I left a work call feeling so embarrassed. My face was heating up, my hands were slightly shaking. You might think some kind of public humiliation had happened and I was a helpless victim, but it was nothing like that.
Then why was I so flabbergasted?
Because I felt like they weren't as excited as I had hoped they would be.
External validation can run that deep. You have no external reason to feel embarrassed because nobody is embarrassing you, but the lack of validation triggers the embarrassment. You have no external reason to feel shame, but you still feel shame. Nothing happened to make you suffer, but the lack of celebration, validation, and cherishing makes you suffer.
I gave you an example of my personal experience with work but there are so many cases where the dependency on external validation can make you suffer. Not feeling confident, not feeling lovable, not feeling deserving of happiness, and so on.
What makes this phenomenon happen in the first place and how do we get freedom from it?
What Is Validation, Really?
In order for us to receive validation, we have to have some idea of what it is. Suppose I tell you that you may or may not have a maengjang. Does that mean anything to you? Unless you speak Korean and know what maengjang is, you don't know if you have it or not. It's the word for appendix — and I don't have one since I had it removed when I had appendicitis, but you might have it!
So you seek validation. You've had an experience of receiving validation, and you know what that feels like. But what exactly is it that you received?
Is it a package with a physical form? Is it a sequence of specific words? Is it in the tone of how someone says it to you? What is validation?
The first thought error is that people think validation is a globally meaningful concept. They are 1000% sure they can tell validation from non-validation. But validation is such a personally defined concept — what you actually want is someone to give you validation in exactly the way you want it. And nobody owes you that responsibility.
The Power Dynamic of the Validator
How you receive validation is up to how you interpret incoming stimuli from the world. As much as what you receive as validation matters, so does who gives it.
If a 5-year-old neighbor tells you that you did a bad job at something, are they a reliable authority figure to make that call? But if your CEO tells you the same thing, doesn't it hit a lot harder?
It matters who gives or withholds the validation from us. But there's an interesting dynamic here.
On one hand, the person who validates you has more power than you. This is why people can't self-validate — people usually hold themselves in low regard, so self-validation feels like a cop-out. "I want to be validated by people who know more and better than me."
But on the other hand, who is the person who gets to decide who is better than you? You. Somehow you are a person who's not good enough to self-validate but at the same time a person who's so capable they get to determine who's worthy of validating them.
Breaking the Validation Loop
Why the need for validation is so difficult to overcome is this: without external guidance we have no way of knowing if we're doing the right thing or not. Nobody wants to do the wrong thing and walk backwards in life when walking forward takes this much energy.
What we need to recognize to break from this loop of validation is two things.
1. Validation ≠ Condition
We are so used to living a life of conditions. We follow best practices and — perhaps more importantly — we remember being punished for sub-optimal choices. We forget that we have the freedom and are actually allowed to make mistakes and learn from them.
Someone might not approve of what you do. But you don't need anybody's approval to live your life the way you want to. It certainly feels like a crime to do something your loved ones might not approve of. In fact, that's why a majority of personal dreams die: they never overcome the resistance of validation.
You hold the biggest power in your life because you are the only one who gets to decide what you do or don't do. Other people's opinions are optional — and they are ultimately a thought someone has inside of their head. No thought has superiority or inferiority against another.
2. Dependent Origination
So what is the actual condition for the life you want to live? We spend too little time actually thinking about what matters.
If you want to grow tomatoes in your yard, what you don't need is your parent's permission. What you do need is tomato seeds. If you want to have an online business, what you need is to register with your state — and the approval of your coworkers is something you can live without.
When we see beyond the pursuit of validation — which seems like such a convincingly real need — we find that we actually spent such little time studying and understanding the actual conditions to reach our goal.