Your Approval Is Enough: Unapologetically You - Mini Series Episode 2

Letting go of the need for external validation is one of the most freeing things we can do for ourselves. In this episode, we’re diving into why approval-seeking keeps us stuck and how to shift into unshakable self-trust instead.

 ✨From an early age, most of us learn that love and belonging feel conditional.
 ✨ Society and social media feed us impossible standards, keeping us in a cycle of seeking approval.
✨ When we rely on validation from others, we give away our power—and our freedom.
 ✨ I’m sharing a personal story about resigning from a 24-year job to live with greater integrity.
✨ There’s a big difference between healthy feedback and approval-seeking—let’s break it down.
✨ Building self-trust starts with knowing your values and priorities.
✨ What if you started asking, Do I approve? instead of Will they approve?
✨ Every time you take a small, bold step that honors your truth, you strengthen your trust in yourself.
✨ The reality? Not everyone will approve—and that’s completely okay.

This week, pay attention to where fear of judgment is holding you back. Just once, choose to act from your own truth instead. What if the freedom I truly seek is simply the freedom to be myself?

Chapters

• 1:57 Introduction to Unapologetically You Miniseries
• 3:48 Why We Crave Others' Approval
• 7:16 Personal Journey: Leaving a 24-Year Career
• 11:46 Healthy Feedback vs. Approval Seeking
• 13:54 Building Self-Trust and Inner Authority
• 17:38 Weekly Challenge and Card Reading

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:59

Welcome back to the Pure Possibilities podcast. Thank you so much for joining me. Today we're going to go into episode two of the Unapologetically you miniseries, and we're going to be talking about releasing the need for approval. This is a juicy one, and it's a little personal for me. This week.

Speaker 1: 1:18

Last week, we explored what's holding us back from being our truest selves, and I hope you took an opportunity to really ask yourself the questions that I had included and also getting really honest with yourself. One of the most important ways for us to truly move ourselves forward and get unstuck is by being honest with ourselves. I've said it before you can be dishonest with other people, but when you're not honest with yourself, you're truly, truly unable to move forward and make shifts and changes in your life. So who are you when no one else is watching? Where in your life are you truly holding back and where do you feel most like yourself? Where are you? Who are you with? What are you doing? And did you take me up on the invitation to take one small step to show up for yourself? I hope you did. I really hope you did. So let's be honest Most of us, at some point in our lives, have made choices around what other people might think and we often will hesitate before we make any bold moves or changes in our life.

Speaker 1: 2:35

Because that little voice comes in and it says what are people going to think? And it says what are people going to think. What will they say? Will they approve of what I'm doing? Am I going to be judged? What if they don't like what I'm doing? What if, what if? What if? What if? We know I love what ifs, but not in regards to this.

Speaker 1: 3:00

So this need for validation is one of the most common reasons people often stay stuck in their lives and they don't move forward and they don't make changes and they don't live the life that they actually want to live and are truly afraid to step into their power. When we live for other people's approval, we will never, ever find true freedom. Let me say that again when you live for other people's approval, you will never find true freedom, and I believe true freedom is being your authentic self. What if that's actually the freedom that we seek? Today we are going to break that cycle and we're going to explore why we crave approval and where that pattern starts, how to tell the difference between getting healthy feedback from people and approval seeking, the key to building self-trust, so that your own validation becomes enough. Oh my gosh, how amazing is that. And a simple but powerful practice to release fear of what other people think. So hopefully, by the end of the episode, you will feel lighter, freer and more aligned with who you truly are. Are you ready? Let's dive in.

Speaker 1: 4:10

Why do we really care about what other people think? For most of us, that approval starts when we're really young, as children, and we learn that love and belonging are often very, very conditional. Maybe you were praised for being good, for getting good grades, or when you would do things to make other people happy, and maybe there were times in your life where you expressed a different opinion than somebody actually wanted and you received disapproval or you were punished or rejected in some way. So over time, we start to internalize that belief that being accepted by others is more important than being our true selves. And a belief is just the thought that we keep thinking and we have the ability to change that thought, which then changes the belief. So it's not just childhood. A lot of it is in society. Society tells us to follow the rules and don't rock the boat. Do things this way, do things that way. And then there's social media. You know when you're scrolling on social media and you see like people that have the perfect life and they're doing everything perfect and they're so happy and it's not always really true and those images of people's perfect lives create pressures for us to meet an impossible standard that likely isn't actually even true. And then we have past experiences like criticism and rejection or being shamed can make us fearful of standing out or speaking up. I definitely have a lot of things in my past that I could be criticized or shamed for, and I did a lot of work on myself and getting to know myself to really move through that and release the shame and the guilt, and that's why this work is so important to me and that's why this work is so important to me.

Speaker 1: 6:18

I recently, just a few weeks ago, chose to resign from my job of 24 years, and this episode is extra personal for me because when you make a choice like that, it's very bold and not everybody's going to understand what you're doing, whether you're changing jobs, leaving your job, leaving a relationship, moving whatever it is that you're choosing to do. People don't always understand and they honestly don't have to because it's not their life. However, it doesn't necessarily hold them back from sharing their thoughts, feelings and opinions, which is why it's so important to really connect with yourself and know who you are at your core, so that other people's opinions don't shape your life. I left my job for many reasons, one of them being that I didn't feel like I was being in integrity with myself, because I talk about creating a life that you love and living the life that you actually want, and I wasn't doing that. I was choosing to be unhappy every day and I couldn't fake it.

Speaker 1: 7:30

I was trying and I was telling myself all of these things to make it work for me, and I did that for a long time, but it it didn't feel right anymore and it felt so uncomfortable in my body to be in that space because it didn't feel true and authentic to me and it wasn't what I actually wanted to be doing. Didn't feel true and authentic to me and it wasn't what I actually wanted to be doing. And when you feel that in your body, it changes everything, like you can do it for so long, and then you get to a point where you're like, oh my gosh, I can't do this anymore. And that's what happened. And I had to move through all of the feelings and and learn how to step into the newer version of me that was able to handle it and able to make that decision, which is what I did. And I chose me.

Speaker 1: 8:43

I chose to go all in on me, my podcasting and my coaching business, because I asked myself how would I ever really know what's possible if I don't go all in? Because it was pretty easy to easy as a relative term. It felt easier to also have the backup excuse to be able to say, oh, the business didn't work out because I wasn't able to do it, because I wasn't creating the time, because I didn't have the time. People would often say I don't know how you do it. I launched the podcast.

Speaker 1: 9:13

I have been working on my own personal growth and development. I've been taking courses and certifications and doing all of these things and working full time and it was a lot and I felt so stretched in so many ways that I was honestly like half-assing everything and that didn't feel good for me. And I got to a point where I just had to make that decision and something happened one day where it came to me that I don't have to have other people's approval to do this. I would love to have their support, but I don't need their approval because I am my own approval and if I feel good with the decisions and choices that I'm making, that's enough. I've been very grateful for the love and support that I've received from my family and friends. However, I knew I didn't have to have that. There was definitely some resistance from some people didn't have to have that. There was definitely some resistance from some people. And that's the thing.

Speaker 1: 10:20

When you make decisions about your life and things that you want to do, you have to remember that it is your life, and other people's reactions and responses are often because of their own fears or it's not a choice that they would choose to make, and then they project that onto you and it literally has nothing to do with you. And so that's really really important when we're talking about seeking external validation. So when we seek outside of ourselves for that validation, we shrink ourselves and hold back and go with what's expected to avoid anything that might cause disapproval from people around us. So but what does that cost you? Have you ever stopped yourself from speaking up or speaking your truth because you were afraid that you would be judged. Have you ever chosen what was acceptable over what was truly, truly right for you, and have you ever felt trapped in an identity that wasn't actually yours? If so, you are definitely not alone and you can unlearn those patterns. So that's the good news.

Speaker 1: 11:33

So let's talk a little bit about healthy feedback versus approval seeking. Approval seeking is not the same as receiving feedback. When you're looking for healthy feedback, it's constructive and supportive. It helps you grow, it can spark ideas or refine them, and you can also see things from a new perspective. So that's when you're talking with a friend and they're offering you suggestions, and it's growth-oriented. Approval seeking is driven by fear and self-doubt. Approval seeking is driven by fear and self-doubt. It's when we change ourselves to gain acceptance from others, when we obsess over what others think before we make a decision and when we feel paralyzed by the possibility of judgment from others. So huge difference between those two. Healthy feedback is helping you to expand and approval seeking is keeping you stuck and in a more contracted state.

Speaker 1: 12:38

So a really good question to ask yourself is am I seeking feedback from other people to improve or am I seeking approval to feel worthy? Because you are worthy and you don't need anyone else's approval. Just a side note. So, self-trust when you deeply, deeply trust yourself, you no longer need people in the outside world to give you permission, because you become the authority of your own life authority of your own life. So, if you are no longer wanting to seek approval, deepen the self-trust. And how can you do that? You can get clear on what's important to you. What are your priorities? What matters to you? Not what everybody, not your family, not your friends, not whoever, not your boss. What matters to you? What's your priority? What's important to you? What do you believe in? What actually matters to you? Make a list of your top five values and use them as a guide.

Speaker 1: 13:43

Rewire your inner dialogue. Instead of asking, will they approve? Ask Instead of asking. Will they approve? Ask, do I approve? Do I approve of this choice that I'm making? Do I approve of what I'm choosing to do? Do I approve of how I'm choosing to spend my time? Do I approve not? Do they approve? When you make a decision, you can pause and ask yourself do I like this choice that I'm making? Does this feel right for me? And remember going back to that gut feeling, that intuition that hell yes or hell no. Trust that that is your body, communicating with you and helping to guide you toward whatever is best for you. To guide you toward whatever is best for you, and then you can take bold, small actions, say what you actually think, even if someone else might not agree. Each time you honor yourself, your self-trust grows. It's interesting.

Speaker 1: 15:01

For a long time I would seek out other people's opinions and suggestions for things that I was doing in my life. Just pretty big decisions, sometimes when it didn't work out, or if it didn't work out, which is interesting, because it removed the responsibility from me and then I could place blame on other people, and then that turned me into a victim. Isn't that interesting? At the time I didn't realize that was what was going on, but when I look back I'm like, oh my God, that's totally what I was doing, and it also kept me from taking radical personal responsibility for my life, and sometimes I guess that's easier until it becomes so uncomfortable.

Speaker 1: 15:44

Okay, so here's the truth you will never, ever have everyone's full and total approval of all the decisions and choices that you make in your life, no matter what you do, no matter if you're the biggest people pleaser in the world. You won't ever, ever have everyone's approval, and that's okay, because you don't need them to approve of you. Your own approval is enough. We we can never, ever please anyone, and when we continue to try and do that, we become angry and resentful and frustrated and unhappy. It's just the truth.

Speaker 1: 16:21

So as you move through this week, I want you to notice where you're holding back because of fear of judgment and then, just once just we're taking baby steps here choose to act from your own truth instead. So next week, we are going to dive into how to set strong boundaries and stand firm in your truth. I'm so proud of you for being here and being open and willing to do this work, because it is the most important work that you will ever do is the work of yourself. So we are going to pull a card from the magic of what if? Card deck volume two, available on my website, pure possibilities.

Speaker 1: 17:14

Okay, here we go. What if I allow myself to choose how I want to feel today? What if I allow myself to choose how I want to feel today? We get to do that every day, throughout every day, when you focus on how you want to feel and how you're showing up as your true self and being authentically you, it changes everything. It truly does. Keep choosing you. I will see you next week. Have a beautiful, beautiful day and an amazing week, much love.