You can have the crowd’s applause and still miss the only approval that lasts.

Approval from a crowd is real and it is unstable. It arrives for whatever is visible, it moves on quickly, and it can be at its loudest during the seasons you are least proud of, which is what makes it such poor evidence about how you are doing. Something can look successful from the outside and be quietly off course.

Find a measure that does not depend on the room: prayer, a journal, one person who knows the parts nobody claps for. Check against that regularly. Applause is pleasant, and it was never designed to tell you the truth.