Do things for your own satisfaction. Consider praise from others to be a bonus. If you don't work for their validation in the first place, you won’t need it to feel satisfied once it’s done.
Your past is just an image in your mind. But you decide to live as if that image were your reality. Even worse, you Photoshop that image. You make it worse than it was and it slowly dims the future image you could create.
The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.
— J.R.R. Tolkien
Master your mind.
Read more. Consume less. Produce more. React less. Focus intensely on one thing. Zoom out and let go of everything. Train. Recover.
Your mind is the operating system for reality. If you don't program it, others will, and that never ends well.