According to Osho, the craving for approval isn’t solved but seen through. Simply recognize its foolishness: everyone serves their own ego, so no one can truly validate yours. Flattery only manipulates. You’re already accepted by existence—created perfect, carrying the divine signature. Drop begging, turn inward, enjoy your own being, and live your destiny; in clear awareness, the hunger for approval falls away by itself.
You stop needing others’ thumbs-up by seeing it’s a silly game and remembering you’re already okay inside, so you just be yourself.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved Osho, I am aware of my need for approval and acceptance from others. I don't want to be driven by this need. How does it resolve?
Drop all this nonsense! You are already approved of, otherwise you could not have been here. God has accepted you, given birth to you. If van Gogh paints, whatsoever painting he creates is already approved of -- otherwise he would not have created it in the first place. If Picasso paints something, in the very painting, the painting is approved of. The painter has put his heart into it. Just go deeper into your own being -- God has put all the treasures that you need there. He has approved of you, accepted you. He is happy that you are! But you don't look there. You are asking from others like a beggar: Approve of me! -- and they are also beggars just like you. Beggars asking beggars. Even if they approve of you a little, they will wait for you to approve of them. It is going to be…
Beloved Osho, why is it that I feel I need to have approval and be recognized, in my work especially? It puts me in a trap -- I cannot do without it. I know I am in this trap but I am caught in it and I cannot seem to get out of it. Can you help me be able to find the door?
While I was teaching in the university, the same thing came about from a different angle. Now I was asking the students questions to bring to their attention that all the knowledge that they have gathered is borrowed, and they know nothing. I told them that I don't care about their degrees, I care about their authentic experience -- and they don't have any. They are simply repeating books which are out of date; long ago they have been proved wrong. Now the authorities of the university were threatening me, "If you continue in this way, harassing students, you will be thrown out of the university." I said, "This is strange -- I was a student and I could not ask questions to the professors; now I am a professor and I cannot ask questions to the students! So what function is this university fulfilling? It should be a place…
Question: BELOVED OSHO, WHY IS IT THAT WE WANT APPROVAL? He knew it. Just when the examinations were to begin, he called me. "Tomorrow morning," he said, "your examinations are to begin, and this is the questionnaire that you have to answer. So please sit with me and answer me, because I want to know.... I have set these questions, this paper has been made by me, so you answer me, one by one, so that I am certain that you will not fail -- at least in my paper. It will be a shame if you fail in my paper." I said, "You don't be worried." I took that questionnaire and just threw it out the window, tearing it into pieces. He said, "What are you doing?" I said, "I am going to answer the questions. Whether I pass or fail does not matter.
For centuries the society has been using that strategy to destroy the integrity of the individual. It gives you ideals, it tells you how you should be. It never allows you to love yourself as you are. It creates division: you are one thing, the society says you have to be something else; you become two. Your ideal self creates a constant tension in you. Your real self also becomes a burden because you don't want it; the society says that it is worthless: Drop it. The real is denied and the unreal is imposed. Now this is the whole misery of man: how can one ever be in bliss if the real is denied, rejected, condemned, and the unreal is appreciated, valued? The unreal remains unreal but it hovers above your head continuously torturing you: You should be this.
Question: BELOVED OSHO WHY AM I SUCH A BEGGAR FOR ATTENTION? WHAT CAN I DO ABOUT IT? In the middle ages there were doctors in Europe... because the woman's virginity can be judged, checked. There is a very thin layer of skin -- if she has not been in a sexual relationship, that skin remains intact; if she has been in a sexual relationship, that skin is broken. That broken skin proves that she is not a virgin. Now sometimes it can be broken just by riding on a bicycle, it can be broken by riding on a horse, it can be broken by any accident -- falling from the staircase. It is not something that can be broken only by making love.