there is but one way to freedom - to despise what is not in our power. - Epictetus

When someone is properly grounded in life, they shouldn't have to look outside themselves for approval.

For sheep don't throw up the grass to show shepherds how much they have eaten; but, inwardly digest their food, they outwardly produce wool and milk.

First to those universal principles I have spoken of: these you must keep at command, and without them neither sleep nor rise, drink nor eat nor deal with men: the principle that no one can control another's will, and that the will alone is the sphere of good and evil.