Overcoming 'Approval Addiction'

One thing honest men will plead guilty of is staring at women. We've even been smacked for it, but we can't help ourselves sometimes seeing how women have made an art out of flaunting what their mamas gave them! Just like the other day, I met a bunch of girls that left me gob-struck. If the sun was not up in the middle of the sky, I would have assumed they were headed for a pole-dancing display! Their lips were painted with unimaginable intensity and their breasts were jouncing in the open as they swung their legs in leggings and high heels. But the winner was the woman that had nothing else on but a little sweater that stopped just below her swaying hips. And she kept pulling it down, and I wondered why she had worn it if it was that discomfortingly short.

Teen pressure can make us do crazy things for approval

Then it slowly hit me that these women were suffering from what my Pastor Fred Wantaate, preached about last Sunday – "Approval Addiction" – a terrible need for affirmation from people especially significant individuals in our circles. Most women seeking validation will do anything including pulling half-naked moves to attract the attention of men just like the goody two-shoes is wont to say yes to everything and everybody in order to preserve his/her goodness.'

In the process you lose yourself as you let others consciously or subconsciously determine the terms of your lifestyle. You’re afraid of losing their friendship so you accompany them to a night club when you don’t like night clubs. You want to remain a virgin till marriage but your friends say virginity is archaic so you lose it to please them, and end up losing your life as well (God forbid.) That's how perilous approval addiction can be. And it all comes from a lack of confidence.

Listen, your worth does not come from being loved and accepted by others. That enlightenment is the cure to that terrible disease called approval addiction. If your friends don’t appreciate you as you are, let them take a hike! The God that gave the breath of life approves and loves you beyond measure, so rejoice and accept who are you are.

As the pastor advised, "Accepting yourself is key to everything else that flows from your life. If you don't accept yourself then you will never feel free to be yourself and you cheat the world and yourself out of God's unique expression through you."