Forget Other People’s Approval. Focus on This Instead.

Why do we need to be liked by everyone?

Every writer wants everyone to read their work. It’s a secret desire that we all have. And we also want everyone to love what we write.

So when we publish something that no one reads, we’re left with all these negative emotions. We feel like no one cares, or that people don’t understand us.

Where does this desire to be liked come from? Because if we look at the facts, it’s more likely that no one reads our stuff. It’s actually very rare that a lot of people would read your work.

But our ego doesn’t care about that. We just want to hit “publish” and get one million claps within 60 seconds!

In my experience, these types of thoughts are destructive as a writer. It makes you want to quit. And it all comes from our need to be liked. We’re trying so hard to get the approval of everyone, that we forget why we write.

When I talk about approval, I’m talking about the belief that someone or something is good. And that expresses itself in our obsession with vanity metrics.

Let’s face it; why do we look at statistics? Why do we care about how many claps a Medium article gets? Why are we obsessed with how much other writers are earning?