Release the Need for External Validation

The need for external validation is the single most dysfunctional of all human needs. The key to recovery is ever more active external elegance because it does not need external validation.

Is it possible that the need for external human validation is the single biggest evil and waste of time on our planet? Haven’t all great thinkers had the common strength that they needed very little external human validation? Since we were all very small, we have been taught to treasure external human awards, praise, approval, and admiration. Isn’t this, by far, the best way to ensure a constant demand for products and services? Is this just so much purple Kool-Aid? If so, it is highly addictive. For example, right now, I am hoping someone will read this blog and leave a comment reinforcing the concept that we can and must live without the need for external human validation. Isn’t that an amazing contradiction?—wanting validation that I should not want validation!
The rule of 97 comes into play today. (1)”97% of all meaningful validation and 100% of typ must come from within myself”, (2)”97% of all people in my life will never know I existed, (3)”the 3% of people who know I existed will forget 97% of all they ever knew about me.
I am seeing life as a train, with physical perception as the 7th railcar from the end and external validation as the last railcar.
This is good because I can choose the railcar where I want to spend my time, thought and energy.

So how do I do this? How do I know what is normal and what isn’t as far as validation? For example, I texted my boyfriend and said “I miss u” and he didn’t text back. I have totally obsessed about it for 2 days. Is that an unhealthy need for validation, or a normal need to know the person you like misses you too?

I came to this realisation when I realised I was on tenterhooks awaiting the arrival of my bother, hoping he would approve of my new appartment.Also have been trying since forever to get my parents approval. and of the ubiquitous Others. got to stop doing that.

Yes really!

After being surrounded by droves of the crippling insecure… by cripplingly insecure i mean people who cannot do anything with out the input of others: “how should i tell the waitress that i don’t want ice in my soda?” “where do i buy a sympathy card” “do you think my socks look okay? i mean really- do they?”; people who are so insecure that they are rendered almost lazy by it, I’ve come to realize I’m not as insecure as I thought.

Perhaps I’m lucky to have been afflicted with so many who are helplessly depleted of esteem to the point of lethargy which has in turn prompted me to be more proactive in my own endeavors. Or it could be that I’ve shelled out so much repeated reassurance and direction for those too worried that they will muck up their own direction that’s it’s filled me with some false sense of ableness.

Eitherway, I’ve come to realize that it doesn’t matter what others think at all. I mean at all.

It comes down to this one reason: You are going to die.

Someday everyone around you including yourself will die. Who knows how, but when you’re lying on your death bed about to submit to eternity- how others percieved you isn’t going to be on your mind, it’s going to be what you’ve done, what you didn’t do and why and how. It’s not going to matter if the lady at the customer service booth hates you because you’re being annoying when returning something. It’s not going to matter if your first five boyfriends dumped you. It’s not going to matter if you’re friend from the fifth grade thought you were fat. It’s not going to matter.

What will matter is if you are self-satisfied, if you learned what you should have from the situations in your life and used them as tools to better yourself. you cannot fault yourself for trying and trying to improve- only congratulate yourself for doing what most people are too scared to do which is be constructive through critisism.

Think of all the time and energy you waste wondering what others think of you when you could use this time to make yourself better by your own terms and means. Self-esteem starts with the “self” not others. If you will it to, you can do it. Those who think they can’t are just too lazy to try.

Even more precise name of this goal would be – release the need for external validation in order to be happy! Release internal happiness with no particular reason.

I have just found out about this tight little group and will for sure share my experiences in my personal struggle to rid myself of the need for external validation and appreciation. My Goal is to be satisfied with my personal self esteem dependent not on others but for myself and my talents which I have been, in recent months, expanding on. I thank whoever in my first entry that made this thread and hope that we can each help each other reach our separate yet common goal of self actualization.

Sincerely
Alexzander

with this one… a certain need for extrenal validation rests in all of us… and I suspect I do not want to be a person who is completely without it.

Consider this one re-thought!

I’ve done my best, have not hurt anyone, and have the best of intentions… I can’t worry about what someone else thinks, or look for them to validate me~

unsolicited criticism (though it may be constructive) is probably my biggest issue to deal with~