Most of us are probably living by someone else’s rules. We do things we don’t necessarily believe in; we hide completely natural desires; we chase goals that don’t add to our happiness; we lose sleep over the opinions of total strangers. The first of the four dependencies concerns the irresistible need to please people.
(Note: Being nice, respectful and helpful is definitely part of a good life and should be developed. Please understand in this post, I’m going to explore the negative side of it that leads to an unstable, stressful and unhappy life.)
Do we need the approval of others?
Yes, but we need to be thoughtful about the qualities we’re judged on and the amount of others we seek to satisfy.
Let’s remember that all animals (Chimps and ourselves) want to survive and continue their species. As an infant, being rejected by a caregiver is unthinkable and, as adults, our survival chances are hindered without the support of a Troop. There are many innate drives that lead us towards this, but we also become conditioned with habits that exchange pleasing others with other drives indirectly.
How does someone get approval?
To feel secure in a Troop, you need to be:
· Competent
· Attractive
· Tough
· Endearing
· Wise
· Wealthy/high status
· Powerful
· Entertaining
· Productive or useful
All of these qualities are subjective – they exist in the eye of the beholder. Therefore they are eternally ephemeral: you can only grasp them briefly before they will inevitably slip away.
We judge ourselves against these qualities and work on them to establish a secure place of superiority in the group. Hopefully, we think, this will make us feel less inferior forever.
It never does because...
Comparison is the thief of joy. There is always someone who can do something better, no matter how good you are. If you are trying to be the best, it will be an endless quest.
Masking leads to burnout. If you are hiding qualities or desires in order to appear attractive, competent or wise, then it will take a toll. Denying your natural impulses or tendencies creates ambivalence, frustration and emptiness. Either you’ll want to indulge it privately in ways that you become ashamed about, or you’ll eventually get sick of hiding and want to change your life completely.
Some climb to the top of the ladder, only to realise it was the wrong ladder. Sometimes people pick a socially-valued career, marriage or project and attain success by working diligently. Each achievement feels rewarding, until you feel like you can go no further. Without the novelty of change or progression, the task does not satisfy the person any longer. Depression can keep in and grief for the time they have lost. They need to have a complete rethink and choose a lifestyle that corresponds with their values more closely.
Incompetence is part of human nature. Perhaps the most damaging, and most overlooked, is the impossible wish to seem competent. Our society has stigmatized mistakes. In business, you can be fired for failure on the justification that there will be plenty of others who will succeed in your place. This is fair if we accept adults always have full control of their actions and never have mental health struggles. Unacceptably, this model is also visible in schools. Exactly at the time that children are developing responsibility and control, exams and behaviour schemes expect a certain level of achievement. Perfection is often cited as an admirable goal. Instead of experimenting and harnessing their bodies and minds, children find it much easier to follow someone else’s approach and get rewarded by their approval.
Why does approval lead to disaster?
The image below shows how advice gets spread.
With every passing generation, the following of the same advice becomes a condition for acceptance and an increasingly large group of people expect it to be followed. This is sometimes called indoctrination. Whether or not, A’s advice is correct or fulfilling to B and C is irrelevant in this model. Whenever there are hierarchical relationships, people who do not follow the senior adult’s advice will face disapproval and exclusion.
This simplistic example might seem irrelevant, but it makes a massive difference in a number of ways.
1. Damaging advice is often accepted without critical appraisal. This opens the door for politicians, advertisers and experts to have their opinions adopted. Sometimes enhanced by fear or rejection, people will follow their advice blindly with huge consequences, i.e. smoking in pregnancy, rioting in DC, overspending on shoes. I love this story for highlighting the contradiction of a more-more-more culture.
2. Once figures amass a certain amount of respect they exploit their positions, i.e. casting couch producers, corrupt politicians and gang recruiters. Instead of questioning the way of life, people want to be accepted by them and so have to flatter or otherwise please another.
3. Finally, when you let someone else give you opinions, then you don’t take responsibility for them yourself. Some people grow up using racist slurs, without having ever spoken to someone of that race. Some people are risk-averse, purely because a parent constantly warned them off the dangers. Some boys grow up friends with girls, only to demean women when they are older to fit in with a certain culture. Unhelpful habits can be passed on and people never take the time to discover their own opinions, values and preferences. This deserves a post of its own.
Who should we seek approval from?
Family?
Friends?
Neighbourhood?
Everyone on Instagram?
All of mankind?
You can draw your line where you like. According to Steve Peters, the Chimp brain only cares about our immediate support network because they are directly related to our survival.
Social media connects billions of us everyday and allows us to be subject to scrutiny and judgement at all hours. The human part of our brains might set goals of impressing arbitrary numbers of irrelevant people and get intensely disappointed when this is not fulfilling. People do attract followings and it does benefit our careers and financial dreams but, unless you can separate the people that really matter to you, you'll always be vulnerable to chasing the approval of strangers you don't know.
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