Watching the most recent Oscars ceremony was a healthy reminder of the most fundamental instinct in human nature – the desire to please.
You want everyone to like you.
Admitting that is a big step towards authenticity. Because it’s true.
It is also true that everyone will not like you. Not even such masters of public relations as Bill Clinton and Barack Obama can make everyone like them. Some people have their own issues – they might dislike you simply for being liked by so many other people.
Why do you want to be liked so much? It relates back to the evolutionary necessity to please your parents. A young animal must please his parents in order to survive. Often, in the wild, where food and care can be in short supply, only the young animal who pleases survives to adulthood.
You crave delighting others because it regresses you into a happy child, secure in having pleased his parents and thus surviving and flourishing.
Even as an adult, you have a place in the back of your mind where everything you do is still directed at pleasing your parents. That promotion at work, the book you published, the shiny diploma on your wall – there’s some part of you that’s hoping mom and dad will notice, just like those folks up on the stage at the Oscars, thanking their mom and dad. And you’re watching those people because you enjoy identifying with them – pretending to be them for a few moments of rapturous pleasure in receiving approval.
Some part of you also wants to experience that cliched but endlessly replayed scene from every “feel-good” movie ever made. It’s the scene where, after a lifetime of commitment and hard work, the unsung hero is finally recognized by…everyone. Think “Mr. Holland’s Opus” or any of thousands of other cheesy Hollywood films. Finally, after quietly doing your part to improve the world, you get your standing ovation. The entire auditorium (or the stadium, if it’s a sports flick) is on its feet, cheering, applauding, weeping with joy – for you.
Moi?
I’d like to begin by thanking the Academy.
The problem with this instinct to please others and seek their approval is that it displaces your source of assurance about your own value onto other people. They become the arbiters of your value as a person.
It’s lovely to receive accolades – the little kid within you dances for joy.
But the judgment of others cannot become a referendum on your value as a human being. An adult needs to look within himself for approval. And you can only achieve that approval by becoming your best self.
That means staying conscious of who you are at all times, and checking in to be certain it is your most authentic identity, the person you want to be – the person you can look back on afterward and be proud of.
Your respect for yourself must be earned.
The respect of others is nice, but it can be fickle. Back in 1985 , when Sally Field won the Oscar for Best Actress for “Places in the Heart,” after having won in 1980 for “Norma Rae,” she didn’t actually say “You like me, you really like me” – although that’s what she’s remembered as saying, and that’s what she still gets made fun of for saying.
Here’s what she actually said in 1985: “I haven’t had an orthodox career, and I’ve wanted more than anything to have your respect. The first time I didn’t feel it, but this time I feel it, and I can’t deny the fact that you like me, right now, you like me!”
Perhaps it was her putting it so bluntly – telling the audience that they liked her – that made them flinch, and change their minds, and switch to making fun of her.
Sally Field probably realized once and for all in 1985 what will always be true – that you must look within yourself for the approval that matters. No one else – not even your parents – can satisfy your craving to be accepted as the person you truly are.
The People's Therapist 
Well said. Any tips on how to remain authentic in the face of overwhelming outside opinions?
Keep your mojo workin’. And never forget who you really are.
Good post. While I agree there’s an evolutionary explanation for what you describe, I disagree that it comes from a desire to please our parents. Evolution has shaped us to seek the approval our peers for the simple reason that we are social animals and losing the esteem of the group puts one at a severe evolutionary disadvantage (although, perhaps less now than in the Stone Age). Attributing our fear of disapproval to our relationship with our parents is unjustly Freudian.
I see your point – but I’m not thinking Freud, I’m thinking David Attenborough. Parents keep you alive when you are very young – peers don’t. If a mother bird lacks sufficient food for all 3 hatchlings, she will think nothing of throwing one out of the nest – this has been caught on camera and observed numerous times. Ducks will actually drown ducklings if there is insufficient food. You have to please your parents – or else. The same isn’t always true for peers. At least, not until later in life, when the society of the clan replaces the smaller world of the nuclear family.
Interesting theory, though I’m not sure that wanting to please one’s parents transfers over to wanting to please others. To the contrary, the desire to please others is really a desire for respect. Taken to the extreme, this desire for respect can take on the form of “worship” (hero/rockstar) which is equivalent in many ways to the way people feel about a deity.
Furthermore, and while I agree that one should not let the judgment of others become a referendum on self-worth, history is written by society at-large, not the individual. What others think of you is how you will be immortalized by history. Again, this goes back to a desire to be more like a deity. Countless rulers in millennium past took great pains to preserve the legacy they desired from history, as do world leaders in modern times.
Ultimately, if you do not care what history thinks of you, then this will translate well into disregarding what others think. Freed from such constraints, many great minds throughout history accomplished fantastic deeds….
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