053 – Pros & Cons of Being an Approval Seeker Creativity Excitement Emotion

Thanks to the proliferation of social media and smartphones, attention- and approval-seeking behaviors are at an all-time high.

In this episode of Creativity Excitement Emotion, David explains the pros and cons of being an approval seeker.
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Highlights:
00:17 – Can you do life without constantly having to be validated?
00:55 – Getting the results you’re looking for
01:58 – Getting results for yourself first
02:12 – It’s not just about being independent
03:08 – What lengths are you willing to go to?
04:03 – Short-sightedness is a problem
04:36 – Approval seeking is beneficial to those who are willing and able to do it
05:04 – Not everyone is going to like you
06:19 – The upsides and downsides of being an approval seeker
07:27 – Know thyself
Transcript:
I don't think I'm much of an approval seeker. There's something that came up in my reflections and I think that's the ideal… if you can be independent… and don't get me wrong, it's always nice to get compliments. It's always nice to get praise. And I think we're all deserving of it to greater or lesser degrees, and we all need it as well.

But if you can be as independent as possible and not have to run on compliments or praise as fuel to do life, I think that's the ideal. You’ve got to take care of yourself first before you worry about taking care of anybody else.

If you're doing things in life, it doesn't matter what area, relationships, business, music, or anything else that you might be taking on. If you're not getting the results that you're looking for, it means that some aspect of what you're doing is not working, right?

I can tangibly see, since February [2023], when I started working out again, that I am getting results. I am looking trimmer, fitter, more in shape, gaining muscle, and losing fat. So, there's proof right there that it's working. If someone wanted to get the results that I'm getting right now, there would be good reason to listen to me.

If I wasn't getting those types of results, and I was merely advising people from my armchair, that's a whole other situation.

So, we want to be mindful of where results are showing up before we worry about trying to advise others on the direction that they should go in. First look at whether our method is working at all, in any capacity.

I'm not talking merely about being independent, though. I think culturally speaking, North America has a lot to learn from a country like Japan.

People often come back to me and say, “Everything has its pros and cons,” and yeah, that is true. Japan has some odd bits of culture that can be a little bit hard to understand or process. You could get thrown in jail for rather bizarre reasons, but I think every country has that. If you start looking into the law, like, there's almost no country that doesn't have some bizarre rules that could get you into trouble.

So, I think there's something to be learned about community culture. It's something that Japan does so well, and I'm sure it happens in other countries, too. I just haven't seen it.

So, I’m not just talking about being independent, although that is important. I think with approval seeking, it's almost your tolerance for what lengths are you willing to go to, to get people's attention. It's exactly what we're seeing with influencer culture. It's exactly what we're seeing with creator culture.

People are running around in tiny little bikinis, or if you're an OnlyFans model, then naked. There's ASMR, there's video games, there's all this stuff…

Look, some people genuinely love what they do and are good at it. I'm not going to take that away from them. But you will also find some people do this just because they think it will get them a lifestyle. In some cases, it does.

You can get advertising money.