If you are an approval addict, your behaviour is as easy to control as that of any other junkie. All a manipulator need do is a simple two-step process: Give you what you crave, and then threaten to take it away. Every drug dealer in the world plays this game.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the dangers of seeking validation from others and how it can lead to manipulation.
Harriet B. Braiker's quote compares an individual's need for approval to addiction, suggesting that those who constantly seek validation are vulnerable to manipulation. Just as a drug dealer controls a junkie by giving them what they crave and then threatening to withhold it, manipulators exploit the desire for approval to control and influence others, making it crucial to recognize and overcome this dependency.
In practice
In a workshop on personal development, this quote could be used to highlight the importance of self-acceptance.
How do I control my emotions? How do I stop getting angry so often, or how do I stop being sad? And I think there's a really important distinction to understand is that you can't completely control your emotions. What you control is your reaction to your own emotions. And a lot of people don't ever make that separation for what goes on with them.
Work organizes life. It gives structure and discipline to life.
In order not to leave any traces, when you do something, you should do it with your whole body and mind; you should be concentrated on what you do. You should do it completely, like a good bonfire. You should not be a smoky fire. You should burn yourself completely. If you do not burn yourself completely, a trace of yourself will be left in what you do. You should not have any remains after you do something. But this does not mean to forget all about it.
Every increase in your knowledge is a simultaneous decrease. You learn and you unlearn at the same time. A new certainty is a new doubt as well.
Outward simplicity befits ordinary men, like a garment made to measure for them; but it serves as an adornment to those who have filled their lives with great deeds: they might be compared to some beauty carelessly dressed and thereby all the more attractive.
One of the most difficult things to learn is to render service without bossing, without making a fuss about it, and without any consciousness of high and low. In the world of spirituality, humility counts at least as much as utility.
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