Being Validated vs. Validation Seeking

We all do it, but we have been told not to seek validation from others. And I think we've gotten this wrong.  In this episode, I break down the difference between being validated by others as a way to create belonging and connection versus seeking it out to avoid negative emotions.     

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Transcript

 Hey girls. What's up? How are we doing? Um, I know not everyone who listens to this podcast is a girl, but you're all my girls. You know what I'm saying? Where my girls at from the front to back. Um, how are you doing? I'm doing great. I am like, I popped into my office. I'm like popping today because I was literally just listening to Britney while I was getting ready and I was listening to the Britney album.

Which gave us slave, but I forgot how like Janet inspired that album is. Um, and it just, it made my heart sing because it's like Janet Light. And, but it's so good. Still like it. It gives you like that Janet vibe, but it's a little bit lighter like the song anticipating. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you need to go listen to it, right?

Anticipating definitely has a Janet vibe. It's giving me like all for you. And then I think this song's called Let Me Be, which is giving like a little bit of, um, doesn't really matter. It's giving that vibe. So anyway, it just feels good. It's like feel good music. And then we also got the like Britney Justin Duet, which unfortunately never went anywhere because their relationship imploded.

But I really, I thought we were gonna get like a fierce like video from them. It would've been amazing. It would've been giving you like Michael Janet's scream vibes. I bet the dancing would've been off the chain, but we never got it. We just never got that moment, and I'm sad about it. Go revisit that album if you haven't listened to it in a while.

Or like if you've only listened to Slave. Right. Cuz that's the one that kind of comes up. But like boys, like, there's just so many good tracks on that album. Ugh. It's just, it really is like, A piece of pop perfection, which I actually don't know if that album was really received that well, but I really don't give a fuck.

Like I never care how things were received. Like I'm a Christina Aguilera Stan, like I was a fan of hers first. I just always feel like she's a little bit ahead of her time and people don't really appreciate it. Like she was using CIA before everyone else was using Sia, and she has all these great tracks on Bionic that like that entire album, people were not ready for.

Anyway, this is not, I'm just talking to you. Uh, I'm just describing to you why I'm in such a good move and also giving you some pop diva. Anyway. Couple things before we get into today's topic. I've gotten some, some feedback from people who are using the intuitive scheduling workbook, but I'd love more. I want to hear how you're using it.

I want to hear if you've adapted things, I want to hear what specific sections of it are speaking to you. I want to hear if it's been useless for you and it really didn't give you any new information and nothing new to work on. Whatever. I want it all, uh, want it all. So if you have been. Interacting with the workbook at all.

Please feel free to email me at Chris the only chris hale.com, or you can also just slide into the dms on Instagram. It's also the only Chris Hale. I'm on TikTok, but I don't, I wouldn't slide into my dms there because I hardly ever check it. Or if we're friends on Facebook, slide into the dms there, message me, I'm here for it.

I'd love to know. Second thing is y'all, I'm working on. My first ever group program, so remember a while back I launched, hit It and get it six weeks where we're gonna like get your goal or we're gonna move you forward on your goal. Well, I decided that hit it and get it is the perfect vehicle for a group program, so that's gonna be coming up soon.

So if you want more information about that, I would get on my mailing list. I would go to the. Website and go to working together and there's a little, um, spot for Hit It and get it, get on that specific mailing list because I'm gonna be sending out information to y'all on that list first, and then to the whole list afterwards.

But if you want like, Information as soon as it's ready, it's gonna go to that list first. So that's that. So go get on that mailing list if you're interested in participating in a group coaching program with me. More details to come in the future. So that's it for little updates now into today's topic.

So as a lot of my topics are, this one was inspired by real conversations with one of my besties, and she was really talking about like, Seeking validation from like people in her life around decisions and things that she's doing specifically around the amount that she works, um, being compared to other people and like decisions that they've made.

I know I'm being really vague, but I don't wanna give away too many, like, personal details, um, around this story. But I think it's, it's a common thing in people's lives to be seeking validation. And I wanna talk about it because I feel like. We're getting it wrong or we've gotten it wrong, especially in the self-help, self-improvement, whatever, what, whatever you want to call this, that we do here, especially in that space.

I think that we've been getting it wrong because we've taken on this very, like individualistic, that's a lot to say, individualistic point of view on it, where we're supposed to just be able to only validate ourselves, not need. Any kind of reinforcement from the outside. And if we do need reinforcement from the outside, then we are weak, we're doing it wrong, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

So I wanted to address this today because I, I think like for anyone who's listening, I wanna help you kind of navigate the space of being validated versus seeking validation, because I think that those are two different things, or I'm gonna talk about them in. Two different ways that I think will help to kind of clarify for you the value in being validated and how seeking validation can be.

Really destructive for us. So I wanna say the first thing is like, we're never gonna stop seeking validation. You can't stop seeking like the approval or the validation, the co-signing of people in your life. It's a biological imperative. We've talked about this before. We need people, we need connection.

We need a sense of belonging from people. If we look at, say like Maslow's hierarchy of needs, like. Belonging, right? Is what is in there. Like feeling like we're a part of the group. And we know this, if we've studied sociology at all, you know, we have our in groups and our outgroups, we all have those, right?

Like your family is an in group, your circle of friends is an in group. Your profession, there's an in group there, right? And we do wanna feel connected and like we belong to these groups. And one of the ways that we do that, Is through validation in some way, right? Like, am I behaving in a way that is an, an alignment with the values of this group?

And it's actually interesting, um, I didn't know that this was gonna happen, but like perfect timing. I was listening to Jonathan VanNess podcast this morning, um, getting Curious with Jonathan VanNess, and the topic was all about gossip. It was really interesting to see the doctor that was on. To see like her talk about ways in which gossip.

Is really helpful and productive. And especially like for queer people. Like she defines gossip as like basically like an evaluative. An evaluative, an evaluative, whatever. Basically like evaluating another person, right? So it's like we're taking. An evaluation, like two people are talking about someone else and we're kind of evaluating them in some way, right?

So that can be good or bad. So in the case of the queer community, it's like evaluating whether or not someone is a safe person to say, come out to. That's really important. Like we need to know who our allies are. So in that sense, gossiping can be a f uh, a way to create safety and. I think it's the same thing around like validation, right?

It's not good or bad. It's like why are we using it? What are we doing with it? Right? Because we can also gossip in a way that like seeks to destroy other people. I think we have to look at all of this in the context of like, we aren't just people living on our own in the world without reference to other people, right?

Like there is this like us. In reference to the world and other people and are we like fitting in And a lot of times gossip was, is used as a way to like sort of. Police, other people's behavior slash like communicate what the rules are within a group of people. Right. And I wanna say Jonathan and, and Dr.

Melton Yuel, that was the guest, um, they go into this in depth. They did a lot of heavy lifting on this. So if you're really interested in understanding this a bit more, Go listen to getting curious with Jonathan Meez because, um, I don't wanna like go into that whole episode. They already did that work, so go listen to that.

But Right. We can use gossip as a way to kind of communicate, um, what our values are, right? So if it's like someone is cheating and we like gossip about them cheating, and we're like, we don't cheat, like, we're kind of displaying that. Like we think cheating is bad. So you can like, Expand that out, right into what other situations we might use gossip for.

So anyway, I think that it all is relevant and it all ties together in terms of like the way we're socialized. If we look at it from a sociological standpoint, all of these concepts kind of roll around together and explain a lot of our behavior. In terms of like why we gossip or why validation from the people around us or greater society kind of matters, right.

I think we can, we can sort of see the parallels there in those situations, but I think when it becomes maybe destructive for us is when we are seeking validation to assuage our self doubt or places where we think we're inadequate or that there's some deficiency in us. And this is different from the like kind of looking around and saying like, okay, am I in alignment with the people around me?

It's really, again, what we've talked about in the past trying to solve for a feeling, and this is when I think that it can become a problem, and that's when it becomes like seeking validation because we're seeking it. In order to let us know that we're worthy, that there isn't a deficiency, that there isn't something wrong with us, and we can become dependent on ne like needing that from an outside source and never finding it for ourselves, which I think whenever you're doing anything like a creative endeavor, when you have a creative pro project going on, you first have to go to yourself and say like, is this something.

That is an alignment with me, with my needs, my values, my desires, and be able to kind of do that validation first for yourself and not need other people to cosign on the decisions that you're making. So this is where like that self authority comes in. This to me, like the need or the seeking of validation is basically in contrast, it's the antithesis of intrinsic authority.

Or it can really get in the way of you creating intrinsic authority. So when I think about intrinsic authority, it's it's about me being the person that governs my life, me being the reference point, right? Not using the outside as the reference point, but I'm gonna start as the reference point. And then I'm gonna go out from here and hold up everything against.

My beliefs and I do wanna be open-minded. I do wanna be willing to change my beliefs. Right? That's the other thing that can happen is like, When we go for this binary of like needing all validation from other people or only needing to be validated by myself, we do run the risk of not being open to other people's opinions.

And I see this a lot with people who are trying to work on people pleasing. They start to think that anytime they do something for another person, that they're people pleasing and it's like, maybe not like sometimes we just like to do things for other people. Sometimes it's, you know, it is a socialized thing, but like it's not that big a deal.

It doesn't mean that like we're trying to influence the way that people think about us. And again, sometimes, like if you're a person who is a member of a marginalized group, like it could be for safety. We don't wanna judge ourselves or be un needlessly. Mean to ourselves around the things we sometimes choose to do in order to keep us safe.

So I just wanna make all of those distinctions. I also think that there's like an intersectionality aside from that, aside from maybe being a person who holds like different and multiple marginalized identities, there's the intersectionality of the things that we're working on, right? So if you are someone who.

Is a people pleaser or tends toward people pleasing behavior, you might be more likely to be looking for validation from outside sources and vice versa. Right? So there can, we have to look at that as a whole, like you're a whole person and there might be several different things going on that kind of come together.

That are impacting the way you're showing up in a situation and whether or not you're able to move forward based primarily on validating yourself versus needing someone else to tell you that what you're doing is okay. And I wanna make all these distinctions because one, understanding there is a need for connection and belonging is important.

So that we can give ourselves a break on this idea that we should be able to just move through life without caring what anybody else thinks about us. That's just not gonna happen. So if you've been thinking that that's something that you need to be able to do and you've been beating yourself up because you haven't been able to quite get there, guess what?

You're probably never getting there. And it's probably a good thing because otherwise you might be a sociopath. And the second thing is when we're starting to think about putting our work out into the world, Or if we're already putting our workout into the world, being validated is kind of necessary.

And what I mean by that is like if you're, if, if you're in a service industry, like if you serve people, like I'm a life coach, I need proof of concept. I need to know that people out there want. What I'm selling them. So that's a form of being validated. I can go on Instagram or do a Google search and figure out whether or not people are searching for the thing that I'm selling.

Right? So right now I'm selling like the intuitive scheduling, right? That's a freebie that I have that I'm offering. Do people want that? Yeah, they fucking do. There are so many people who are struggling with creating a schedule. That looks and feels the way that they want it to look and feel. That really works with their own energy flow and when they're most productive and the available time that they have because they've been told that they should just be able to do it.

And that if they're not making time for certain things and they don't care about them, right, that like they're not priorities if they're not prioritizing them. And that's just maybe not true. And I think the messaging out there has been so intense. And it's so wrapped up in productivity, culture, and capitalism and the whole 40 hour work week and all of those things that I can really see that people are desiring a different way.

So I have proof of concept there. I know that people want it, and when I know that people want it, when I can be validated. By going out into the world and seeing that people want it, and it allows me to improve the way I'm being of service. Because once I know that they want it, then I can start to really think about, well, what are all the components of it?

What is getting in their way? And that's what led me to create a resource because I went through all the steps of figuring out like, okay, I know that people are desiring this, but like, Like what is the impact I want it to have? Or what is it, the impact that they're looking for it to have? So this idea of being validated in the world is super important when we're like putting our work out there.

And I think the same thing for visual art or choreography or music. Is there a market for that? Like if you wanna sell it, if you just wanna make it, I don't think it matters so much. If you just wanna make it and it feels good for you and you love it, I think you will. You'll find people who also appreciate it.

But. Living in a capitalist society, we have to decide how we're going to interact with capitalism, right? Cuz it's not going anywhere. So if the point is to make money, then yeah, definitely follow your bliss, but also make sure that there are people who are willing to buy your bliss. I think that that's twofold.

So this is where like being validated makes sense for the production of our work, but at the same time, we don't wanna personalize it so much. Or personalize our work so much that it feels defeating if people aren't right away responding to it. You might need to learn how to sell what? Sell your work.

Like, literally, like make people interested in it. And I'm sure there are ways to do that when people know a little bit about something, they're more interested in it. So I think about like a piece of choreography. If it has a really engaging title or a title that makes like people curious, they're already gonna be more engaged in the work.

Then they would be, if it like was Untitled or it just didn't have a very interesting title, or you just, you know, you use the, the, the title of the song. Nothing wrong with that. If the title of the song is engaging, but if it's not right, how do you create interest in your audience for wanting to consume your work?

And then whether they like it or not doesn't necessarily matter because we create work for people to have an opinion about, right? So a lot of times people are willing to consume stuff. And then have an opinion about it that is not favorable. We do it with movies and television all the time. I don't think we should be worrying so much about whether or not people like it so much as whether or not people are willing to consume it and have an opinion about it.

So I hope that this clarifies a little bit the difference between being validated, right? Getting validation. Proof of concept, connection, belonging, safety versus seeking validation. Looking to solve for an emotion, looking for other people's opinions to eradicate yourself doubt or looking for other people's opinions and cosigning to help you feel adequate or more than adequate because when we can differentiate between the two.

And understand what we're looking for. That's where the work begins. Because if I know that I'm looking to solve for an emotion, a negative emotion that I don't like feeling, then I know that's personal work that I need to do, right? I need to like focus in what's the self-coaching I need to do around finding validation for myself, self-love, self-trust, who are the people in my life who I feel like I can lean on?

That are going to help me bolster my sense of self, right? We do need people for that versus looking for that like proof of concept. Looking for that. Is this something that is going to be useful or helpful to the people out in the world? All right, friends, that's what I got for you this week. I hope that you have an amazing week, and I will talk to you soon.

Bye now.