Living Without Approval

Adler's Lessons for Everyday Relationships

Introduction

Think about the last time you rewrote a message several times before sending it. Or the last time you said yes when you wanted to say no. Or the last time you lay awake wondering whether someone was annoyed with you, whether your joke had fallen flat, whether people at work really thought you were good enough. If any of these feel familiar, you are not alone. Much of our worry and unhappiness comes not from big events, but from small moments with other people.

This book looks at those everyday relationships through the ideas of Alfred Adler, a doctor who lived from 1870 to 1937. Adler began his career treating patients' bodies and slowly became more and more interested in their minds, and especially in the way people live together. He developed an approach that he called individual psychology. By "individual" he did not mean a person alone. He meant a whole person who cannot be divided into separate parts, and who can only be understood in the setting of the people around them.

Adler's central idea was simple and, in his time, unusual. He believed that human beings are deeply social, that we all need to feel that we belong, and that much of our behaviour can be understood as an attempt to find a place among others. When we feel small or left out, we try to make ourselves feel bigger, sometimes in helpful ways and sometimes in ways that cause trouble. When we feel that we belong and that we can contribute, we become calmer, braver and kinder.

One of the most common ways people try to find their place is by seeking approval: trying to be liked, praised and accepted by everyone. This is very natural. But it can become a trap. A person who lives only for approval hands their happiness to other people and never feels free. Adler's ideas, and the ideas of teachers who followed him, offer another way: a way of living with people, caring about them and contributing to them, without needing their constant approval to feel worthwhile.

How to Use This Book

There are fifteen chapters. Each begins with an everyday scene: a person, a relationship and a difficulty. Then it explains one of Adler's ideas in plain language. After that, you will meet several people of different ages and in different situations who try to use the idea in their own lives. Each chapter then offers practical steps, a short section on a common misunderstanding, a short exercise and a summary.

The early chapters lay the foundations: why approval matters so much to us, how the meaning we give to our past shapes us and why everyone feels small sometimes. The middle chapters look at specific situations: drawing lines in relationships, saying no, praise, equality, friendship, love, family and conflict. The final chapters turn to courage, contribution and how to live well with people without living for their approval. You can read in order, or go straight to the chapter that speaks to you today.

When this book describes Adler's ideas, I give them in my own plain words, not in quotation, and I name the book in which he wrote about them when that is helpful. Some ideas in this book come not from Adler himself but from later teachers who worked in his tradition. When that is the case, the book says so.

You may find it helpful to keep a notebook nearby. Many of the exercises ask you to write a few lines. Writing slows the mind down and helps us see our patterns more clearly. You do not need to show your notes to anyone.

A Note on Care

If you are struggling with very low mood, constant fear or feelings that make daily life very hard, please talk to a doctor or another qualified professional.

Some relationships are not just difficult but harmful. If someone is hurting you, threatening you or controlling your life, the ideas in this book are not a reason to stay or to try harder. Please reach out to people and services that can help you be safe. If you ever feel that you might hurt yourself, or if you are in danger, contact a helpline or a medical facility right away, and in immediate danger call your local emergency number.

With that said, let us begin with a feeling almost everyone knows: the wish to be liked.

Chapter 1: The Wish to Be Liked

Ten Versions of One Message

Mia is twenty-seven and works as an assistant in a physiotherapy clinic. On Thursday evening, she sits on her sofa with her phone in her hand, trying to write a message to a group of friends. The message is simple. She wants to suggest that they meet for dinner next Saturday, because it has been a long time since they last saw each other. She has been trying to write it for forty minutes.

Her first version sounded too eager, she thought, as if she had nothing else to do. Her second sounded too casual, as if she did not care whether they came. The third had too many exclamation marks. The fourth had none and seemed cold. She deleted a joke from the fifth, in case nobody laughed. She added an apology to the sixth, in case anyone felt pressured. By the tenth version, the message said almost nothing, and she was exhausted.

When she finally pressed send, she put the phone face down on the table and tried to watch television. Every few minutes she turned the phone over. One friend replied with a heart. Another said, "Maybe, will check." The others said nothing. By eleven o'clock, Mia had decided that her friends were tired of her, that she should not have suggested anything and that she would not organize a meeting again. She went to bed feeling foolish and alone.

On Friday morning, three more replies had arrived. Two friends said yes, and one suggested a different restaurant. The dinner happened, and it was a warm, happy evening. But Mia noticed something about herself that worried her more than any unanswered message. She was spending enormous amounts of energy trying to be liked. She shaped her words, her plans, her clothes and even her opinions around what she guessed others would approve of. And the more she did it, the more anxious she became.

Mia's experience is very common. Most of us want to be liked, and many of us spend a great deal of time trying to make sure that we are. This chapter introduces the ideas of Alfred Adler, who thought carefully about why human beings care so much about their place among others, and who offered a different way of finding that place.

A Doctor Who Studied Belonging

Alfred Adler was born in 1870, the second of several children in a family of modest means. As a small child, he was often ill. He had a condition that made his bones weak, so he could not run and play as easily as his older brother, whom he admired and envied. When he was about five years old, he became so seriously ill with a lung infection that a doctor told his father he would not survive. He did survive, and he later said that this experience was one of the reasons he decided to become a doctor himself.

Adler trained in medicine and worked first as an eye doctor and then as a general doctor. Many of his patients were working people, including tailors and circus performers, and he became interested in how their work, their bodies and their circumstances affected their lives. In 1902, he was invited to join a small discussion group led by Sigmund Freud, who was then developing his theories of the mind. Adler took part for several years, but he came to disagree deeply with Freud on important points, and in 1911 he left the group and began to develop his own approach.

Adler called his approach individual psychology. The name can be confusing in English, because it sounds as though it is only about one person. Adler meant the opposite. The word he used carried the sense of something that cannot be divided. He wanted to understand the whole person: body and mind, thoughts and feelings, past and future, all working together toward goals. And he believed that the whole person could only be understood in their social setting, among the people they lived with.

As an army doctor during the First World War, Adler saw how much suffering came from people being cut off from one another. In the years after the war, he helped set up guidance centres for children, linked with schools, where parents and teachers could come for advice. He lectured widely and wrote books for ordinary readers, not only for specialists. In the 1930s he moved abroad, and he died in 1937 while on a lecture tour. His ideas went on to influence many later approaches to counselling, teaching and raising children.

Adler's most important idea, the one that runs through all his work, is that human beings are social at their core. We are born completely dependent on others. We grow up in families and communities. Almost everything we value, from language to love, comes to us through other people. So it is natural that our deepest wish is to belong: to have a place among others where we are accepted and where we matter.

Approval and Belonging Are Not the Same

If our deepest wish is to belong, it is easy to see why approval feels so important. Approval seems like proof that we belong. When people like us, praise us and agree with us, we feel safe. When they frown, criticize us or do not reply to our messages, we feel the ground move under our feet.

But Adler's ideas suggest that approval and belonging are not the same thing. Approval is something other people give or withhold, moment by moment, according to their own moods, tastes and interests. It is always uncertain. Even if someone approves of us today, they may not tomorrow. If our sense of belonging depends entirely on approval, we will never feel secure, because we are always waiting for the next judgment.

Belonging, in Adler's view, comes from something steadier. It comes from our own feeling of being part of the human community and from our own contribution to it. Adler called this feeling social interest, using a word in his own language that is often translated as community feeling. It means a sense of connection with other people and a real interest in their well-being, not only in what they think of us. Adler believed that social interest was the best measure of a person's psychological health. People with strong social interest, he thought, tend to be braver, calmer and more able to face life's difficulties.

In his book What Life Should Mean to You, Adler argued that the people who find life hardest are often those who are most interested in themselves and least interested in others. He did not mean this as a moral judgment. He meant that a person who is always asking "How do I look? What do they think of me?" is living with constant tension, because their attention is fixed on a judgment they cannot control. A person who is asking "How can I be useful here? What do these people need?" is facing outward, toward something they can actually do.

This is the first and perhaps the most important shift this book will explore: from seeking approval to seeking contribution. It does not mean that we stop caring about others. In fact, it means caring about them more, and caring about their opinion of us less. It is a shift from "Do they like me?" to "Am I doing something good with and for them?"

Kenji and the Jokes He Did Not Find Funny

Kenji is thirty-one and recently joined a new team at a company that makes kitchen equipment. He is skilled at his job, but he is anxious about fitting in. His new colleagues have known each other for years. They share jokes, nicknames and stories from past projects. In the first few weeks, Kenji laughed at every joke, even when he did not understand them or did not find them funny. He agreed with everyone in meetings. He stayed late whenever someone else did.

By the end of the first month, Kenji was tired in a way that his work alone did not explain. He realized that he was performing all day long, watching faces for signs of approval and adjusting himself to match. Yet he did not feel that he belonged. He felt like a visitor trying very hard to be invited to stay.

Kenji's older sister, who had read some of Adler's ideas, asked him a question one weekend. "What do you actually bring to that team?" Kenji thought about it. He was very good at solving technical problems that others found confusing. He was patient with people who were learning. He noticed small details that others missed. "Then bring that," his sister said. "Stop trying to be liked and start being useful. People belong where they contribute."

The following week, Kenji stopped laughing at jokes he did not find funny. He did not become cold. He simply smiled when he wanted to and stayed quiet when he did not. In a meeting, he disagreed politely with a plan and explained a technical problem he had noticed. To his surprise, his manager thanked him. He offered to help a younger colleague who was struggling with a new system. Slowly, his place in the team changed. People started coming to him with questions. He was invited to lunch.

Kenji says that the strangest part was how much more relaxed he felt. "I stopped trying to win their approval," he says, "and I started to feel that I belonged. It was the opposite of what I expected." Adler would not have been surprised. Kenji had found his place not by pleasing people, but by contributing to them.

It is worth noticing that some of Kenji's colleagues did not warm to him at once, even after he changed. One senior colleague seemed to find his disagreement in the meeting irritating. In the past, this would have sent Kenji back to laughing at every joke. Now, he reminded himself that he could not decide how every person felt about him. He could only decide whether he was honest, respectful and helpful. Over time, even the senior colleague began to ask for his opinion. But Kenji had stopped needing that to feel that he belonged.

Abebe in the Community Garden

Abebe is sixty-eight and retired after a long career as an accountant in a large organization. For most of his working life, his sense of worth came from his position. People called him by his title. Younger staff asked for his approval. When he retired, all of that disappeared overnight. For several months, he felt invisible. He found himself telling strangers about his former job, hoping they would be impressed.

His daughter suggested that he join a community garden near his home, where neighbours grow vegetables together on shared land. Abebe went reluctantly. At first, he tried to find a position of authority. He offered to manage the garden's accounts and to organize the work schedule. The other gardeners were polite but uninterested. They did not need a manager. They needed someone to help carry water and pull weeds.

It took Abebe some time to accept this. But one morning, he found himself kneeling beside a young mother, helping her plant beans, while her small son handed him seeds one at a time. Nobody was praising him. Nobody knew his former title. Yet he felt something he had not felt for a long time: the simple satisfaction of being useful, side by side with others.

Over the following year, Abebe became one of the garden's most regular helpers. He taught some of the children how to measure rows for planting, using skills from his working life in a new way. He shared his harvest with neighbours. He stopped telling strangers about his former job. "I used to need people to look up to me," he says. "Now I just need them to be beside me."

Abebe's story shows the difference between approval and belonging very clearly. In his working life, he had approval, but much of it was attached to his position, not to him. When the position disappeared, so did the approval. In the garden, he found belonging through contribution, and that belonging did not depend on any title. It depended only on his willingness to take part.

Farah and the Group Chat

Farah is fifteen. Like many people her age, she spends a good part of each day in a group chat with friends from school. The chat is full of jokes, pictures and plans. It is also, for Farah, a constant source of worry. She checks how many reactions her messages receive and compares them with those of her friends. If she posts something and nobody responds for a while, she feels a sinking feeling in her stomach.

Last month, Farah posted a drawing she had made. She was proud of it. Two friends sent kind messages. The rest of the group moved on to another topic. Farah deleted the drawing within an hour and did not draw anything for two weeks. She felt that the silence meant her friends thought the drawing was bad, or that she was showing off.

Farah's aunt, a teacher, talked with her about it one evening. She did not tell Farah to stop using the chat or to stop caring. Instead, she asked her about her friends. Who in the group seemed sad lately? Who had been left out of something? Who had done something good that nobody had noticed? Farah realized that she had been so busy watching for reactions to her own messages that she had hardly noticed what was happening to the others.

Over the next few weeks, Farah tried a small change. When she opened the chat, she first looked for something she could respond to warmly: a friend's news, a friend's worry, a friend's joke. She sent kind words to a girl who had been quiet. She asked a boy how his grandmother's operation had gone. She still posted her own things, and she still noticed reactions. But her attention had shifted outward, and the chat began to feel less like a test and more like a place where she belonged.

Young people today live with a kind of constant, visible approval that earlier generations never faced. Every message can be counted and compared. This makes Adler's distinction between approval and belonging especially important. Farah cannot control how many people react to her drawing. But she can control whether she is a warm, attentive and useful member of her group. That part is hers, and it is the part that builds real friendship.

Practical Steps: From Approval to Belonging

The first step is to notice when you are seeking approval. The signs are often small: rewriting a message many times, checking for replies, agreeing with something you do not believe, laughing when you do not find something funny, feeling tense when someone's face is hard to read. When you notice one of these signs, simply name it to yourself: "I am looking for approval right now." Noticing is the beginning of choice.

It can help to notice where in your body approval-seeking shows itself. For some people, it is a tightness in the chest while waiting for a reply. For others, it is a forced smile that makes the face ache, or shoulders that rise when a certain person enters the room. These physical signals often arrive before we have any clear thought. Learning to recognize them gives you an early warning, a moment in which you can choose a different response.

The second step is to ask a different question. Instead of "What will they think of me?", ask "What can I contribute here?" In a meeting, it might be an honest idea or a careful question. With friends, it might be warmth, attention or practical help. In a family, it might be patience or a task done without being asked. This question moves your attention from something you cannot control, their judgment, to something you can, your own action.

The third step is to find one place where you can contribute without being noticed. Abebe found it in the garden. Farah found it in kind replies to friends. It might be helping a neighbour, tidying a shared space, listening to a colleague or volunteering for a small task. Contributions that are not seen or praised are good practice, because they teach us that our worth does not depend on applause.

The fourth step is to tolerate uncertainty about what others think. You will never know for sure what is in someone else's mind. Instead of trying to find out, practise letting the question rest. You might say to yourself, "I do not know what they think, and that is all right. I know what I did, and I am content with it."

The fifth step is to be honest in small ways. Kenji stopped laughing at jokes he did not find funny. You might start by giving one honest opinion, kindly expressed, in a situation where you would normally just agree. Small honesty builds the courage for larger honesty, and it also lets people meet the real you, which is the only person who can truly belong.

The sixth step is to look for the people who already accept you as you are. Most of us have at least one or two people with whom we do not need to perform: an old friend, a grandparent, a colleague we trust. Spend a little more time with them, and notice how it feels to be with someone without seeking their approval. That feeling is a glimpse of belonging, and it can remind you what you are looking for in other relationships too.

Living Without Approval Is Not Living Without People

The title of this book could be misunderstood. "Living without approval" might sound like a recommendation to stop caring what anyone thinks, to say whatever we like and to ignore the feelings of others. That is not what Adler taught, and it is not what this book means.

Adler's whole psychology is built on connection. He believed that a person who does not care about others is not free, but lost. Rudeness, selfishness and indifference are not signs of independence. They are signs that a person has withdrawn from the community, often because they feel discouraged or afraid. Adler would have seen such behaviour as a problem to be understood and helped, not as a goal.

What this book means by living without approval is something more balanced. It means caring deeply about people, while not making our sense of worth depend on their constant approval. It means being willing to be honest, even when honesty might not be applauded. It means doing good things because they are good, not because someone is watching. And it means accepting that some people will not like us, however kind we are, because their likes and dislikes are their own.

In short, living without approval is a way of living with people more fully, not less. When we stop performing for approval, we have more energy for real connection. We can listen better, help more freely and be more honest. And the people who come to value us then value the real person, not the performance.

There is also a practical point here. People who try to please everyone often end up pleasing nobody, because different people want different things. A person who agrees with everyone soon finds that their words carry little weight. A person who is honest and kind, even when they disagree, is usually trusted more. In this sense, letting go of the need for approval often makes our relationships stronger, not weaker.

A Short Exercise: The Approval Diary

This exercise helps you see how much of your daily energy goes into seeking approval, and where it might go instead. It takes a few minutes each day for one week.

Take a small notebook and divide each page into three columns. In the first column, write down moments during the day when you noticed yourself seeking approval. Keep it brief. "Rewrote my email to the manager four times." "Agreed with my aunt about something I disagree with." "Checked my phone for replies every few minutes." Try to catch at least two or three moments each day.

In the second column, beside each moment, write what it cost you. Time? Energy? Honesty? Peace of mind? Be specific. "Twenty minutes and a lot of tension." "I felt a little false afterwards." "I could not concentrate on my book."

In the third column, write what you could have done instead, focusing on contribution or honesty rather than approval. "Sent a clear email once and moved on to helping my colleague." "Said gently that I see it differently." "Put the phone away and asked my partner about their day."

At the end of the week, read the whole diary. Notice where approval-seeking appears most often: at work, with family, with friends, online. Notice what it costs you over a week. Then choose one situation where you will try the third column for real during the following week. Many people find that just seeing the cost written down makes approval-seeking less attractive. Mia did this exercise and found that her messages to friends were the biggest source of worry. Her third column said: "Write it once, kindly, and send it." She now has a rule: no more than two versions of any message.

Chapter Summary

Alfred Adler, a doctor who lived from 1870 to 1937, founded individual psychology, an approach that sees each person as a whole who can only be understood among other people. He believed that human beings are deeply social and that our deepest wish is to belong. Because approval seems like proof of belonging, we often spend great energy seeking it. But approval is uncertain and controlled by others, while belonging grows from social interest: our own feeling of connection with others and our contribution to them.

Mia rewriting her message, Kenji laughing at jokes he did not find funny, Abebe missing his old title and Farah counting reactions in a group chat all found that shifting from "What will they think of me?" to "What can I contribute here?" made them calmer and helped them belong more truly. Living without approval does not mean living without people. It means living with them more honestly and more generously.

In the next chapter, we will look at another of Adler's key ideas: that our past does not decide who we are, but the meaning we give to it does.