Relationships
The #1 Reason To Stop Seeking Other People’s Approval
When we’re a child, we’re biologically wired to seek the approval of adults around us. Otherwise we would die. Humans are born with very poor individual survival instincts, so we are reliant on our parents and other caregivers to teach us how to avoid threats to our well-being.
We are born to instinctively trust our parents and to seek their love and approval, however misguided they may be. We learn pretty early on in life to do what we can to keep them happy. And while we also develop our own ideas about what we want quite young, often we get punished harshly when our desires conflict with those of our parents. Some parents withhold their love and approval when we disobey, which uses the power of our own instincts against us.
This is why you see so many parents giving their children behaviour-reinforcing proclamations like “good boy/girl!” or admonishments like “bad boy/girl!”
