This idea is nearly two thousand years old, yet most people still miss half of it.
Marcus Aurelius — a Roman emperor who was praised constantly simply because of his position — once reflected on a simple question: does an emerald become less beautiful because no one compliments it?
Of course not.
Praise, he understood, does not make something better. And the absence of praise does not make it worse. A thing remains what it is regardless of whether anyone applauds.
More than a century ago, Rudyard Kipling expressed a similar idea in a different way. In his famous poem If—, he called Triumph and Disaster “two impostors” and advised us to treat them both the same.
Notice something important: neither idea is only about surviving criticism, failure, or humiliation.
Most of us understand why we shouldn’t let an insult define us.
What we talk about far less is the other side of the lesson:
Praise can control you just as easily as criticism can.
If insults can make you abandon your path, you are not free.
But if compliments, applause, likes, approval, and admiration determine whether you believe in yourself, you are not free either.
The moment you begin living for praise, you also begin fearing the day it disappears.
And that may be the part of the ancient lesson we most often forget:
Do not give other people the power to decide your worth — whether they are criticizing you or applauding you.