Rick Torrison argues that basing your identity on others' opinions limits your potential. When you chase external praise to feel loved, seen, or valued, you settle for less than your true purpose and become trapped by what others need from you, not what you actually are.
I am who others say that I am. But as soon as we start building our life, our identity, our value off of what others say that we are, I think we become limited and we start settling for something less than what we were actually born and created for. Others have opinions of what they want from us. They want a human, a person, a relationship, typically that meets the needs that they have, that answers the questions that they have, that aligns with the beliefs that they have. And these things aren't necessarily good or bad, bad. They're just not us. And the other side of that is good. We can get caught up in the praise of others as well, can't we? I mean, we can get caught up in the accolades. I mean, we all love that. We all love it when someone acknowledges us, recognizes us. I think that's some of our core created needs. But I think sometimes what happens is those needs that we have to be loved, seen, recognized, valued, heard, understood. When we start trying to meet those needs in illegitimate ways through outside sources, I think we end up setting ourselves up.
