Why Do You Keep Making Choices to Impress People You Don't Even Like?
Humans are evolutionarily wired to fear the group more than they fear a wasted life. Getting kicked out of the tribe used to mean you died, your brain never got the memo that it doesn't anymore. This shows up as: 1) social proof, you default to what the room approves of because testing your own judgment feels riskier than it is 2) impression management, you're optimizing decisions for how they look, not what they actually deliver 3) reputational loss aversion, losing face hurts your brain more than losing years. Nobody claps at your funeral for the car you never wanted.
How it plays out
You take the job the family can brag about
You pick the partner nobody can criticize
Resentment builds quietly under all the compliments
The audience leaves, you're still stuck there
Making everyone proud vs the actual outcome
Myth
If everyone's proud of you, you're doing life right
Reality
The approval fades in a week, the mortgage and the misery stay for decades
What happens the day the people you're performing for stop watching?