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Worrying what others think makes you pay a heavy price

• The more you depend on forces outside you, the more you are dominated by them. Harold Sherman
• Our human condition makes us tend to share only the best of ourselves, because we are always searching for love and approval. Paulo Coelho
• If you need encouragement, praise, pats on the back from everybody, then you make everybody your judge. Fritz Perls
• Approval seeking,  Worry,  Conformity

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Worrying what others think makes you conform and sacrifice your uniqueness

• For fear of not being accepted, we tailor our personality, mince our words, and carve our opinions to fit in. Danielle LaPorte
• Man’s desire for the approval of his fellows is so strong, his dread of their censure so violent, that he himself has brought his enemy (conscience) within his gates; and it keeps watch over him, vigilant always in the interests of its master to crush any half-formed desire to break away from the herd. William Somerset Maugham
• If your number one goal is to make sure that everyone likes and approves of you, then you risk sacrificing your uniqueness and, therefore, your excellence. Edge Keynote
• Uniqueness

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Worrying what others think makes you live other peoples’ lives; not your own

• The trouble is if you don’t spend your life yourself, other people spend it for you. Peter Shaffer
• Every day, passion speaks to us through our feelings. That’s why when you allow yourself to become anesthetized by what others think, you literally block yourself from living the life you were called to live. Oprah Winfrey
• When you live a life trying to please others, you end up not living a life at all. You are just living others’ lives under the facade of your life. Celestine Chua
• In order to please others, we lose our hold on our life’s purpose. Epictetus

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Worrying what others think makes you pretend to be what you are not …

• In civilized life, where the happiness, and indeed almost the existence, of man depends so much upon the opinion of his fellow men, he is constantly acting a studied part. Washington Irving
• People striving for approval from others become phony. Ichiro Suzuki
• Until we become fully free, we put up a false front, a facade, to others for the purpose of winning the acceptance and approval of others. We behave in accordance with what we think the other one wants rather than by expressing our own real feelings. Lester Levenson
• If I believe I need your approval, then I begin to say the things that I think you want me to say and I begin to do the things that I think you want me to do. I turn into someone I’m not. So when you say, “I approve of you, you’re wonderful”, I can never believe you because you are approving of someone that doesn’t exist and I know that. Byron Katie
• We are more interested in making others believe we are happy than in trying to be happy ourselves. Duc de La Rochefoucauld
• We pretend to be strong because we are weak. Paulo Coelho
• You turn into someone you aren’t, and then when they say “I love you,” you can’t believe it, because they’re loving a facade. They’re loving someone who doesn’t even exist, the person you’re pretending to be. It’s difficult to seek other people’s love. It’s deadly. In seeking it, you lose what is genuine. This is the prison we create for ourselves as we seek what we already have. Byron Katie
• Be who you are

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… resulting in a denial of who you really are

• How hurtful it can be to deny one’s true self and live a life of lies just to appease others. June Ahern
• If there were such a thing as sin, this would be it: to allow yourself to become what you are because of the experience of others. Neale Donald Walsch
• Living up to an image that you have of yourself or that other people have of you is inauthentic living. Eckhart Tolle
• He who trims himself to suit everyone will soon whittle himself away. Raymond Hull
• They who are all things to their neighbors cease to be anything to themselves. Norman Douglas

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Worrying what others think reduces confidence and increases doubt

• She lacks confidence, she craves admiration insatiably. She lives on the reflections of herself in the eyes of others. She does not dare to be herself. Anaïs Nin
• The need to be normal is the predominant anxiety disorder in modern life. Thomas Moore
• Self-confidence,  Doubt

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Worrying what others think blocks your connection to your divine source

• The moment we begin to fear the opinions of others and hesitate to tell truth that is in us . . . the divine flood of light and life no longer flow into our souls.  Elizabeth Cady Stanton
• Nothing will make you wishy-washier in your vibration more than asking what everyone else thinks about what you’re planning. Abraham-Hicks
• Connection,  God

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Worrying what others think makes you their hostage

• Care about what other people think and you will always be their prisoner. Lao Tzu
• Wanting another’s approval makes you their hostage. It puts your happiness in their hands. The truth is you are 100% responsible for your own happiness.  Byron Katie
• The person who seeks all their applause from outside has their happiness in another’s keeping. Dale Carnegie
• He who seeks for applause only from without has all his happiness in another’s keeping. Oliver Goldsmith
• The person who seeks all their applause from outside has their happiness in another’s keeping. Claudius Claudianus
• Slavery

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Worrying what others think creates pain and disappointment

• Lean too much on other people’s approval and it becomes a bed of thorns. Tehyi Hsieh
• If your joy is derived from what society thinks of you, you’re always going to be disappointed. Madonna
• When you say or do anything to please, get, keep, influence, or control anyone or anything, fear is the cause and pain is the result. Byron Katie
• Pain,  Disappointment

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Worrying what others think sucks up your life energy

• There is one recurring, persistent, perennial, and dogging personal problem which, more than any other, steals the force and peace of people and ruins projects and enterprises and careers. It is the habit of feeling hurt because of what others do or do not do and what they say or do not say. Ervin Seale
• Energy management

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Not worrying what others think brings great rewards

• If you shape your life according to nature, you will never be poor; if according to people’s opinions, you will never be rich. Seneca
• Everything will line up perfectly when knowing and living the truth becomes more important than looking good. Alan Cohen
• Dance above the surface of the world. Let your thoughts lift you into creativity that is not hampered by opinion. Red Haircrow
• To be independent of public opinion is the first formal condition of achieving anything great. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

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Not worrying what others think brings you greater peace of mind

• Great tranquility of heart is his who cares for neither praise not blame. Thomas Kempis
• The less compelled you are to try to prove yourself to others, the easier it is to feel peaceful inside. Richard Carlson
• My whole teaching is: Just be what you are and don’t care a bit about the world. Then you will feel a tremendous relaxation and a deep peace within your heart. Osho
• There is something magical that happens to the human spirit, a sense of calm that comes over you, when you cease needing all the attention directed toward yourself and instead allow others to have the glory. Richard Carlson
• Inner peace

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Not worrying what others think gives you greater freedom to be yourself

• So long as you are still worried about what others think of you, you are owned by them. Only when you require no approval from outside yourself can you own yourself. Neale Donald Walsch
• Naturalness is the easiest thing in the world to acquire, if you will forget yourself-forget about the impression you are trying to make. Dale Carnegie
• Let go of the need for approval. Let go of old judgments and opinions. Die to all that, and fly free. Lama Surya Das
• Real freedom is freedom from the opinions of others. Above all, freedom from your opinions about yourself. Brennan Manning
• Freedom,  Be who you are

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Not worrying what others think makes you more fully alive

• To know what you prefer instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you ought to prefer is to have kept your soul alive.  Robert Louis Stevenson
• Being fully alive

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Not worrying what others think brings you less suffering; greater happiness

• When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering. Miguel Ruiz
• To be happy, we must not be too concerned with what others think. Albert Camus
• I do not exist to impress the world. I exist to live my life in a way that will make me happy. Richard Bach
• One reason why birds and horses are not unhappy is because they are not trying to impress other birds and horses. Dale Carnegie
• Suffering,  Happiness

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Not worrying what others think brings you greater strength and confidence

• Ironically, when you surrender your need to hog the glory, the attention you used to need from other people is replaced by a quiet inner confidence that is derived from letting others have it. Richard Carlson
• A truly strong person does not need the approval of others any more than a lion needs the approval of sheep. Vernon Howard
• Strength,  Self-confidence

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Not worrying what others think opens your eyes to your own inherent worth

• Humility just means that you’re stepping out of the rat race of self-glorification. You’re not trying to build up your ego, impress people, or compete with others for status. You’re not preoccupied with yourself. What a relief!   Not chasing praise, you become more aware of your natural worth—which becomes easier for others to see as well; the less you focus on being appreciated, the more appreciation you’ll get.  Rick Hanson
• When you stop seeking approval from elsewhere, you start gaining your own approval. You begin to like yourself. Byron Katie
• Do I approve of me and do I approve of you? That’s my work. Not do you approve of me. Byron Katie
• Self-worth,  Self-esteem

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Paradoxically, not worrying what others think brings you greater approval

• The less you care about seeking approval, the more approval you seem to get. Richard Carlson
• You will never gain anyone’s approval by begging for it. When you stand confident in your own worth, respect follows. Mandy Hale
• People who want the most approval get the least and people who need approval the least get the most. Wayne Dyer
• Those whose approval you seek most give you the least. Maurice Chevalier
• An amazing thing happens when you stop seeking approval and validation: You find it. People are naturally drawn like magnets to those who know who they are and cannot be shaken! Mandy Hale
• Because one accepts oneself, the whole world accepts him or her. Lao Tzu
• Approval seeking

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To stop worrying what others think, stop taking the opinions of others personally …

• Write this agreement on paper, and put it on your refrigerator to remind you all the time: Don’t take anything personally. Don Miguel Ruiz
• People will love you, people will hate you, and none of it will have anything to do with you. Abraham-Hicks
• Nothing other people do is because of you. It is because of themselves. Don Miguel Ruiz
• Whatever people think of you is really about the image they have of you, and that image isn’t you. Don Miguel Ruiz
• Don’t take things personally” means you should not let other people’s comments, actions, attitudes, opinions or choices affect how you feel about yourself or your life, even if they are a direct and personal attack. Kim Giles
• Men are not against you; they are merely for themselves. Gene Fowler
• Do not take things personally

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… by realising the opinion of others is simply the projection of their own beliefs and experience and has little to do with you

• No, I don’t take it personally. Whatever you think, whatever you feel, I know is your problem and not my problem. It is the way you see the world. It is nothing personal, because you are dealing with yourself, not with me. Others are going to have their own opinion according to their belief system, so nothing they think about me is really about me, but it is about them. Don Miguel Ruiz
• I’ve learned to see that someone’s criticism (or praise) is just a projection of what’s going on with them, so I’m less attached to other people’s opinions of me. Brian Johnson
• Don’t Take Anything Personally. Nothings others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering. Don Miguel Ruiz
• But other people’s reactions and opinions are simply other people’s reactions and opinions. They are having their own experience and none of it has anything to do with you – it does not make you wrong, guilty, bad, unworthy, famous, loveable, or important. Don Miguel Ruiz
• There is an awful lot of negative energy out there and some of it is directed at us by other people. But other people’s reactions and opinions are simply other people’s reactions and opinions. They are having their own experience and none of it has anything to do with you – it does not make you wrong, guilty, bad, unworthy, famous, loveable, or important. If you take it personally and take on the poison of another’s words, it becomes a very negative agreement you have with yourself. What anybody thinks about you, or says about you, is really about them. Not taking it personally allows you to be in relationship with anyone and not get trapped in their stuff. This agreement can also pertain to things that we take personally that cause us to go into upset. Don Miguel Ruiz
• Projection

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You wouldn’t worry what people think of you if you knew how seldom they did …

• You wouldn’t worry what people think of you if you knew how seldom they did. Charlie Greer
• Don’t worry about what other people think. They don’t think that often, anyway. Tim Ferriss
• I like Dr. Daniel Amen’s 18/40/60 Rule: When you’re 18, you worry about what everybody is thinking of you; when you’re 40, you don’t give a darn what anybody thinks of you; when you’re 60, you realize nobody’s been thinking about you at all. Jack Canfield
• We wouldn’t worry nearly as much about what others thought of us if we recognize how seldom they do. Paulo Coelho
• We probably wouldn’t worry about what people think of us if we could know how seldom they do. Olin Miller

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… for they’re too busy worrying about themselves

• Most of the time, nobody’s thinking about you at all! They are too busy worrying about their own lives, and if they are thinking about you at all, they are wondering what you are thinking about them. Jack Canfield
• As for worrying about what other people think, forget it. They aren’t concerned about you. They’re too busy worrying about what you and other people think of them. Michael le Boouf
• I realize now that people are not thinking about you and me or caring what is said about us. They are thinking about themselves—before breakfast, after breakfast, and right on until ten minutes past midnight. They would be a thousand times more concerned about a slight headache of their own than they would about the news of your death or mine. Dale Carnegie
• We go on fancying that each person is thinking of us, but they are not; they are like the rest of us– they are thinking of themselves. Charles Reade

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Realise that what others think of you is just opinion and not fact, including rejection and disapproval

• Most fears of rejection rest on the desire for approval from other people. Don’t base your self- esteem on their opinions. Harvey Mackay
• Criticism is just someone else’s opinion. Even people who are experts in their fields are sometimes wrong. It is up to you to choose whether to believe some of it, none of it, or all of it. What you think is what counts. Rodolfo Costa
• Disapproval: Possession or expression of an unfavourable opinion. Oxford Dictionary
• Rejection,  Criticism

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People will always have their opinions of you and to rail against that is to fight the inevitable

• I don’t care what you think unless it is about me. Kurt Cobain
• People can have their opinions about everything in the world, but people’s opinions end where the tip of my nose begins. Your opinions of others can only go so far as to where their own shoreline is. The world is for your taking, but other people are not. One is only allowed to have an opinion of me, if that person is done educating him/herself on everything about me. Before people educate themselves on everything about you, they’re not allowed to open their venomous mouthes and have an opinion about you. C. JoyBell C.
• People will always have opinions about your decision because they’re not courageous enough to take action on their opinion. Steve Maraboli

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However, you don’t need to be a slave to the opinions of others …

• Dance above the surface of the world. Let your thoughts lift you into creativity that is not hampered by opinion. Red Haircrow
• Don’t be intimidated by other people’s opinions. Only mediocrity is sure of itself, so take risks and do what you really want to do. Paulo Coelho
• Patterning your life around others opinions is nothing more than slavery. Lawana Blackwell
• It’s a good thing to learn early that other people’s opinions do not matter, unless they happen to be true. Phyllis Bottome
• If you fuel your journey on the opinions of others, you are going to run out of gas. Steve Maraboli
• It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude. Ralph Waldo Emerson
• A tiger doesn’t lose sleep over the opinion of sheep. Zag
• If you shape your life according to nature, you will never be poor; if according to people’s opinions, you will never be rich. Seneca
• Literature is strewn with the wreckage of those who have minded beyond reason the opinion of others. Virginia Woolf
• The feeble tremble before opinion, the foolish defy it, the wise judge it, the skillful direct it. Jeanne-Marie Roland
• The greatest fear in the world is of the opinions of others. And the moment you are unafraid of the crowd you are no longer a sheep, you become a lion. A great roar arises in your heart, the roar of freedom. Osho
• Opinion

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… especially their opinions of you …

• I am totally independent of the good or bad opinion of others. Deepak Chopra
• Someone’s opinion of you does not have to become your reality. Les Brown
• Away with the world’s opinion of you—it’s always unsettled and divided. Seneca
• Don’t let the opinions of the average man sway you. Dream, and he thinks you’re crazy. Succeed, and he thinks you’re lucky. Acquire wealth, and he thinks you’re greedy. Pay no attention. He simply doesn’t understand. Robert G. Allen
• Be independent of the good opinion of other people. Abraham Maslow
• Your high opinion of me is your opinion only. Any moment you may change it. Why attach importance to opinions, even your own? Nisargadatta Maharaj

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… and especially the opinions of people you don’t even care about

• We are so vain that we care even for the opinion of those we don’t care for. Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

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Don’t let the opinions of others effect your opinion of yourself

• An issue many people experience in life is that they allow other people’s opinions to influence how they see themselves. We make the mistake of accepting the judgment of others as an absolute truth. Do not grant others the power to define who you are or how you feel about yourself; this is something you need to remain in control of. Ashley Fern
• Someone’s opinion of you does not have to become your reality. Les Brown
• Never let someones thoughts and opinions affect your opinion of yourself. When you please others in hopes of being accepted, you lose your self- worth in the process.
• Your opinion is not my reality. Steve Maraboli

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Don’t let public opinion confine you

• A wise man makes his own decisions; an ignorant man follows public opinion. Chinese Proverb
• To be independent of public opinion is the first formal condition of achieving anything great. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
• Public opinion is a compound of folly, weakness, prejudice, wrong feeling, right feeling, obstinacy, and newspaper paragraphs. Robert Peel
• Public opinion… requires us to think other men’s thoughts, to speak other men’s words, to follow other men’s habits. Walter Bagehot

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Never let the opinions of others drown out your inner voice

• Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice inner voice, heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary. Steven P. Jobs
• Listen to your own inner voice, not the jumbled opinions of everyone else. Marc and Angel Chernoff
• A wise man makes his own decisions, an ignorant man follows public opinion.  Chinese Proverb

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Never let the opinions of others stop you from being yourself and doing your own thing

• Don’t waste your energy trying to change opinions … Do your thing, and don’t care if they like it. Tina Fey
• Risk! Risk anything! Care no more for the opinions of others, for those voices. Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth. Katherine Mansfield

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It’s your opinion of you that counts …

• What you think of yourself is much more important than what others think of you. Seneca
• Remove those ‘I want you to like me’ stickers from your forehead and, instead, place them where they truly will do the most good – on your mirror. Susan Jeffers
• Life is too short to waste any amount of time on wondering what other people think about you. In the first place, if they had better things going on in their lives, they wouldn’t have the time to sit around and talk about you. What’s important to me is not others’ opinions of me, but what’s important to me is my opinion of myself. C. JoyBell C.
• The need for approval is based on a single assumption. ‘Don’t trust yourself—check it out with someone else first.’ Wayne Dyer
• Do not give your attention to what others do or fail to do; give it to what you do or fail to do. Buddha
• Rest satisfied with doing well, and leave others to talk of you as they will. Pythagoras
• Our own heart, and not others’opinions of us, forms our true honor. Friedrich von Schiller
• I care not what others think of what I do, but I care very much about what I think of what I do! That is character! Theodore Roosevelt
• What the society thinks is of no interest to me. All that’s important is how I see myself. Robin S. Sharma

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Define yourself from within rather than by external opinion

• As you live your values, your sense of identity, integrity, control, and inner-directedness will infuse you with both exhilaration and peace. You will define yourself from within, rather than by people’s opinions or by comparisons to others. “Wrong” and “right” will have little to do with being found out. Stephen Covey
• Be noble minded! Our own heart, and not other men’s opinions of us, forms our true honor. Friedrich Schiller

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Trust your own opinion

• You must begin to trust yourself. If you do not then you will forever be looking to others to prove your merit to you, and you will never be satisfied. Jane Roberts
• If you’re really spiritual, then you should be totally independent of the good and the bad opinions of the world…you should have faith in yourself. Deepak Chopra
• If you rely exclusively on the advice of others, you may make terrible mistakes. Your heart knows what you need. Other people have other agendas. Brian L. Weiss
• The need for approval is based on a single assumption. ‘Don’t trust yourself—check it out with someone else first.’ Wayne Dyer
• Trust

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Let go of the constant need to please

• When you live a life trying to please others, you end up not living a life at all. You are just living others’ lives under the facade of your life. Celestine Chua
• If you only try to please others, you’re going to resent those people you’re trying to please; the ones who are often closest to you. If you choose a path that you yourself want to take, then you’re going to be much kinder to the people in your life. Sarah McLachlan
• Never let someones thoughts and opinions affect your opinion of yourself. When you please others in hopes of being accepted, you lose your self- worth in the process.
• People who do not need to please are irresistible because they radiate wholeness, a rare delicacy in a world of hungry hearts. Alan Cohen
• If it should ever happen to you to be turned to externals in order to please some person, you must know that you have lost your purpose in life. Epictetus
• In order to please others, we loose our hold on our life’s purpose. Epictetus
• Please all, and you will please none. Aesop
• It is in vain to hope to please all alike. Let a man stand with his face in what direction he will, he must necessarily turn his back on one half of the world. George Dennison Prentice

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Accept it’s impossible to please everyone; in fact that’s the surest way to fail

• I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody. Bill Cosby
• I can’t give you a surefire formula for success, but I can give you a formula for failure: try to please everybody all the time. Herbert Bayard Swope
• You can’t please everybody. Don’t even try. And don’t let it bother you. Tom Morris
• There just isn’t any pleasing some people. The trick is to stop trying. Robert Mitchum
• One fifth of the people are against everything all of the time. Robert F. Kennedy
• If there are 6 billion people on the planet, there should be 6 billion views on religion…politics…marriage…spirituality…on and on and on. While we can likely agree that most of us fall under umbrellas of titles, we are all so individualized that each human being takes a unique approach to, well, everything! That being said, how is it at all possible or probable to please everyone, every time? It’s not. It’s as simple as that. The very best, and frankly all, we can do is be ourselves. Be kind, be spirited, be authentic; offer up the best version of ourselves to the world and to others, and have our own backs. You be the one to approve and accept yourself, every single time. That way, if others don’t, you have the most important person on your side…you. Sara Courter

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Accept it’s impossible to be approved by all

• Praise and blame are all the same. You’ll never be able to please all the people all the time. Even in a landslide victory in which a candidate secures 55% of the vote, he or she is left with 45% of the population that wishes someone else were the winner. Everyone has their own set of ideas with which to evaluate life and our ideas don’t always match those of other people. The sooner we accept the inevitable dilemma of not being able to win the approval of everyone we meet, the easier our lives will become. Richard Carlson
• Let’s get one fact straight right now: You will never, never, never, ever, ever, ever, ever get everyone’s approval all the time. Jesus didn’t do it, nor did Gandhi or Princess Diana. Even very good people could not get everyone to like them. No one ever has and you won’t be the first. You won’t be able to get everyone to like any one thing you do, and you won’t get any one person to like everything you do. So give up your quest for universal admiration right now; it is never- ending, infinitely frustrating, and it sucks. If you are ever going to receive the approval you seek, it is going to have to come from you. Alan Cohen

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Accept it’s impossible to make everyone happy

• Don’t spend your life trying to keep everyone around you happy. Some people don’t want to be happy. Joel Osteen
• If you think, “If I do this or that, they may not be happy.” Well, maybe it’s time for them to not be happy instead of you not being happy. Joel Osteen
• Life is too short to try to keep everyone happy. Joel Osteen

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Let go of the need to seek approval …

• You must let go of wanting approval and you must stop being so sensitive. Karl Moore
• In many ways we were drugged when we were young. We were brought up to need people. For what? For acceptance, approval, appreciation, applause. Anthony de Mello
• Stop being so darn sensitive – and stop wanting approval. Karl Moore
• If I had a prayer, it would be this: “God, spare me from the desire for love, approval, or appreciation.” Amen Byron Katie
• A truly strong person does not need the approval of others any more than a lion needs the approval of sheep. Vernon Howard
• The sooner we accept the inevitable dilemma of not being able to win the approval of everyone we meet, the easier our lives become. Richard Carlson
• The less you care about seeking approval, the more approval you seem to get. Richard Carlson

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… for your need to be approved by others is your own need to be approved by yourself

• The need to be approved by others is your own need to be approved by yourself. Gabrielle Wichowski
• A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval. Mark Twain
• The main reason we seek external approval is because of internal disapproval. Go to the source… Robert Beno
• What do you mean I have to wait for someone’s approval? I’m someone.  I approve.  So I give myself permission to move forward with my full support! Richelle E. Goodrich
• When you are your own best friend, you don’t endlessly seek out relationships, friendships, and validation from the wrong sources because you realize that the only approval and validation you need is your own. Mandy Hale
• The only permission, the only validation, and the only opinion that matters in our quest for greatness is our own. Steve Maraboli
• We can secure other people’s approval, if we do right and try hard; but our own is worth a hundred of it, and no way has been found out of securing that. Mark Twain
• I can spot empty flattery and know exactly where I stand. In the end it’s really only my own approval or disapproval that means anything. Agnetha Faltskog
• The most splendid achievement of all is the constant striving to surpass yourself and to be worthy of your own approval. Denis Waitley

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Fill the void in you with self-worth, not external approval

• The more you surrender to the fear of someone’s disapproval, the more you lose face in your own eyes, and the more desperate you become for someone’s approval. Within you is a void that should have been filled by self- esteem. When you attempt to fill it with the approval of others instead, the void grows deeper and the hunger for acceptance and approval grows stronger.  The only solution is to summon the courage to honor your own judgment, frightening though that may be in the beginning.  Nathaniel Branden
• The better you feel about yourself, the less you feel the need to show off. Robert Hand
• Self-worth cannot be verified by others. You are worthy because you say it is so. If you depend on others for your value it is other- worth. Wayne Dyer
• Self-worth comes from one thing – thinking that you are worthy. Wayne Dyer
• Self-esteem comes from the self, not from acquisitions and approval. Wayne Dyer

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Why depend on others for the way you feel about yourself?

• Why should the way I feel depend on the thoughts in someone else’s head? Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Stop judging yourself through the eyes of other people

• You should banish any thoughts of how you may appear to others. Marcus Aurelius
• It took me a long time not to judge myself through someone else’s eyes. Sally Field
• The way we imagine ourselves to appear to another person is an essential element in our conception of ourselves. In other words, I am not what I think I am, and I am not what you think I am. I am what I think you think I am. Robert Bierstedt

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Stop living your life based on others’ expectations for you

• You can’t base your life on other people’s expectations. Stevie Wonder
• I am not in this world to live up to other people’s expectations, nor should I feel the world must live up to mine.  Fritz Perls
• In the big and small decisions in your life, do you follow your heart? Or are you swept along by the tides of circumstance and the expectations of others? Amanda Harvey
• Today I will realize that I’m powerless over other people’s expectations of me. I’ll think about what I want and consider that how I respond to others’ needs will affect the course of my life. I will own my own power and choose the course that’s right for me. Melody Beattie
• I’m not in this world to live up to your expectations and you’re not in this world to live up to mine. Bruce Lee
• There is no joy involved in following others’ expectations of yourself. Miriam Toews
• He was swimming in a sea of other people’s expectations. Men had drowned in seas like that. Robert Jordon
• Follow your own path

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Let go of the need to explain yourself

• Don’t waste your time with explanations: people only hear what they want to hear. Paulo Coelho

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Follow your own path irrespective of what people say

• It is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else’s life with perfection. The Bhagavad Gita
• It’s easy to get caught up in where the world is going and lose sight of the direction we were headed. Terry A O’Neal
• You must define your own life. Don’t let other people write your script. Oprah Winfrey
• Anthony de Mello
• You can’t base your life on other people’s expectations. Stevie Wonder
• Our wretched species is so made that those who walk on the well-trodden path always throw stones at those who are showing a new road. Voltaire
• I want to sing like birds sing, not worrying who listens or what they think. Rumi
• People will disapprove of you if you’re unhappy, or if you’re happy in The Wrong Way. Mignon McLaughlin

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Learning to love and accept yourself lets you worry far less what others think …

• You either like me or you don’t. It took me twenty-something years to learn how to love myself, I don’t have that kinda time to convince somebody else.  Daniel Franzese
• Loving yourself lets you worry less what people think of you …
• When you acquire enough inner peace and feel really positive about yourself, it’s almost impossible for you to be controlled and manipulated by anybody else. Wayne Dyer
• Get to know your true self. When you are truly comfortable in your own skin, not everyone will like you, but you won’t care about it one bit.  Marc and Angel Chernoff
• When you learn to embrace your self with a sense of appreciation and affection, you begin to glimpse the goodness and light that is in you and gradually you will realize that you are worthy of respect from yourself. When you recognize your limits, but still embrace your life with affection and graciousness, the sense of inner dignity begins to grow. You become freer and less dependent on the affirmation of outer voices and less troubled by the negativity of others.  John O’Donohue
• The more I like me, the less I want to pretend to be other people. Jamie Lee Curtis
• Only when we do not fully like or love ourselves are we bothered when someone else does not like us… Robert Beno
• Self-love,  Self-acceptance

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… and makes you less reliant on external approval

• There is an applause superior to that of the multitudes: one’s own. Elizabeth Elton Smith
• It’s not your job to like me. It’s mine. Byron Katie
• Ultimately, love is self-approval. Sondra Ray
• Because one believes in oneself, one doesn’t try to convince others. Because one is content with oneself, one doesn’t need others’ approval. Because one accepts oneself, the whole world accepts him or her. Lao Tzu

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Recognise that disapproval and criticism is the price you pay for living a full life

• Criticism is something we can avoid easily by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing. Aristotle
• Disapproval is the price you pay for leading a full, healthy life.
• For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism.
• If people are making fun of you then you’re probably doing something right. Amy Lee
• If you are not criticized, you may not be doing much. Donald H. Rumsfeld
• It is impossible to go through life without incurring a good deal of disapproval. It is the way of humanity, the dues you pay for your aliveness. Wayne Dyer
• Nobody kicks a dead dog. Dale Carnegie
• People will disapprove of you if you’re unhappy, or if you’re happy in The Wrong Way. Mignon McLaughlin
• To escape criticism – do nothing, say nothing, be nothing. Elbert Hubbard
• When you show yourself to the world and display your talents, you naturally stir all kinds of resentment, envy, and other manifestations of insecurity… you cannot spend your life worrying about the petty feelings of others. Robert Greene
• You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life. Winston Churchill
• Criticism

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Recognise that the thoughts of others can never harm you; only your own

• How on earth can another’s thought harm you? It is your thought about his thought that harms. Change your thought. Vernon Howard
• Another illusion is that external events have the power to hurt you, that other people have the power to hurt you. They don’t. It’s you who give this power to them. Anthony de Mello
• No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. Eleanor Roosevelt

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Recognise that what people think of you is none of your business

• What other people think of me is none of my business. Wayne Dyer
• Don’t regard what anyone says of you, for this, after all, is no concern of yours. Epictetus
• What other people think of you is not your business. If you start to make that business your business, you wil be offended for the rest of your life.  Deepak Chopra
• What people think of me is none of my business. Terry Cole Whittaker
• The opinion which other people have of you is their problem, not yours. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

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Learn to not give a shit

• One of the greatest journeys in life is overcoming insecurity and learning to truly not give a shit. A. Konrath

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To become immune to criticism, become immune to praise too

• As a solid rock cannot be moved by the wind, the wise are not shaken by praise or blame. Buddha
• Be independent of the good opinion of other people. Abraham Maslow
• Children can’t help crying when their sand castles come crumbling down. My mind is so like them when praise and reputation start to fail. Shantideva
• Court not the critic’s smile nor dread his frown. Sir Walter Scott
• I have already settled it for myself so flattery and criticism go down the same drain and I am quite free. Georgia O’Keeffe
• I pay no attention whatever to anybody’s praise or blame. I simply follow my own feelings. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
• Just as solid rocks are not shaken by the wind, so wise men are not mound by either blame or praise. Dhammapada
• Self-actualised people are independent of the good opinion of others. Wayne Dyer
• The final proof of greatness lies in being able to endure criticism without resentment. Elbert Hubbard
• They have great tranquility of heart who care neither for the praises nor the fault-finding of people. Honoré de Balzac
• Treat praise like criticism: refuse to accept either. Chris Brogan
• You can’t let praise or criticism get to you. It’s a weakness to get caught up in either one. John Wooden
• You’re never as good as everyone tells you when you win, and you’re never as bad as they say when you lose. Lou Holtz and John Heisler
• They have become strong enough to be independent of the good opinion of other people, or even of their affection. The honors, the status, the rewards, the popularity, the prestige, and the love they can bestow must have become less important than self- development and inner growth. Abraham Maslow

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Realise that there’s nothing personal in praise

• If you base your self-worth on how often people compliment and validate you, then you’re allowing others to decide how you feel about yourself. If someone compliments you, it’s no more personal than a direct insult. They’re simply calling it how they see it, and that may or may not be accurate–only you can be the judge of that. If someone compliments you, that doesn’t make you a better person, it makes them a better person because they’re taking the time to be supportive and encouraging. Your value remains unchanged, because it’s something that comes from within.  Levien Neelman

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Be more concerned with your character and integrity than your reputation

• Be more concerned with your character than with your reputation. Your character is what you really are while your reputation is merely what others think you are. Dale Carnegie
• Character is like a tree and reputation its shadow. The shadow is what we think it is and the tree is the real thing. Abraham Lincoln
• Your reputation is in the hands of others. That’s what the reputation is. You can’t control that. The only thing you can control is your character. Wayne Dyer
• If I take care of my character, my reputation will take care of itself. Dwight Lyman Moody
• Many a man’s reputation would not know his character if they met on the street. Elbert Hubbard
• Character is made by what you stand for; reputation by what you fall for. Robert Quillen
• Reputation is what men and women think of us; character is what God and angels know of us. Thomas Paine
• Character is what you know you are, not what others think you have.
• I care not what others think of what I do, but I care very much about what I think of what I do! That is character! Theodore Roosevelt
• Outside show is a poor substitute for inner worth. Aesop
• The important thing isn’t what other people think you are; it’s who you are. Shannon L. Alder
• Until you’ve lost your reputation, you never realize what a burden it was. Margaret Mitchell
• As a solid rock cannot be moved by the wind, the wise are not shaken by praise or blame. Buddha
• My security does not come from the way people treat me or by comparing myself to others. It comes from my basic integrity. Stephen Covey
• What we really are matters more than what other people think of us. Jawaharlal Nehru
• Integrity,  Reputation,  Character

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Be more concerned with your purpose, growth and goals than what people think

• We must do our work for its own sake, not for fortune or applause. Steven Pressfield
• If you are clean inside, having no wounds of inferiority, then who cares what people expect of you? You have never fulfilled anybody’s expectations. You have been simply living your life according to your own insight, intuition, intelligence. Osho
• He does not mind failing to get recognition; he is too busy doing the things that entitle him to recognition. Confucius
• They have become strong enough to be independent of the good opinion of other people, or even of their affection. The honors, the status, the rewards, the popularity, the prestige, and the love they can bestow must have become less important than self- development and inner growth. Abraham Maslow
• Successful people pay more attention to their visions and goals than to history and the opinions of others. Alan Cohen
• Pursue your goal. Opinions be damned. Stacy Verdick Case
• Purpose,  Growth,  Goal setting

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Be more concerned with liking others than in getting them to like you

• The Master said, (the good man) does not grieve that other people do not recognize his merits. His only anxiety is lest he should fail to recognize theirs. Confucius
• Getting people to like you is merely the other side of liking them. Norman Vincent Peale
• Remember, it’s not your job to get people to like you, it’s your job to like people. Jackson Brown, Jr.

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Be more concerned with your spiritual growth and knowing your real Self than what people think

• When we are in touch with our universal Self, We relinquish the need for approval and control. This means that our actions are independent of the opinions of others and detached from expectations. We are motivated by our own powerful instincts and their evolutionary outcome, not because we have any expectations for payback. Deepak Chopra

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• When I walk into a room, I know that everyone in it loves me. I just don’t expect them to realize it yet. Byron Katie
• There is no limit to the good a man can do if he doesn’t care who gets the credit. Proverb
• How would your life be different if…You stopped allowing other people to dilute or poison your day with their words or opinions? Let today be the day…You stand strong in the truth of your beauty and journey through your day without attachment to the validation of others. Steve Maraboli
• If someone isn’t what others want them to be, the others become angry. Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own. Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
• Most people think everybody feels about them much more violently than they actually do; they think other people’s opinions of them swing through great arcs of approval or disapproval. F. Scott Fitzgerald
• I do not care so much what I am to others as I care what I am to myself. Michel de Montaigne
• Know that no one is capable of making you upset without your consent. Wayne Dyer

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