How approval seeking increases your worry?

Do you seek approval constantly? Do you depend on others for your self esteem? How approval seeking increases your worry and anxiety?

People especially children, teens, and young adults seek approval constantly and many worry that they won’t get it. People want to be liked and they want to fit in with their group. Peer pressure is one of the main reasons of approval seeking, which usually causes many people excessive worry and anxiety if they don’t learn how to control their thoughts and emotions and learn to look for the positive in situations and events.

Kelly will start going to her new job tomorrow. She worries if her colleagues and her new boss will like her. Anxiety and worry are filling up her head. In fact, Kelly has spent the last three days focusing on nothing except what she will do if no one likes her. She needs the approval of people so badly that she can’t sleep at night.

What Kelly is doing she is saying if her boss and colleagues don’t like her, she is going to collapse if she doesn’t get their approval. Worrying too much about what people think of her is affecting Kelly’s well being.

As I mentioned in my book “How to overcome worry and have peace of mind” that most people want approval, which is fine. However, when seeking approval gets to be a need rather than a want, then it will start affecting your life in a negative way and you will not be able to have peace of mind.

To learn how to stop worrying if you don’t get people’s approval, follow the below steps:

1. Build your confidence

It is known that lack of confidence contributes to anxiety and worry. The chances are if you are not confident doing a certain task, you will start worrying over it. One of the best ways to tackle such issue is by working on learning the necessary skills needed for the task.

When you have strong confidence in yourself, it won’t matter to you that everyone must like and accept you. You would know that some people will like you and some won’t, which is perfectly fine.

By accepting the fact that not everyone is going to like you, you would save yourself a great amount of worry.

2. Improve your social skills

One of the best ways to stop needing people’s approval is by building and improving your social skills. When I was a teenager back in the early 1990s, I didn’t have good social skills. I used to worry excessively over what I will say when I meet new people for the first time, which is one of the main reasons I got into personal development back in 1998 and started studying ways to overcome worry and anxiety.

As I improved and enhanced my social skills, I started to worry a lot less, started to engage in conversations with new people and began to have peace of mind.

3. Learn positive programming

One of the best ways to stop seeking approval is to believe in your opinion and always look for the positive in situations and events. If someone doesn’t like you or like something you do, then learn to accept it and be comfortable with that.

Instead of worrying that someone doesn’t like you and getting all stressed over it, you can think of the situation as it is something healthy.

4. Love yourself unconditionally

If you love yourself unconditionally, then it doesn’t matter what others think of you. You have to believe that you are a true gift from God and you have great potential. You are lovable for no other reason than you are a human being. You are a live on this earth to fulfill a great cause and purpose. Make the most out of yourself and always think of yourself as unique human being.