The Internal Approval Check
Judge work against your own standards so rejection becomes feedback, not identity
- Difficulty
- Advanced
- Time to result
- ~ongoing to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 95%
The Internal Approval Check builds resilience by changing the primary source of evaluation. External approval is unstable: a reader, employer, teacher, or market can withhold it at any time. After a rejection or before anticipating a public response, return to questions you control. Did you create the work you intended? Are you proud of it? Did you tell the stories or make the choices that mattered to you? Did the process align with your standards? These answers do not make external feedback irrelevant; they stop it from becoming a verdict on identity. Once grounded internally, examine the fall for useful lessons and apply them to the next attempt. The mechanism also protects originality, because work shaped chiefly to win approval tends to imitate expectations rather than express the creator's best judgment.
Origin
While awaiting reaction to a book he spent two years writing, Varol counters spirals about how it will land by asking whether it is the book he wanted to write and whether he is proud of it.
Core principles
- 01External approval can disappear at any time
- 02Internal standards remain available after rejection
- 03Rejection contains learning without defining the creator
- 04Catering for approval can weaken originality
How to run it
- 1
Catch the external spiral
Notice thoughts centered on being chosen, praised, or rejected. Name the external person or group whose verdict has become dominant.
- 2
Return to intent
Ask whether you made the work, decision, or attempt you genuinely intended to make.
Pro tip Write the intended standard before release so it cannot be rewritten after the reaction.
- 3
Evaluate from within
Assess pride in the result, alignment with your values, and the quality of the process. Answer these separately from whether others approved.
Watch out Internal approval is not permission to ignore valid corrective feedback.
- 4
Separate rejection from identity
Treat the result as information about an attempt rather than a statement of personal worth. This creates room to stand back up.
- 5
Harvest the lesson
Identify what the fall taught and carry that learning into the next attempt without surrendering the internal standard.
In the wild
After spending two years on Awakening Your Genius, Varol cannot know how the world will react. When that uncertainty triggers an external-approval spiral, he asks whether it is the book he wanted to write, whether he enjoyed the process, and whether he told the intended stories.
→ His own affirmative answers provide a stable basis for meeting the public response.
A designer's proposal is rejected. They first compare it with the brief and their own quality standard, then separate the client's decision from their identity and extract one concrete lesson about explaining trade-offs.
→ The rejection improves the next proposal without forcing the designer to imitate every preference.
Common mistakes
Confusing approval with feedback
Internal grounding should prevent identity collapse, not block useful evidence from users, editors, or employers.
Changing the standard afterward
Inventing an easier internal standard after rejection protects the ego but provides no reliable basis for resilience.
Is it for you?
Best for
Creators, applicants, and professionals whose work is judged by audiences, editors, employers, or other gatekeepers.
Not ideal for
Situations where internal pride is used to dismiss consistent evidence of harm, poor quality, or unmet requirements.
From the transcript
“that approval can be denied at any time it can be withheld at any time”
“was this the book that I wanted to write and the answer is absolutely yes”
“most people are able to get back up they get back up because they don't take rejection personally they look within for approval”
From the episode
Episode 231: Ozan Varol: How to Stop Overthinking and Start Quitting
Ozan Varol