Many people allow their need for other people’s approval to control their lives. They spend their lives worrying about what others think of them. – Rick Warren

Don’t worry about it.  I’m laughing to myself even as I type.  Yesterday, I was really pro-active and picked out the quotes for the week and set them up to be tweeted.  Life was good, and I was so proud of myself.  This morning, I woke up and there was no email in my inbox with the quotes.  I freaked, panicked and then tried to figure out what happened.  Then I realized that I forgot to set up the email to send.  I immediately began to worry about what people would think.  I felt like such an idiot for letting people down.  Then I went to twitter and read the first quote, and immediately started to feel better.

I really don’t need to worry about what other people think for a variety of reasons.  The first being, hey, I made a mistake and forgot to do something.  The second and most important thing is, the only approval I really need is my own.  We don’t need to live our lives being validated by other people.  If we can get over the need to have external validation we’d all be a lot happier.  When you do something because you want the approval of others, you are giving them a tremendous amount of control and power over you.  Who wants that?  Your motivation and validation should be internal. It needs to come from you and not anybody else.

Why spend your life worrying about what other people think of you?  In the end, does it really matter?  Have you ever seen a gravestone that said “people thought well of him?”  Probably not.  Don’t get me wrong, I spend far more time than I should worrying about what other people are thinking about me.  Case in point, the email I forgot to send.  I’m working on not being that way, and I hope you will too.  It’s a process, and there will be days when I stress about it, and there will be days when I don’t.  I’m not saying you should flout all social conventions or anything like that, but don’t live your life kowtowing to what everybody else wants.  Seriously, just don’t worry about it.