Chad Silverstein argues that people lose themselves trying to win approval, becoming numb to how much they change. He says to build self-awareness, treat struggles as growth opportunities, and focus on becoming better in your actual roles instead of pleasing people who are mostly thinking about themselves.
Chapters
I think people are numb and they don't even know how much they try to actually get the approval of others at the expense of being themselves. And it's sad because you can live your whole life trying to please other people who really, at the end of the day, don't care about you. And meanwhile you forget who you are. And you've never even put any thought into really living your life. Being your true self, figuring out your identity and who you are. It's one of the hardest things that you'll ever do. You've got to be able to see yourself in a way that maybe you don't like. And you have to be able to focus on making changes that sometimes go against your natural instincts of, like, who you are, because you want to grow and you want to be a different person. And there's nothing wrong with that, but being able to see yourself in a light that is true and genuine versus figuring out who am I trying to get the approval of in my life and changing who I am to try to get that approval. It's really, really important that you kind of step back from that and be conscious of it and realize that you're not being your true self when you're trying to please other people. A lot of people have that people pleaser type personality and people joke about it, you know, and they're trying so hard to please other people around them. But the truth is, is that if you were on a bus and you're looking at all the people around you, everybody's thinking about themselves, everybody. And we worry so much about what people think about us. Meanwhile, they don't think about us. No one cares about you and they're not thinking about you. And you have to get out of your head thinking that they are. People have thousands of thoughts all day long, everything they have going on. Everybody's struggling with something and people are struggling with some tough stuff. And trust me, if you were in a big room with lots of people and everybody threw their struggles in the middle of the room, you'd run and go get yours for sure. So you have to see your struggles as tests, see the tests as opportunities. The opportunities are to grow. Usually those are the moments of truth in your life that you look back on and say, wow, you know, that's the biggest blessing in disguise and there's a reason why. And you have to use that learning as experience that you could then kind of see happening more and more instead of, you know, letting it trap you in this form of depression because you think you're a victim and everything's so hard and everything happens to you. No, those are usually your moments of truth. It's the opposite. We sometimes, I think, live in a world that's like the opposite of the way things should be. You know, we think that, you know, that some test that we're going through is so hard, but it forces you to do things that you normally wouldn't do. And if you didn't do those things, you wouldn't be where you are today. And everybody has examples of that in their life. So recognize that your self awareness of who you are and understanding that, you know, it's not your job in life to please other people and having the clarity that they're not thinking about you as much as you think they are, that should be able to kind of eliminate a lot of the need and the feeling of having to try to please so many people in so many different ways. They don't care about you, they're thinking about themselves. And your job is to worry about you and focus on growing as an individual, as a parent, as a friend, as a coworker, as a boss, whoever you are and whatever you are and really try to get to the true essence of who you are and why you exist so that you can let yourself be whoever you are and who you're destined to become and to do great things in this world and make a difference in other people's lives instead of trying to please them and get their approval. So it's an important concept to think about and you should stop and think about it.
