Often people do things because they want to impress other people. Social media has amplified the desire to show off their perfect side in order to impress.

Sometimes we try to show the world we are flawless in hopes that we will be liked and accepted by everyone, but we can’t please everyone and we shouldn’t try.

The beauty of us lies in our vulnerability, our complex emotions, and our authentic imperfections. 

When we embrace who we are and decide to be authentic, instead of who we think others want us to be, we open ourselves up to real relationships, real happiness, and real success.

When one feels the need to always impress others in order to be accepted, it is probably because they feel that other people won’t accept them for who they are.

They are likely to feel as though they are not enough and that in order to be enough, they need to constantly impress.

You are not free until you have no need to impress anybody.

The ultimate freedom is to be free from the need to impress others.

The only relationships that work well in the long run are the ones that make you a better person without changing you into someone other than yourself, and without preventing you from outgrowing the person you used to be.

Don’t lose yourself in your search for acceptance by others.  

You don’t need a standing ovation or a bestseller or a promotion or a million rands.  You are enough right now. You have nothing to prove.

Care less about who you are to others and more about who you are to yourself. 

You will have less heartaches and disappointments the minute you stop seeking from others the validation only YOU can give yourself.

The attempt to convince someone to approve you, to validate you of anything is a hallmark of insecurity. 

You are enough the way you are, you don’t need VIP tickets to elite events, or befriending famous people, or reading and quoting famous philosophers, you don’t need to seek  or feed off people’s daily compliments in order to feel important.

If you can’t validate yourself, you will die when others don’t validate you.

Free yourself from the need to impress.

Free yourself from the need to seek validation.

At some point you get to a phase in your life where you don’t need attention from many people to feel good about yourself… It is not about arrogance but about understanding that exposing your deepest part of your soul should be reserved for a few close people who truly appreciate and value you. 

I thought:
What is?
What was?
And
What if?

I was transformed the day
My ego shattered,
And all the superficial, material
Things that mattered
To me before,
Suddenly ceased
To matter.

I really came into being
The day I no longer cared about
What the world thought of me,
Only on my thoughts for
Changing the world.”