By Praveen Chandhok
You don’t need a permission slip to move on. You don’t need applause to grow. The moment we stop chasing validation, we begin choosing peace.
Seeking approval from others is like trying to drink water from a mirage – no matter how much you run toward it, it always leaves you thirsty. We get shackled to opinions, weighed down by expectations, tiptoeing around life like we’re guests at our own story.
But peace? Peace is a quiet room within. It doesn’t arrive with fanfare. It slips in when we stop asking to be seen and instead start seeing ourselves. When we stop waiting to be heard and start listening to our own truth.
That is when peace enters – not loudly, but unmistakably.
I’ve noticed something in recent times – a kind of social fever we all seem to catch: the Fear of Missing Out. FOMO is the silent epidemic of our age. We scroll through someone else’s celebrations, travels, or romances, and feel a pang. It’s as if life is passing us by while everyone else is starring in a movie we weren’t cast in.
But the truth? Most people are not thinking about us. They are busy scripting their own stories, battling their own storms. For most, we are a passing thought – if that. And yet, we waste precious time and energy looking over the fence, comparing lawns, forgetting that our own garden needs tending.
It’s like running a race while constantly looking sideways – you’re bound to trip on your own feet.
Instead of comparison, what if we chose cultivation? What if we spent our best hours not envying someone else’s highlight reel, but honing our skills, nurturing our relationships, expanding our knowledge? That is how we uplift not only our own lives, but the lives of those we love.
This endless thirst for validation only bruises us. Osho said it best:
“Accept yourself as you are. And that is the most difficult thing in the world, because it goes against your training, education, your culture. From the very beginning you have been told how you should be. Nobody has ever told you that you are good as you are.”
And to accept yourself as you are is not weakness.
It is courage.
The courage to drop the mask, dissolve the ideals, and finally say:
“I am enough. Not someday. Now.”
Most people will never validate you. They will only point to the gap between who you are and who they think you should be. But the mantra is this: accept yourself and believe in your worth. Your self-esteem isn’t a charity to be granted by others. It is your most valuable currency-and it must be guarded, grown, and honoured.
The deepest form of freedom is not having more – it is needing less. And peace is not something we find. It’s something we remember, once we stop looking outside and start coming home to ourselves.
(Praveen Chandhok is former President (2021-2023, 2015-2017) SJA Alumni Association, Dehradun)
