I Need Too Much Approval: How to Stop Arranging Your Life Around Other People's Likes

You make a decision.

Then you look around to see whether everybody else thinks it was the right one.

Someone seems disappointed, so you reconsider. A message feels slightly colder than usual, so you reread it six times. You say yes when you want to say no, explain perfectly reasonable choices as if presenting evidence in court, and occasionally allow one missing like to launch an internal investigation with resources normally reserved for major criminal cases.

If this sounds familiar, you may be giving other people’s approval far more influence than it deserves.

I Need Too Much Approval is a practical, funny guide to reducing people-pleasing, reassurance-seeking, overexplaining, social overthinking, and the exhausting habit of arranging your decisions around how other people might react.

This is not a book about becoming selfish, ignoring feedback, or proudly announcing that you do not care what anyone thinks. Other people matter. Relationships matter. Useful criticism matters.

The problem begins when their reactions become instructions.

Inside, you will learn how to:

separate facts from assumptions about what people think;

stop asking for reassurance every time uncertainty appears;

pause before automatic yeses;

say no without submitting a six-paragraph defense;

decide what you think before asking everybody else;

identify whose opinions actually deserve weight;

tolerate disappointment without immediately fixing it;

separate criticism of your behavior from a verdict on your identity;

stop monitoring every room, message, like, and facial expression;

build your own practical standards for judging your decisions;

recognize when approval-seeking starts returning;

create a minimum version of the system for tired, stressful days.

The methods are designed for normal people with jobs, families, phones, deadlines, imperfect confidence, and no desire to spend four hours each morning journaling beside a waterfall.

You will not become completely indifferent to approval.

That is not the goal.

You will become better at deciding when approval is useful information, when it is merely somebody else’s preference, and when your brain has promoted a raised eyebrow to executive management.

The result is not a life without other people’s opinions.

It is a life where those opinions finally have appropriate job descriptions.

You can listen without automatically obeying.

Disagree without assuming the relationship is doomed.

Make a reasonable decision while someone else wishes you had chosen differently.

And, occasionally, post something without checking the reaction before your phone has even cooled down.

Other people are allowed to have opinions about your life.

You are allowed to remain the person living it.

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E-bog: 3. september 2026