Clearing the mental space of the day's residues, which I wrote about last time, frees capacity for what matters. But there is a source of mental residues more persistent than all others and which consumes energy in invisible ways: the obsessive concern about what others think of us. The need to be liked, to be approved of, to disappoint no one.
Today's subject is about what happens when you genuinely understand that you cannot please everyone and why this acceptance is not a defeat, but one of the greatest liberations you can experience.
What is the need to be liked by everyone? It is not the same as being an agreeable person or caring about others. It is something more compulsive: the inability to tolerate disapproval, criticism, or the simple indifference of others towards you. It is when you choose what you say, how you dress, what opinions you express, and how you live your life according to what you believe will maximise approval from those around you.
People with this pronounced need do not live their own life. They live a collection of adapted versions of themselves, one for each audience.
Where does it come from? I have touched on similar sources throughout the series, but it is worth returning with specificity.
The first is that social approval was, evolutionarily, a matter of survival. Exclusion from the group was genuinely dangerous. The brain evolved to be hypersensitive to disapproval. And so the need to be liked is not irrational. It is an old instinct applied to a modern context in which social exclusion is no longer an existential threat.
The second is that for many people approval was the condition for love in childhood. If love came with the condition of being well-behaved, agreeable, successful, or comfortable for those around you, you internalised that your worth depends on others' approval. And so disapproval is not discomfort. It is existential danger.
The third is that society rewards conformity and penalises departures from the norm. People who try to please everyone receive fewer social conflicts in the short term. The price is paid internally and in the long term.
What do you lose when you try to be liked by everyone?
The first is authenticity. If you constantly adapt your behaviour, opinions, and expression to what you believe the audience wants to see, you no longer know who you are independently of the audience. Your identity becomes a function of context, not a reality of your own.
The second is genuine relationships. People who permanently adapt to others are never truly known by anyone. How could they be? They never showed anything real. And so relationships, however numerous, remain superficial.
The third is decision-making capacity. If every decision is filtered through what X will think or how Y will react, you can no longer choose from within yourself. You choose from fear or social calculation. And choices from social calculation produce lives that do not represent you.
What is the freedom in accepting that you cannot please everyone? It is enormous and concrete.
When you give up the impossible objective of being approved by all, an enormous amount of energy is freed. The energy you consumed modelling, adapting, anticipating, can be reinvested in being present, creating, loving genuinely.
And more importantly: when you give up universal approval, you can be truly selective. You no longer need everyone. You need a few people who see you and choose you real, not the calibrated version.
There is a paradox I observe constantly: the people who try least to be liked by everyone are often the most genuinely liked. Because they have something real. And the real attracts, even if it does not attract everyone.
How do you work with the need for universal approval? Not by becoming indifferent to others. But through a few recalibration moves.
The first is to notice when a choice is dictated by the fear of disapproval, not by a value of your own. The concrete question: if nobody would know and nobody would judge, would I still choose this?
The second is to practise small disagreement. Having a different opinion in low-stakes conversations. Refusing something insignificant. Tolerance for disapproval is built gradually.
The third is to recognise that disapproval does not define you. Whether someone likes you or not, approves of you or not, tells you something about your compatibility or about their own perspective. It does not tell you something definitive about your worth.
There is a phrase I have had in mind for some time: you are not responsible for others' happiness and nobody is responsible for approving of you. This symmetry, when genuinely internalised, produces a type of freedom that the need for approval completely blocks.
Think about a decision in your life that you postponed or distorted from the need not to disappoint or not to be judged. What would you have chosen if others' approval had not mattered? And how would your life have looked different?
