LEAD August 2023 | Page 43

“ When we live for the applause of others — whether large scale or small scale — we begin to make sacrifices , and not healthy ones .”
Praise is a tricky thing . It can be motivating , and you can use it to your benefit , but it can also cause you to lose your focus . To keep the applause coming , you may make decisions that detour you from a better path . Praise can easily become one of the reasons we might come to the end of our lives and regret that we never accomplished things that matter greatly to us .
Now , of course , not everybody is in the same position when it comes to the distraction of applause . Some of us have roles in society in which we naturally get more attention than others . Some of us are temperamentally more susceptible to letting praise go to our heads ( here I have to raise my hand ). Some of us have life goals that can benefit from lots of public recognition ; others don ’ t . But all of us need to be careful . The sound of applause is sweet , and it ’ s addictive — we want more , more , more .
My grandfather used to say , “ Praise is like perfume . Smell it , but don ’ t swallow it .” Maybe you ’ re getting a lot ( or wishing you were getting a lot ) of praise for what you ’ re doing in pursuit of your life goals . Then beware . It ’ s so easy for the applause to replace the goals as your objective .
Or maybe it ’ s just praise seeking in general that ’ s causing you problems . One of the reasons people don ’ t get around to pursuing the things and people that matter is that they ’ re spending too much time trying to impress the boss or fuming over how little noticed they are or making TikTok dance videos they hope will go viral .
If you care about pursuing and accomplishing your life goals above all lesser occupations , you need to deal with the distractibility of applause . And the answer for too much applause is . . . more applause . Just not for you . I ’ ll be getting to what I mean by that soon .
The goal is to make applause serve your purposes , not undermine them .
Fame ’ s Appeal
You ’ ve heard the phrase fame and fortune . Have you ever thought about the fact that fame comes first in that phrase ? Could it be that human beings , at least many of us , are driven even more by the desire to be known and approved of than we are by the desire for wealth ?
A social research study investigated the goals that tweens have . The top goal of all ? Fame solely for the sake of being famous . Maybe this is not surprising , given that this is a generation raised in the age of amateur YouTube stars , pop singers with Twitter followers in the tens of millions , and influencers who get to travel the world first class just because they look good in selfies .

“ When we live for the applause of others — whether large scale or small scale — we begin to make sacrifices , and not healthy ones .”

But let ’ s not pick on our kids . Many of us adults
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