The dependence on other people's opinions is not just a weakness of character or a side effect of low self-esteem. It is a Trojan horse embedded deep in the mind of a civilized person since early childhood. We are taught to seek external validation long before we even learn to say the word “I.” Do it this way then you’ll be praised. Do it differently and you’ll be left without love, without friends, without likes, without the approving nod from a teacher, without the pat on the back from a boss, without your mother’s smile, without society’s silent permission to exist. Do what’s expected or you’ll get nothing: no attention, no recognition, no seat at the table.
These embedded beliefs are not wisdom, not experience, and certainly not care. They are a virus. Silent and invisible, but persistent, passed down from generation to generation along with the warm porridge, the red marks in the school diary, and phrases like “is that how you think you should behave?” Parents don’t pass it on out of cruelty, they simply replicate the pattern because their own parents once embedded the same monstrous programming in them, all under the comforting mask of love, protection, and “good upbringing.”
We dress to be approved. We write to be praised. We speak not what we truly feel, but what is least likely to be rejected. Even our suffering today follows a schedule - a neatly formatted display of vulnerability designed to be understood, supported, and rewarded with a heart under a post. The essence is no longer who you are, it’s how you appear through the eyes of others.
According to several large international studies, between 70% and 80% of people who go to the gym regularly don’t do it for health. Not for stamina, not for longevity, not even for basic well-being. They do it for validation, for a body that others will approve of, for a shape that will be admired. It applies to both men and women. It’s almost everyone. Nearly eight out of ten people don’t build muscle. They collect likes. And that’s not just sad. It’s an intellectual and psychological disaster.
Look at fitness advertising. There’s barely any health in it. There’s only social hierarchy and you’re allowed in only if you fit the mold. You’re attractive then you get attention, people talk to you, you’re seen. The beautiful woman chooses the man with the superhero body. And the man, in turn, won’t choose a woman whose body doesn’t align with the engineered perfection of a polished coconut. This isn’t about love. It’s about gaining access to the game.
The core of this game is brutally simple: do as I do. You’re cool because you follow the rules. You belong. You’re integrated. You are one of us. If not - you’re a loser, a reject, a glitch in the system. The game demands that you constantly prove your alignment - to demonstrate, again and again, that you understand the code, that you’re still “in,” that you haven’t fallen out. You start playing this game in childhood and then spend years, sometimes entire decades, reaffirming your loyalty in every word, every post, every look, every gesture.
Here I am - wearing the right clothes. Here’s my car - from the right showroom. Here’s my stack of money, my watch, my curated vocabulary, my strategic goals, my Instagram captions. I think like you. I speak like you. I’m successful and that makes me valid. My food looks like yours, look. Me. Me. Me. Approve of me. I need it. It matters. Without your approval, I am no one. Each like is a medal for loyalty. Each dislike is a sentence for betrayal.
Everything around us is coded. Dress codes. Speech codes. Behavioral, political, social codes. All of them require external confirmation. “You’re one of us” - here’s your like. “You fit in” - here’s our |”wow”. You’ve complied - now you can sleep in peace.
This is why the need for approval has nothing to do with personal growth. It’s a desperate, nearly instinctive attempt to patch inner emptiness with someone else’s words. Because personal substance either doesn’t exist or it’s buried so deep it looks like a shivering kitten in a dark corner, one that’s been smacked on the nose too many times for every honest attempt to step out.
Social media has become the perfect environment for this addiction - a source of instant, high-dosage validation that demands nothing but conformity. It feeds the dependency. It rewards the performance. It allows you to “be” but only in the right format, only inside the rules, only within the lines.
And there’s only one way out of this pit. It seems painfully simple - almost childish in its clarity but terrifying in practice: you must stop playing their game and start your own. Set your own rules. Build your own laws. Let yourself be yourself. Not to prove a point, not to rebel, not to shock, but simply to exist without needing to perform loyalty to the system.
Create your own principles with no apologies, no need for validation, no inner reflex whispering, “how will this look?” Move forward with complete, ice-cold indifference to what others might think. And that is exactly why this path feels so difficult, so uncomfortable, so dangerous to your public image. Because to live by your own code, you have to build a spine. Not just any spine, but your own.
A spine that doesn’t collapse under criticism. That doesn’t inflate under praise. That holds its form not for the world but for you. A spine composed of your own experiences, your failures, your observations, your private truths, and the silent, often painful conversations you’ve had with yourself.
This is who I am. These are my rules. I live by them.
Not to be liked. But to never betray myself.
“We buy things we don’t need with money we don’t have to impress people we don’t even like.”
— Chuck Palahniuk
If you’ve spent your whole life trying to please others, don’t be surprised when one day you realize you no longer like yourself.
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