Just a Reminder: Do it First for Yourself
Tags: career, devjournal, developer, mentalhealth
Published: 2023-09-02 22:13:13

## It's obvious, but hard to remember
Yes, I know that you've come across this message in various places, whether digitally or in person. I have too...

The title could also change to: "Be Your Own Top Client," "Take Pride in Your Deliveries," etc. But no, I wanted to stick with the cliché. Ultimately, it's the most important message I'm trying to convey to you today.

And it's not because I'm writing this article that I believe in it as a mentor/coach or some _influencer_ who sits at a podcast table and spouts motivational phrases. I'm writing this for myself as well, because it's not every time that I do this, or that I'll remember to behave this way.

Deep down (really deep down), I know that I should take pride first, and you should too (I think...), but it seems that we forget and always seek someone's approval before our own opinion. We give more weight to that. 

## What have we learned about 'approval'?

But there's no way we can start this habit when all the models we've encountered since childhood follow the pattern of seeking others' evaluation.

In the early years of age, you don't even have awareness yet, and any dance, drawing, word comes with the phrase "show it to `put a name/relative here` how you do it." And when we do it (sometimes after countless repetitions of requests), we get congratulations and applause.

And so it goes: school, college, work. Analyzing this journey, we're not guided to first evaluate ourselves, to know ourselves, and to identify if we like what we did. Or maybe we did it once, we liked it, but we didn't receive the same feedback from others in the same way we felt about what we did. And then comes the retraction, we close up and condition ourselves to seek "the others'" approval.

## The self-approval path

Rejection/disapproval will happen, believe me. And I think one of the keys is to be very aware of this for expectation management. Let me be clear: yes, we need evaluators and opinions, because (another yes), **YOU DON'T KNOW EVERYTHING!** 

The figure of parents, teachers, mentors, leaders, bosses, colleagues, whoever, is important. They have different perspectives, experiences, information that you don't have. Listen as an addition to your knowledge. But also remember that they don't know everything either, so be open to discarding something that doesn't make sense. But listen, analyze, and don't be reactive.

This is my first article. I won't lie to you: I'm hesitant to publish this (I postponed **3 weeks** to publish this article). But I just reread the previous paragraphs. You know what I'm thinking? _"Hey, this is something.. Maybe with practice, it will get even better..."_.

Yes, I'll hope that close people will also like it, that you'll leave your like or comment saying how you identified, adding ideas, or disagreeing with me and saying it wasn't good. But I'm going to try to hold onto the feeling I have now. It's good for me.

And as I said at the beginning: focus on being satisfied with what you've done and develop the habit of enjoying learning about yourself and noticing your progress. Notice yourself, know what you like and what you don't. Sooner or later, things will start to fall into place, to build up, to evolve.

But that's what I think...