Wanting Approval

Wanting approval is a lacking approval feeling, this feeling often wreaks havoc in our lives both consciously and unconsciously.
Reflect for a moment on your life if you are honest you will notice just how much this feeling has influenced your actions. Learning to recognise and release this lacking feeling is very liberating. It frees us up to be our authentic self and express ourselves more freely.
Learning to find our own internal supply of approval ensures that we do not need to be driven by those urges to do things that we later regret. For example, before I leaned to release those wanting approval feelings I would often find myself filling myself with chocolate, gobbling it down quickly and then feeling frustrated and even more disapproving once the 'binge' was over. As I became more conscious I began to realise that as I was eating the chocolate in an attempt to push down or avoid some uncomfortable feeling. On deeper reflection I discovered that the feeling was often one of vulnerability and lack of approval. On recognising this I began to allow myself to 'Let Go ' of those uncomfortable feelings ( I would keep doing this until I felt lighter inside). Then I would give myself approval, I would remind myself that we don't need to do or be anything special to deserve approval, that everyone and everything deserves approval. Then I would give myself a good 'dose ' of approval. Now I have been releasing for a few years I find it much easier to 'catch' those feelings as they arise and let them go before I end up binging.
 Do you 'binge' on anything ? It may not be food, it could be alcohol, television, exercise, shopping. Any of these activities can be used to avoid uncomfortable feelings. When we learn to recognise those uncomfortable feelings and let them go we can be free to be present and relaxed here and now. We can learn to welcome all feelings up into awareness and fully experience this life.
There is hardly a day that goes by without my feeling gratitude to Lester Levenson developing this method of Releasing. 

Ps  for my T'ai Chi class on Monday our video would not upload on vimeo but you can watch it here on Facebook if you scroll back to Monday's post. Tai Chi Chuan Cork