Keychain Approval

I have multiple devices (Ipad Pro 11", MacBook Pro mid-2014, and iPhone XR) that I'm trying to 'approve' via iCloud. The instructions tell me to go to another of my devices to approve a device, however, none of my devices 'have approval' and thus I can't approve any of them. This seems to be a circular problem without a solution without resetting my encrypted data. Am I missing something, or is this just a major flaw?