International bestselling author and speaker Dr. Miles Monroe once said that a man is drawn to praise.
I really resonate with his words because for much of my life I equated praise with success. I was conditioned by culture, movies, cartoons, family, and school to believe that succeeding in life was imperative. My hunger for success clothed as praise led me to a career choice I never thought I’d make: male exotic dancer—or fantasy salesman, as I often said.
Let’s take a trip down memory lane. I was nineteen years old, and I didn’t have anything very praiseworthy in my life at the time. I had just finished my first year at Morehouse College in Atlanta and had no desire to go back. I hadn’t exactly flunked out, but my grades weren’t great, and my heart was so broken by a relationship that had ended that moving back to LA with absolutely no idea what I was going to do next seemed like a better option than staying in Atlanta for my sophomore year.
I’d always wanted to become an actor, but I’d struck out on almost every audition I’d gone to. Although my major in college was computer science, my fallback plan if acting didn’t work out was modeling. I’d had some success with it in Atlanta, but not enough for me to stay there. At least that’s what my nineteen-year-old brain kept telling me.
At that time I was working at a fast food restaurant for minimum wage, which wasn’t enough to finance my basic needs and the extravagant dating experiences I desired to take my prospects on. Add to that, I was on academic probation for the first time in my life. I was fed up.
I’d had enough of Atlanta. I was ready to go home to LA.
Not long after arriving back home to my old neighborhood, I ran into a friend from high school. While we were catching up, she mentioned she was dating a male exotic dancer.
“You need to meet him,” she told me. “I remember the way your shirt came off in every single pep rally in high school and how you danced around to get the whole school worked up. You’d be a natural.”
If we’d had that conversation a year earlier, I probably would have laughed and said something about how I had bigger dreams for myself. But now with no better prospects, I said, “Okay. I’ll meet with him.”
A day or two later I found myself at a club off infamous Crenshaw Boulevard with my friend and her exotic-dancer boyfriend. I told myself I was just going to check things out. But besides my friend, her boyfriend, and me, another presence was there: my bruised ego. And it needed a win.
I was hired on the spot. By the end of the night, I was onstage dancing, 95 percent exposed, and doing what I believed I did best: enticing the crowd. I knew I could grab their attention and keep all eyes on me. More than that, I loved the high of being showered with praise using nothing but my looks and my body to get it. What I didn’t know was the enormous influence that door I had just opened would have over my ability to resist succumbence in the next season of my life.
Seeking God’s Approval Leads to True Identity
Despite growing up in church where my grandfather was the founder and pastor and still involved in Wednesday-night Bible studies, I kept going back to that stage night after night. For the next five years I worked up the most enticing dance routines that prompted the audience to give not only all the money they could but all their praise as well. And that praise became my addiction to the point that I traded personal safety and my mental health for it.
I felt very successful as a dancer, and by every measure I was, but only because I forced myself to ignore my authentic self screaming from the basement of my subconscious:
This isn’t who you are!
The applause you hear isn’t the approval you need.
You were made for more than the version of yourself they pay to see.
You can light up a room without dimming your soul.
You know the prayers your grandmother prayed over you.
Does this look like the answer?
The Praise of People Never Lasts
That was a lot to ignore. After a while I couldn’t.
I knew how to elicit the desired response from my audience. But it was all smoke and mirrors. My performance on the stage was just that, a performance. Every compromise cracked open a little more of my soul that my authentic self was shouting through.
Every quiet moment, every empty ride home, every time the music stopped, I’d hear that voice saying, This isn’t you. This isn’t it. This isn’t home. God will let you feel the weight of a crown you were never meant to wear so that you’ll crave the one he designed for you.
Seeking God’s Approval Defines True Success
As the years of dancing dragged on, I could not escape the sense that I was trying to win a race that wasn’t meant for me. I knew how to succeed. The problem was, my what was all wrong.
By chasing applause and praise, I had allowed myself to embody someone I was not. As a result, I could no longer consistently hold on to what mattered to me.
I had defined success in a way that left me completely dependent on the reactions of others to my actions, rather than on my actions themselves.
Cheers and applause and praise felt good, but what did any of it have to do with me? The cheers always faded. The applause always stopped. And the praise was always temporary.
In the end, none of it really had anything to do with me. Yet that’s where my definition of success had to begin: with me.
Adapted from Designed to Succeed by Kevin Olusola and Donovan Donnell. Copyright Kevin Olusola and Donovan Donnell © (June 2026) by Zondervan. Used by permission of Zondervan, www.zondervan.com.
About the Author
Donovan Dee Donnell is co-author of Designed to Succeed. He is a former male exotic dancer who experienced his own transformation through Christ and now lives out his purpose as a published author, international life coach, and keynote speaker, creating and leading trainings in the fields of leadership, entrepreneurship, relationships, personal development, mental health, and suicide prevention throughout the U.S. and abroad.
Donovan has helped countless individuals clarify their purpose and obtain personal success without compromising their faith, morals, or identity. His signature approach of confronting life’s greatest complexities through a biblical and psychological lens has unlocked breakthroughs for many seeking the freedom to live a fulfilled life.
