I spent a long time operating like approval was something I could earn if I just worked hard enough at it. Said the right things. Stayed in the right lanes. Didn't rock anything. The idea was that if I could just be acceptable to enough people, I'd be safe. Respected. Left alone.
That's not how it works. You can do everything right by every standard you can think of, and some people still won't be for you. Not because you did something wrong. Just because that's how people are. They have their own stuff, their own filters, their own reasons that have nothing to do with you.
The cost of chasing universal approval is high. You start editing yourself in real time. You shrink down to whatever version of you seems least likely to get pushback in a given room. And after enough time doing that, you realize you don't actually know what your own opinion is anymore. You've been performing for so long that the performance replaced the person.
Here's what I've landed on instead. Figure out who your people are. The ones who actually show up. The ones who tell you the truth even when it's inconvenient. The ones who want to see you do well and aren't quieter about it when you start succeeding. Those people are rare. When you find them, invest there. Be reliable for them. Be honest with them. Build something real with them.
Remember: The stronger the bridge of communication, the heavier the messages that can be carried across.
The people who aren't for you, you don't need to win them over. You don't need to understand why. You don't need to carry it around as evidence that something is wrong with you. Some people just aren't going to be in your corner, and that's their business, not yours.
What you can control is whether you show up as yourself. Whether you do the work that matters to you. Whether you hold your standards even when holding them makes someone uncomfortable. Whether you spend your limited energy on the people who are actually building with you or on trying to win over people who have already decided.
You're not going to be for everyone. Nobody is. The sooner you stop treating that like a failure on your part, the sooner you can put your attention where it actually does something.
Be for your people. Be for the work. Be for the version of yourself you're trying to become. That's enough. That's more than enough.