Last time, I hosted a funeral for my Critical Inner Parent and asked the question: if I’m not letting that inner tyrant dictate the terms anymore, then whose terms am I living by? The answer, it turns out, depends on clarifying my goals. Because if I don’t know what I’m aiming for, approval-seeking patterns are more than happy to fill in the blanks.
Say hello to the Approval Seeking Spectrum, a thing I totally made up! But it helps my brain make sense of my life, so I want to share it with you.
Getting clear on my goals involves taking out the trash, the “trash” being approval-seeking patterns dressed up as “productivity.”
Now, as we learn the difference between actions that genuinely move us toward our goals versus approval-hungry wheel-spinning, if you’re anything like me, it’s tempting to think, “Ah ha! I shall do this perfectly! Henceforth, good sir, I will act solely in noble pursuit of my goals, unsullied by the baser longings of approval-seeking mortals.”
Uh huh. This is where the Approval Seeking Spectrum (otherwise known as ASS 😏) comes in.
Our psyche doesn’t deal in pure anything. It’s impossible—and unnecessary—to categorize an action as “purely approval-seeking” or “purely goal-oriented.”
Instead, think of it as a colorful spectrum of ASS. Every action leans more toward one end or the other. You don’t have to know the precise gauge mark; you simply need a sense of the needle’s direction.
And how do you do that?
By feeling. Each of us has our own suite of sensations and emotions that accompany approval seeking. For me, there’s a tightness in my stomach and a pressure in my chest. But even easier to spot is this: all the fun leaves the room. Instead of sparkling with ideas, my brain is spinning through all the things I “have” to do and how long that shit is going to take.
I also have the urge to check how roughly 2 billion other people are doing it, to ensure I get it “right” (and also to avoid doing the thing I no longer want to do because, again, all fun has left the building).
My old writers group is a great example. I’ve belonged to a few over the years, so what follows is a mash-up of those experiences. (And to be clear, I have nothing against writers groups and may well join one again in the future!)
What I noticed was how easy it was for all of us to start writing, not for ourselves, but for each other. Maybe not consciously, but after feedback, people would often try to fold in every single suggestion until they had a lumbering Franken-book on their hands.
In the process, they’d lose sight of what they were trying to write in the first place.
Side note: This highlights how tricky it is to give good feedback. A valuable critique isn’t about what you think the writer should do; it’s about understanding what they are trying to do and gauging whether they’ve accomplished it. That’s a much harder, and rarer, skill—but I digress!
Now, there’s nothing wrong with getting feedback on your writing and making changes accordingly. I definitely do this! But I’ve realized there’s a difference between shaping my work to better serve my goals and endlessly reshaping it in the hopes that no one, ever, will be able to find fault with it.
At some point during the writers group experience, I noticed that my ASS meter was swinging wildly into the red zone (i.e., I was feeling constricted and rushed, and all fun had fled). This was my invitation to pause and get clear on my goals.
What was I actually trying to accomplish with my writing?
A big piece is creative satisfaction. This is super duper important to me, and I’ve become rather ruthless about anything that sucks the joy out of writing. This isn’t to say I don’t do hard or uncomfortable things; quite the contrary. But if something consistently feels soul sucking, it’s gotta go.
Another goal is earning a full-time living as an author. My health challenges have opened my eyes to how unsustainable it is, long-term, to continue running three businesses. Eventually, I want to focus entirely on my writing business.
Let’s take this last goal as our case study, because I want to show you how very, very silly approval-seeking can get.
I could have forced myself to stay in writers groups that weren’t a good fit, and for a while I did precisely that, because I was afraid not being in a writers group would somehow doom me as a writer (I’d be doing it “wrong”).
A (Slightly Ridiculous) Case Study
Let’s look at the approval-seeking goal of “writing a book that everyone in my writers group loves” and see whether it helps with my actual goal of “earning a full-time living as a writer.”
Let’s say I want to earn $65k a year from my writing. If there are three people in my writers group, unless each of them are able to purchase 2,170 copies of my book every single year (and that’s print, not ebook, baby!), their approval will never, ever, ever get me to that goal.
At the risk of being rude, it doesn’t effing matter what they think of the book. It will never get me to my goal.
You might argue, But, Melissa, they might be a representative sample of a wider audience!
It’s possible. But guess what? No matter how wide the audience, there isn’t a single book in the history of words that everyone likes. Let’s take a gander at reviews for Pride and Prejudice:
Right. 🤔
Of course, this is true of contemporary books as well. I picked this one because I don’t think Ms. Austen will be terribly miffed by the one-stars at this point.
And it’s not just books in their entirety that are subject to a rollercoaster of opinions. The exact same element of the same book—the way a character dirty talks in the boudoir, for instance—will leave some readers panting for more, while others are flinging the book across the room in disgust.
In writing, as in life, we truly can’t please everyone.
I have inner parts that really don’t believe this, no matter how many times they hear it. (Perhaps you do, too?)
These parts are convinced I simply haven’t found the One Right Way yet—and off they go to continue the search! 🔎
Meanwhile, I think I’ll sit down and get back to writing.
Clarifying your goals and learning to spot when the ASS gauge is swinging into the red zone will help you press pause on approval-seeking actions.
Am I working until 5pm because I need that time to finish my projects (and my body-mind-spirit is okay with this), or have I inherited a rule that says I have to overwork to earn approval and love?
The latter will never pay my bills. Trust me—if that shit worked, I’d be Scrooge McDucking into a room full of gold every morning.
The point isn’t to stop caring about approval altogether. For 99.9% of humans, that’s simply unrealistic. We care about what people think. The point is to notice where your energy is going, and to conserve more of it for what actually moves you forward—or more of what makes you feel good!
Approval will likely be part of the mix, but we don’t want it running the show, so use that ASS meter to check in and gently recalibrate.
Next time, we’ll look at what happened when I really leaned into this reorientation—redefining what it means to “do a good job” from the inside out.
See you then.
