When Approval Becomes an Addiction
Why "good jobs" and gold stars are not the encouragement we think they are.
It started with a gold star.
A single, shimmering sticker on a construction-paper chart in my kindergarten classroom. I don’t remember the assignment. I don’t remember what I drew or said or built.
I just remember the star.
And how it glowed.
There’s a photograph of me from that week. Five years old, Dragon Ball Z backpack, missing front tooth (I knocked it out on the back of my brother’s head at the pool where my cousin was a lifeguard)… grinning with my hand on that chart like I had discovered buried treasure. My mom wrote on the back: “He’s so proud of himself.”
But thinking back now, I’m not sure I was proud of myself.
I was proud of the star.
That’s the thing about gold stars. They sparkle just long enough to blind you to the difference between joy and approval.
The Praise Paradox
We praise children to “build confidence”.
We reward them to “keep them motivated”.
We raise them in a world where “Good job” is practically punctuation.
But here’s the paradox:
The more we praise, the more fragile confidence seems to become.
Psychologists like Edward Deci and Richard Ryan noticed this decades ago. Praise, they said, doesn’t always inspire… it can control. It shifts a child’s attention from doing to being seen doing…. And once approval becomes the goal, authenticity begins to fracture.
So today, I want to explore a question that’s haunted me for years:
When did we start mistaking validation for love? And what happens to a person, to a culture, when praise replaces presence?
A Tower of Blocks and a Moment of Clarity
A few months ago, I found myself watching my three-year-old son trying to build a tower out of blocks. This kid is usually the one knocking down towers not building them. Yet that day, he stacked them carefully.
Wobbling, grinning, failing, trying again.
I opened my mouth to say “Good job, buddy!” and then stopped.
He wasn’t asking for praise.
He wasn’t asking for anything.
He was totally absorbed. Lost in the rhythm of play.
I thought of psychologist Alfie Kohn, who wrote that praise is often “judgment wrapped in sugar.” We think it’s encouragement, but it’s evaluation in disguise. It teaches a child not just what we value, but whose valuation matters most.
In other words, “Good job” sounds harmless. But said too much or when unnecessarily and subtly conditions dependence.
And I began to see it everywhere, in classrooms, offices, Instagram feeds.
The world is built on little gold stars now.
The Experiment
Take, for example, a strange experiment from the 1970s.
Researchers invited preschoolers to draw with markers. Some were promised a reward; a fancy certificate with a gold seal. Others weren’t.
When the rewards were handed out, everyone seemed happy.
But here’s what happened next: the children who expected a reward stopped drawing for fun.
The activity that had once been pure play became work.
Joy became transaction.
That small moment in a preschool art corner was a window into something enormous.
Because it turns out, motivation is fragile.
It’s like a campfire: add a log, it glows brighter; dump gasoline, and you risk burning it out entirely.
Flow and the Fragility of Presence
Around this time, in a different corner of the world, a young psychologist named Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (chik·sent·mee·hai·ee) was studying what he called flow. That deep state of immersion when time disappears and you forget yourself completely.
Artists knew it. Athletes felt it. Even monks in silent prayer described it.
But what fascinated Csikszentmihalyi was what killed flow:
External evaluation. The moment you notice someone watching (or worse, judging) the spell breaks.
In other words: praise interrupts presence.
And presence, is the birthplace of meaning.
The Price of Being a “Good Kid”
Which makes me wonder:
If praise disrupts presence, then maybe the opposite of love isn’t criticism… maybe it’s evaluation.
That’s the twist most of us miss.
We think praise is the opposite of judgment, when it’s often just judgment with better lighting.
We say “Good boy,” when what we really mean is “You are lovable when you please me.”
And that subtle distinction between I love you and I approve of you becomes the architecture of a lifetime.
It’s why grown adults still measure their worth in promotions, likes, and applause.
Why so many high achievers still feel empty.
Because somewhere along the way, their sense of value got outsourced.
Obedience Disguised as Achievement
Rewards, in that sense, are a form of modern control. They feel like progress. The grade, the raise, the pat on the back. But they’re really just upgraded obedience.
The carrot replaces the stick, but the leash remains.
You can see it in schools.
A generation raised on stickers and honor rolls grows into one hooked on metrics and performance reviews.
The gold star becomes the résumé.
The chart becomes the algorithm.
And we all learn, in subtle ways, to trade curiosity for compliance.
Even our moral education is built this way. We tell children to “do the right thing” and then hand out prizes when they do. But morality without internalization is just manipulation.
We’ve replaced conscience with conditioning and then wondered why empathy feels endangered.
It’s not that praise is bad. It’s that it’s too easy. It gives us the illusion of connection without the substance of understanding.
Performing Goodness
When I think about my own childhood, I can trace this thread like a faint scar.
After I began to manage my ADHD I became the “good kid.” The rule follower. The one who never got in trouble.
My teachers loved me. Adults in my life trusted me. But I realize now, I wasn’t being myself. I was performing goodness.
And there’s a loneliness to that. The loneliness of the extrinsically motivated.
Because when your worth depends on applause, silence feels like rejection.
Even success becomes hollow. You hit the mark, but the satisfaction evaporates almost instantly. You start chasing the next thing; the next star, the next like, the next nod from someone whose approval you’ve confused for love.
And all the while, your true desires grow quieter. Until one day you realize you’re not even sure what you want anymore.
The Emperor’s Face on Every Coin
This isn’t new. In ancient Rome, soldiers were given coins stamped with their emperor’s face as rewards for bravery. Those coins weren’t just currency; they were loyalty tokens. Proof of worth bestowed from above.
We haven’t changed much. The emperor just got rebranded as the algorithm.
If you zoom out far enough, extrinsic motivation isn’t just a psychological issue. It’s a spiritual one. It reflects a deeper human fear, that without proof of value, we might not have any.
But here’s the quiet act of rebellion:
To live from intrinsic motivation, to act from curiosity, wonder, or love, is to trust that being is enough. It’s to plant a seed without needing a witness.
The good news is every child begins that way. We don’t need to “do” anything. They don’t paint for praise or sing for approval. They build and imagine because the world is fascinating and life itself is invitation.
Our job, as parents, teachers, humans, isn’t to instill motivation. It’s to protect it.
Praise, Reimagined
A few nights ago, I watched my son again. Same blocks, same small hands stacking.
When he finally built a tower taller than himself, unlike my oldest, he didn’t look at me for approval.
He just screamed in triumph. The pure, round kind of joyous hurrah that only comes from the inside out.
I sat there in the quiet after, realizing:
He didn’t need me to say “Good job.” He just needed me to see him.
That’s what praise tries and fails to imitate… the deep, wordless knowing of being witnessed, not evaluated.
Maybe the point isn’t to stop praising altogether. Maybe it’s to praise differently. To encourage rather than evaluate.
Not “You’re so smart,” but “You worked so hard.”
Not “You’re so good,” but “I love watching you try.”
Not “Good job,” but “I see you.”
We can’t gold star our way back to wonder. But maybe we can notice it when it appears. Unprompted, unmeasured, free.
Because love, the real kind, doesn’t sound like “Good job.” It sounds like silence, held open long enough for a child, or an adult, to hear their own heartbeat and believe it’s enough.
End.
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