Why Chasing Acceptance From Others Erodes Our Ability to Accept Ourselves

We spend our lives chasing acceptance.

We chase acceptance from our parents, friends, spouses, and society.

We can’t help it; it’s how we’re wired.

We’re tribal creatures, and acceptance means survival.

We chase externals to achieve the acceptance we desire because this is what we believe we need to do.

Those externals fall under the categories of power, status, prestige, and pleasure.

We will chase them to the ends of the earth to receive the acceptance we crave.

We’re on The Golden Treadmill, and our vision has been reduced to a mere pinpoint in front of us.

We furiously sprint, blind to the reality and, in turn, the futility of our actions.

The more we chase acceptance outside of ourselves, the further away we travel from the only person’s approval we ever needed — and that was always there.

Ourselves.

By running from ourselves, and I mean our true selves, we give birth to a void we’ll spend the rest of our lives trying to fill.

And what we chase will never fill that void, and in time the more we attempt to fill it, the bigger the void will…