The Weight of Doing Everything Right
The quiet exhaustion that comes from chasing approval instead of living with honest acceptance
There was a stretch of my old career where “good enough” wasn’t good enough.
That was an actual slogan—painted on walls, baked into reviews, repeated like a badge of honor at every emergency meeting. And for years, I bought into it.
Game development runs on pressure. Everything’s behind schedule. Everything’s one more tweak away from being “done.” You learn to live in that constant grind of almost.
Somewhere along the way, I stopped asking whether that pace—or those standards—made sense. I just kept trying to do everything right, saying yes to every insane ask, because that’s what valuable people did—they performed.
But taking on everything slowly hollowed me out. The harder I worked, the less it felt like it mattered. Fear had crept in quietly—fear of losing my job, my career, my reputation—if I messed up anything.
So I kept saying yes, kept pushing harder, kept trying to meet unreasonable expectations I wasn’t allowed to question.
What I didn’t see then was how deeply I’d tied my worth to approval—from others and, by extension, myself.
As long as someone else signed off, I could breathe. Their praise meant safety. Their silence meant I’d failed. I thought that was accountability—but it was dependence.
And somewhere inside that loop, I stopped being honest with myself.
I kept accepting situations that didn’t feel right, mistaking suffering for integrity. But acceptance isn’t about surrendering to what hurts you. It’s about seeing things as they are, so you can decide what deserves your energy and what doesn’t.
That’s the line most of us blur—between living honestly and performing for permission.
“You can’t base your self-worth on the approval of others. You’re worth it because you decide you are.” — Mel Robbins
If you’ve been chasing approval over progress, start with honest acceptance — meeting yourself where you are. Book your FREE Discovery Call and let’s build a plan that takes you from where you’re standing to the goals that actually matter to you.
The Approval Loop
Most of us learn the approval loop long before we know we’re in it.
You do well, you get praise. You fall short, you get silence—or worse. Over time, your brain wires that feedback into a survival response. You stop asking what feels right and just start doing what looks right.
It sneaks into everything—work, training, relationships. You start setting goals not to grow, but to prove you’re enough. To others. To yourself. To the invisible scoreboard that never stops moving.
You call it responsibility or high standards. But really, it’s fear dressed up as discipline.
The loop runs quiet but deep: Approval gives a hit of safety → you chase it again → you burn out trying to earn it → you crash → guilt creeps in → you start chasing approval again.
It’s not just external validation, either.
Sometimes the approval we’re chasing is our own—this inner version of us that always wants a little more, a little better, a little cleaner. The voice that says, “Sure, you finished… but you could’ve done more.”
And the worst part? The loop feels noble. It feels like drive. Until you realize it’s not leading anywhere—it’s just keeping you busy.
When approval becomes your compass, effort never feels like enough—and peace never feels earned.
When Approval Replaces Living
There’s a strange kind of exhaustion that comes from doing everything right and still feeling wrong.
You hit the marks, meet the deadlines, nod in all the right meetings — but something in you goes quiet. You stop asking what you want and start waiting for someone else to tell you you’re on the right track.
That’s how approval quietly replaces living. You stop steering and start performing. You follow the path that gets the nod, not the one that actually fits you.
And once you’re on that road, it’s hard to leave.
Because leaving means disapproval — and disapproval feels dangerous when your worth has been tied to doing things “right” for so long.
So you stay. You keep performing. You keep pretending it’s fine.
Most people know the feeling, even if they can’t name it — being a passenger in your own life. You’re still moving, still busy, but it’s not you making the turns anymore. The hands are yours, but the choices aren’t.
It’s a quiet kind of fear. Not the kind that makes you run — the kind that convinces you not to move at all.
You call it stability or maturity, but deep down, you know better. It’s not acceptance keeping you there — it’s avoidance. And the longer you avoid the truth, the more approval starts to feel like safety.
That’s where most people stop — stuck between knowing they’re off course and being too afraid to take back the wheel. But clarity doesn’t come from running harder. It comes from stopping long enough to see the difference between what’s true and what’s approved.
That’s where acceptance steps in — not as a moral stance, but as a starting point.
Trading Proof for Peace
Acceptance isn’t about lowering your standards or pretending everything’s fine.
It’s about facing what’s real so you can finally do something about it. You stop arguing with the truth and start working with it — not resisting, not justifying — just seeing things as they are.
That’s what most people get wrong.
They think acceptance means agreeing with something. It doesn’t.
You can accept a hard truth without approving of it. You can accept where you are and still want better. You can be grateful for what’s here and still reach for what’s next. That’s not weakness — that’s how change actually starts.
Approval, though, plays by a different rulebook.
It’s emotional, fragile, and constantly shifting. It says, “You can feel okay once things look okay.”
And that’s how we get stuck — waiting to like every part of our life before we’re willing to work on it.
When you separate the two, everything starts to make sense again.
If you’re unhappy, it’s ok to disapprove of parts of your life while still accepting reality for what it is — the only place you can actually make a change from.
Approval chases peace. Acceptance builds it.
I still catch myself chasing approval at times.
Not as much as before, but it shows up — in how I second-guess boundaries, or worry what people will think if I slow down. Old patterns have a way of hiding inside good intentions.
What’s changed is how I meet the moment. I don’t try to crush the need for approval anymore; I just notice it, name it, and come back to acceptance — where I actually have control over what I’m building.
Some days that means acknowledging fear instead of pretending it’s not there. Other days, it’s giving myself credit before waiting for anyone else to.
Acceptance doesn’t mean I’ve stopped wanting more. It just means I start from where I am — clear, grounded, and honest enough to move. Because that’s the only way progress sticks.
What truths in your life are you ready to accept about your current position, so that you can move forward better?