Most of modern advice culture, whether it’s about wellness, productivity, or “healthy aging,” still talks to you like you’re a child waiting for a grade. You get endless lists of what to eat, how to journal, how to think, how to become “your best self.” The subtext is always the same – if you perform correctly, someone will finally hand you a gold star. But lately, everything I’ve been reading, from psychology research to essays on aging to conversations in magick communities, has started to hum with a different frequency. All three point toward the same quiet revolution. You stop living for approval and start living from internal consent.
The scientific word for this is “autonomy.” Psychologists call it one of three universal needs in something known as *Self-Determination Theory*. The idea is simple and surprisingly practical: human beings thrive when three conditions are met. We feel autonomous when our actions match what we actually care about. We feel competent when we believe we can handle what life throws at us. We feel related when we’re genuinely connected to others instead of left to drift alone. According to decades of research, when these three needs are supported, we become healthier, more motivated, and more resilient ([American Psychological Association][1]).
What is “autonomy”?
What people often miss is that autonomy is not isolation. The research doesn’t say “become a hermit.” It says “stop living just to please everyone else.” When you spend years inside other people’s expectations, it can look virtuous on the surface—loyal, dedicated, agreeable—but underneath, something starts to rot. You lose your own coordinates. Burnout is not always about overwork. Sometimes it’s about over-approval. And the people describing this most vividly are often the ones in their sixties and seventies, who have already paid that bill and decided not to renew the subscription.
One woman writing about aging described her biggest shift as “quitting the approval business.” She wasn’t selling supplements or routines or gratitude journals. She was talking about the radical relief that comes from walking away from the need to be constantly validated ([Global English Editing][2]). She wrote about how you can still love people without letting them lease space in your nervous system. That peace, she said, came not from being seen as “good,” but from finally being aligned with herself. At some point, you realize that being liked is not the same thing as being whole.
That’s what autonomy looks like in real time. It’s also competence—the trust that after surviving this long, your judgment counts for something. And it’s relatedness too, only on new terms: you stay connected because you want to, not because you’re afraid someone will withdraw love if you don’t behave. You don’t have to wait for your seventies to claim that. You can start charging rent for your energy now.
The same lesson is playing out in completely different corners of the internet. On a Reddit thread in *r/magick*, people were asking how to develop intuitive practice when they didn’t have a teacher, a coven, or a rulebook to follow. The best answers weren’t about tools or spells. They were about attitude. You experiment, you pay attention, and you trust the results that show up in your real life ([Reddit][3]).
If you don’t identify as a witch, that’s fine. This principle crosses every border. You stop chasing someone else’s rubric and start building evidence from your own experience. You keep your own grimoire—your notebook of what works and what doesn’t—instead of copying from someone else’s spellbook. This is Self-Determination Theory in motion again. Autonomy means defining what practice even means to you. Competence comes from learning through your own results. Relatedness is still there, but it’s voluntary, not submissive. You can talk to other practitioners, or peers, or friends, without giving up the authorship of your own path.
Of course, there’s a cost to staying in the approval loop. The human body pays it first. Chronic tension and anxiety from trying to be acceptable. Decision paralysis because you no longer know what you actually want. Resentment leaking out sideways because you feel unseen. Wellness culture often disguises this obedience as virtue. “Do this morning routine, track that habit, fix this flaw.” It looks like care, but it’s just another form of performance.
The woman in her seventies said that letting go of the need to please others felt like freedom, not loneliness ([Global English Editing][2]). The magick practitioners said the same thing in their own way. They weren’t waiting for a referee to score their rituals anymore. They were reclaiming the right to define success for themselves ([Reddit][3]). And the psychologists, dry and methodical as they can sound, were saying the same thing all along: autonomy and honest connection are health behaviors, not luxuries ([American Psychological Association][1]).
Next Steps
So what do you actually *do* with this tomorrow? Start small. Run an autonomy check. Pick one thing you’re doing out of obligation this week and ask, “What would this look like if I did it for me instead of for approval?” Then keep a results log, not an approval log. Borrow from the magick crowd: write down what you tried and what happened, without judgment. Treat your life like an experiment, not a courtroom transcript. Try an approval fast. Pick one tiny situation where you simply don’t explain or justify yourself. Not to be reckless, just to practice not narrating your choices for points. Finally, strengthen relatedness on your own terms. Text one person who supports who you are now, not who they want you to be.
That’s what autonomy looks like in practice. It’s not “I don’t need anybody.” It’s “I get to be in my own life.” Psychology calls it intrinsic motivation. The seventy-something calls it peace. The witch calls it practice. It’s all the same muscle—the one that lets you move through the world as your own witness. You don’t have to earn the right to live your own way by burning out or waiting until old age. You’re already allowed. The work now is building proof for yourself.
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**References**
[1] [American Psychological Association: Self-Determination Theory overview]
[2] [Global English Editing: “The art of being happier in your 60s without needing anyone’s approval”]
[3] [Reddit: “How did you further develop your intuitive craft/magick?” in r/magick]
Pragmatic Alchemy™ 
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