We’ve talked a lot recently about the importance of not making yourself a slave to outside approval. Because it’s not something you control. Because your own standards should be so high that you already have plenty to worry about. 

Still, there is so much more to be said about this very human desire for external validation. Indeed, it is a timeless and universal problem. Marcus Aurelius, like us, wanted to be liked—by his imperial staff, by the Senate, by the citizens he met in the street, by history–but he also always tried to really think about why he wanted to be liked. He wanted to get his mind wrapped around it, so he knew what was driving him and he could neutralize its power. 

“You want praise from people who kick themselves every fifteen minutes,” he asks rhetorically in Meditations, “the approval of people who despise themselves?” 

It’s such a great point. Being liked seems important…for some it can seem like the most important thing in the world. Until you start to consider the people we seem to be so desperate to impress. Until you think about the silly things they are impressed by, and the amazing things they don’t “get.” Until you realize that they don’t even respect themselves. Then all of the sudden being liked feels almost…juvenile.

To be clear, the point of freeing yourself from this external burden isn’t to make it easier for you to be a selfish jerk. On the contrary, it’s to free you up to do the right things for the right reasons. Not to pursue virtue for praise, but for its own sake with no regard for whether we take heat for it later. Many great decisions are not popular, many brilliant innovations (and creative people) are poorly understood. Should they change for the sake of people who kick themselves? Or don’t understand themselves?

No. And neither should you. Do right—do your best—because it’s who you are. The rest doesn’t matter.

P.S. This was originally sent on January 21, 2020. Sign up today for the Daily Stoic’s email and get our popular free 7-day course on Stoicism.