Stop Being a Sociotropist. 

On duty, effectiveness and respect as the only currency worth chasing. 

On duty, effectiveness and respect as the only currency worth chasing.
There is a scene in Fences, August Wilson’s play about a Pittsburgh sanitation worker named Troy Maxson, that I have never forgotten. Troy’s son wants something ordinary from his father, warmth, approval, the sense that his father is on his side because he likes him. Troy shuts the door on that idea, hard. He tells the boy plainly: liking him was never the deal. Duty was the deal. He feeds him, houses him and protects him because the boy is his son and that is his responsibility to carry, not because affection was ever promised. Then he says the line that should be carved into the wall of every office, every home and every WhatsApp family group in this country: stop worrying about whether people like you, and start making sure they are doing right by you.

I did not understand that scene the first time I watched it. I understand it completely now, and I want to unpack it properly, because there is a piece of mentorship that sits right next to it that finishes the thought.

You Are Not Money

My mentor used to put it this way: you are not money. Only money is liked by everyone,  by monks, by pastors, by priests, by the pious and the corrupt in equal measure. There are no vegans when it comes to money. Everybody eats. There are people who claim to dislike it, who perform discomfort around it, who insist it corrupts, but genuine aversion to money is rare enough that it has clinical names.
Chrometophobia, or chrematophobia, is an irrational fear of money itself,  the coins, the notes, the handling of it. Plutophobia is narrower: a fear of wealth and of becoming wealthy, usually rooted in the belief that money corrupts the soul. “Money-averse” is the softer, non-clinical cousin,  a subconscious association of money with guilt, greed or shame, which quietly sabotages people’s own financial progress. None of these are common. Most people who claim to hate money are performing a virtue they do not actually hold, or they are simply unwell. You do not have chrometophobia. Nobody in your family line has ever refused a rand. And that is precisely the point my mentor was making: money is liked by everyone because money has no opinions, no boundaries, no spine and no standards. It does not correct you. It does not tell you the truth when the truth is unpopular. It simply circulates, agreeable to whoever happens to be holding it.
If you are chasing universal liking, you are chasing the psychology of a banknote. And you were not built to be spent.

“In this life, do not seek to be liked. Obsess over being effective, with care and respect. Being liked should be the cherry on top,  never the cake.”

Even rooibos, that most inoffensive of Cape shrubs, brewed into the gentlest tea on the continent, has people who cannot stand the taste of it. If a plant that harms no one can still collect enemies, who exactly do you think you are that you should be spared?. Consider the largest case study available to us. Jesus walked on water, turned water into wine, raised the dead, and fed thousands from five loaves and two fish. He did nothing but good, publicly and repeatedly, and they crucified him for it anyway. If the most generous life on record could not purchase universal approval, approval was never for sale. Somebody, somewhere, will always want to bring the good thing down. That is not a flaw in your character. That is the tax on existing in public.

Why We Chase It Anyway

The pull toward being liked is not vanity. It is old machinery, and it was once genuinely useful. For most of human history, exclusion from the group meant exposure, starvation or death by predator,  approval was survival, not ego. That wiring is still live. Social acceptance activates the ventral striatum, the same reward circuitry triggered by food and by money,  which is why my mentor’s comparison lands so precisely. And rejection is not merely unpleasant; it activates the anterior cingulate cortex, the same pain pathway your brain uses for a broken bone. Your nervous system genuinely cannot tell the difference between being left out of the group chat and being physically hurt. This is also why money softens social pain so effectively,  it functions as a buffer, a proxy for the safety that group approval used to provide. None of this makes wanting to be liked a weakness. It makes it human. The danger begins when the want curdles into a need.

What the Need Costs You
THE HIDDEN DANGERS OF NEEDING TO BE LIKED
Identity erosion, constantly editing your opinions and values to stay likeable leaves you with no fixed self underneath.
Burnout and anxiety, putting everyone else’s comfort ahead of your own boundaries is a chronic stressor, not a kindness.
Vulnerability to manipulation,  a desperate need for approval blunts your judgement of character, which is exactly what predatory and narcissistic people are trained to find and exploit.
Inescapable hostility,  if goodness itself does not buy universal approval, then chasing it is not a stretch goal. It is a trap with no exit.

Psychologists have a word for the deeper pattern: sociotropy, an excessive investment in how others feel about you, at the expense of who you actually are. Left unchecked, it does not just make you agreeable. It makes you unreliable,  because a person who bends to whoever is in front of them cannot be trusted to hold a position when it matters.

The Compass Shift

Troy Maxson’s line to his son is the correction: stop asking whether they like you, start making sure they are doing right by you. That single reversal moves your entire compass from a variable you cannot control to standards you can enforce.

OLD OBJECTIVE: TO BE LIKED
•  A variable emotional state,  it moves with someone else’s mood.
•  Dependent on external whims you cannot govern.
•  Requires bending your values to fit the room.
↓
NEW OBJECTIVE: TO BE EFFECTIVE
•  Measured in results and output, not mood.
•  Grounded in your own autonomy, not their approval.
•  Driven by duty and self-respect, not applause.

Three Pillars to Anchor Yourself  In.

Effectiveness and accountability. Move the metric from how people feel about you to the quality of what you actually produce. A leader does not need to be liked to be respected, provided the execution is consistent and the delivery is reliable. Colleagues, congregants, children and clients will forgive a great deal of personal distance if the work is solid and the word is kept.
Duty and responsibility. Troy Maxson looked after his son out of duty, not affection, and that is precisely why it held. Feelings fluctuate with the weather. Duty does not. When you anchor your actions in an internal code rather than in the mood of an audience, you stop needing that audience’s applause to keep functioning. This is close to what we mean by ubuntu properly understood, umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu is not a call to be agreeable to everyone; it is a call to carry your obligations to the people around you, whether or not they are in the mood to thank you for it.
Respect over affection. Demand fair treatment, clear boundaries and honest conduct from the people around you. Respect is transactional,  it can be earned, enforced and withdrawn on the basis of behaviour. Liking is not; it is subjective, weather-dependent and largely outside your control. You cannot dictate whether someone likes you. You can absolutely dictate what you will tolerate in your presence. The best outcome available to you was never universal affection. It is a room full of people who say: I do not agree with him, I did not enjoy every page of his book, I do not always like him,  but I respect him, because he is competent, he does the work, and he says what he means with his chest.

Close

Stop chasing being liked. It is not a neutral habit sitting quietly in the background of your life,  it is actively pulling you down, one small self-betrayal at a time. It does not build you. It does not protect you. It does not pay your rent, raise your children, or keep your word. Effectiveness does.

Duty does.

Respect does.

Go and get those instead.
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Dr. Mzamo Masito

Between Thoughts- Intellectual Musings

Where the uncomfortable questions get a seat at the table..