How to Stop Living for Approval and Start Leading Yourself

One of the most freeing things I ever realised is that people will always have opinions.

No matter what you do. No matter how carefully you explain yourself. No matter how much you try to be understood or accepted. Someone will always judge it through their own lens, their own insecurities, their own limitations. And there is absolutely nothing you can do about it.

I spent years trying. Years performing versions of myself that I thought other people would find acceptable. The successful entrepreneur. The confident speaker. The person who had it all together. And the performance was exhausting. Because none of it was real.

The Performance That Almost Killed Me

When I was running Clear Property Investment, I was so consumed by what people thought of me that I forgot to check in with who I actually was. I was making decisions based on how they would look, not on whether they were right. I was saying yes to things I should have said no to because I was afraid of what people would think if I said no.

And all of that pressure, all of that performance, all of that constant need for approval, it contributed directly to the breakdown that nearly ended me.

Because you cannot sustain a life built on someone else's expectations. Eventually the performance cracks. And when it does, the people whose approval you were chasing will not be there to help you pick up the pieces. Trust me on that one.

The Shift

After the breakdown, something changed in me. Not overnight. Not dramatically. But gradually, I stopped caring about approval in the way I used to.

Not in an arrogant way. Not in a "I don't care what anyone thinks" way, because honestly, anyone who says that usually cares the most. But in a quieter, more honest way. I started making decisions based on what I actually believed, not on what I thought people wanted to hear.

I started saying what I actually thought in meetings instead of what sounded diplomatic. I started walking away from relationships that required me to shrink myself in order to be accepted. I started building BlockHaus the way I wanted to build it, not the way I thought the market expected.

And something interesting happened. The people who were meant to be in my life stayed. The people who needed a performance left. And for the first time in years, I felt like I was actually living my life instead of curating it.

The Fear That Keeps You Small

The fear of what people might think is the single most common reason I see talented people stay stuck. They do not lack ability. They do not lack ideas. They do not lack ambition. They lack the willingness to be judged.

So they play it safe. They post what everyone else posts. They say what everyone else says. They build lives that look right from the outside but feel empty from the inside. And every night they lie awake knowing that the version of themselves the world sees is not the version that is actually there.

That is not living. That is performing. And performing gets exhausting eventually.

What Authenticity Actually Gives You

Authenticity creates a different kind of peace. Not the kind that comes from everyone liking you. The kind that comes from knowing your life actually belongs to you.

Not to public opinion. Not to social pressure. Not to everyone watching from the sidelines with their commentary and their judgments and their unsolicited advice.

My father used to say, if you live your life through the eyes of others you will never see clearly through your own. I wrote that down when I was seventeen and I did not understand it until I was forty.

So here is my question to you. How much of your life is shaped by what you truly want? And how much is shaped by fear of what people might think?

Because the moment you stop living for approval is the moment your life begins to feel like it actually belongs to you. And that is worth more than any standing ovation.

To your success.

Tahar
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Read the full story of my journey in my book, Fail Your Way to Success.