Joe learned it the hard way in college bars: the people who got the deeper thing they wanted were not the needy, chasing ones — they were the self-possessed ones who felt good simply being with themselves. The chasers might get something short-term, but never the real thing underneath. The same dynamic plays out in business and families.
“You’ll often see that there’s one person who’s chasing and one person who’s running. There’s not two people standing upright.”
When you stand upright in yourself — knowing that everything you need to be good with yourself is available right now, not in the future or past — you stop chasing, and you start attracting other people who are also upright in themselves. That, Joe says, is what makes life really satisfying. He paints the contrast inside a business meeting: one person scared of disappointment and judgment, the other unbothered.
“Yeah, people are going to judge me and I still have me. Yeah, people are going to like me and I still have me. Yeah, I’m going to mess up and I still have me. I’m right here. I’m available right now.”
The self-possessed person isn’t immune to judgment; they simply don’t lose themselves to it. That groundedness is magnetic precisely because it isn’t performed for anyone.
Related Concepts
- Chasing approval separates you from yourself
- Peace with yourself is only available right now
- We push away the approval we seek
- Seeing others dissolves their judgment and criticism
- Self-possessed presence transforms how others relate to you
- No amount of external validation works if you won’t validate yourself