feel like I missed out on a lot of high school experiences because I was so worried about where I fit in because I was so confused.
I had never dreamed about the NBA like some guys did. I was a non-scholarship player at an NAIA college. I played on the Boys and Girls Club team in my freshman and sophomore years of high school before I made the high school team. I was our backup center in college.
I actually live right near a high school and I always walk by...I live in a high school. I actually live in the boiler room of a high school at night. When I see high school guys now I'm actually like, 'Thank f - king God I'm not in high school anymore because they look like they could kick the living s - t out of me.'