Ep 182: Chasing Validation

Marie opens this episode fresh off the final call of the first-ever Moxie Mastermind cohort — and she is FEELING it. The women were in tears. Every single one named the Moxie group as one of the greatest sources of positive feeling in their last six months. And almost all of them are coming back for round two in September.

From that high, she dives into something she's been coaching heavily lately — a shift that her clients keep describing as total freedom: learning to need nothing in the way of external validation, while giving everything in the way of it.

This one's a game changer.

What you'll learn in this episode:

• Why needing external validation is one of the biggest things standing between you and making your idea real — and why the people who love you most still can't give you what you need
• The story of Marie leaving her career to start over, feeling sheepish sharing her vision, and why she had to believe in the "after" before anyone else could see it
• Why chasing external validation is chasing the dragon — it will never be enough, it will rob you of your authenticity, and it will pull you off your own internal compass
• The three things you actually have control over (hint: it's not what other people think of you) and why handing that power to someone else is the opposite of Moxie
• What a vulnerability hangover is, how to be with the feeling instead of running from it, and why embracing your "too-muchness" makes it lose its power
• Real client stories: the woman who stopped asking her partner if he was mad at her, the one who stopped checking in with her boss at the end of every day, the one who stopped fawning over her chaotic family — and what changed for all of them
• Why Marie doesn't believe in feeling neutral about positive feedback — receive it, soak it up, let it feel great — and what to do with negative feedback instead
• The two-part process: never need validation because you give it to yourself first — and always give it freely in the form of gratitude, appreciation, and presence
• Why that combination — needing nothing, giving everything — creates an ecosystem where nobody else controls how you feel, and your momentum becomes inevitable

Also in this episode:

• A sneak peek at the Moxie Mastermind September cohort (almost full — apply at dothebloom.com)
• The Pocket Moxie — an AI tool Marie is building to give her clients access to her full body of work anytime, right in their pocket
• And a little love letter to taking August completely off — by design, on purpose, unapologetically.
• The Moxie Mastermind September cohort is almost full. Apply now at dothebloom.com.

How to connect with Marie:

• On the Web | The Local Bloom
• Instagram: @the.bloom.coach
• All Things Marie on LinkTree

JOIN THE BLOOM ROOM!
We'll take all these ideas and apply them to our lives. Follow me on Instagram at @the.bloom.coach to learn more and snag a spot in my group coaching program!

Transcript

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Welcome And What We Build Here

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Welcome to the Bloom Your Mind Podcast, where we take all of your ideas for what you want and we turn them into real things. I'm your host, certified coach Marie McDonald. Let's get into it.

Moxie Wrap Up And September Spots

SPEAKER_01 0:27

Well, hello everybody, and welcome to episode number 182 of the Bloom Your Mind Podcast. So much fun stuff is happening in my world. Oh my gosh, I finished the first round of the Moxie today. So exciting. We are staying in touch for all of August, which I take off, which I'm going to talk about in just a minute. But we had our last call today, and the women were in tears, and every single woman, when they answered, they did a reflection on the last six months. And we said, What types of things, people, places gave you positive feelings this last six months? It was one of, like, you know, my whole series of questions. We spent a few weeks reflecting, and every person said, the Moxie girls, this room, looking forward to Wednesdays, being in this group, changed me so much, had a profound effect on my life, and was the thing that gave me positive feelings. It's changed who I am. And all of them are coming back in some way or another. Uh most of them are coming back to the next round and staying in it because everyone is just having such a blast. And it was really wonderful. So we are wrapping that up. We wrapped it up today, and the next one is starting in September. The room is almost full. Um, we have a couple spots left. So if you want to come into the Moxie, go to do thebloom.com and fill out your application right now. Grab your spot. Um, that crew of women is amazing, and we've got a ton of amazing new stuff coming. So, new iterations, new amazing things as part of everything that I do. We do retros, which is one of the things the Moxie women loved so much and said they were all incorporating into every element of their life. And so I always take the feedback from the favorite things, the things that could change, and I incorporate those changes. It's gonna be amazing. And so that's

Building Moxie Bots And Pocket Moxie

SPEAKER_01 2:16

happening. I also had a meeting this morning to kick off this little crew that's building a team of AI companions for me to help me with my work, with organizing my email and all the things, building a team of uh, I'm calling them the Moxie bots, an AI team, to help me organize myself. So that is so fun, and also building something called the Pocket Moxie, which is gonna be an AI app or an AI bot that supports my Moxie ladies so that they can uh get access to, you know, the the encyclopedia or this library of every single bit of my work. They'll have a little access point in their pocket all the time that knows me and can support them to help elevate their work all the time, like a little library, like a little me in their pocket, even though they all have access to me. Anyways, that's

Taking August Off By Design

SPEAKER_01 3:10

so fun. And I'm also wrapping up my work year here. I always take August off. I just that was one of the things when I designed my loo life, when I left my burnout cycle six years ago in the company I was leading, and I said, I'm gonna work half as much, earn at least twice as much, and love, do what I most love to do 95% of the time. And that's what I created. It's amazing. And I also said I want to take August off because I don't want to miss my children's childhood. I want to take it off. And that's what I do. And people, whenever they hear it, they say, What? How is that even possible? It's possible because I designed my whole life around it. I designed my whole business around it, and nobody blinks an eye. Everybody's like, great, no problem. So I'm off in August. It's gonna be so fun taking my kids on our annual road trip and doing all kinds of other wonderful things. Going to Hell's Kitchen, the Alicia Keys uh musical, and doing the cast party for that, and uh celebrating my son's birthday. It's gonna be wonderful. Doing some downtime, some paintings at home, and watching the garden continue to bloom. Figuratively and literally. Okay,

The Freedom Of Needing Nothing

SPEAKER_01 4:21

so today we are talking about how to need nothing and give everything, not in a toxic way, but in the form of validation. I have been doing a lot of coaching on this, having a lot of my clients kind of working on this and saying that they just feel total freedom in making this shift. So, what do I mean? Well, often what I see stopping people from making their ideas into a real thing is the need for external validation along the way. Validation that they're on the right track, that their idea is good, that they did a good job pitching their idea, that they look great, that they all different reasons. They don't we cannot have constant positive feedback. We cannot have constant validation. And even if we can have that, it's not good for us. So I'm gonna tell you why. So there's a lot of reasons why it's important for us to focus on not needing validation to come externally, not needing it, right? We can enjoy it, but not needing it. And I'm gonna give you a bunch of those reasons, and I'm gonna give you a process that you can use where you can need nothing to be well, to keep working, to stay in action, to stay motivated, need no external validation, need nothing. Enjoy it when it comes, but don't need it, and give everything only in regards to validation. And I'll tell you why that is total freedom. It allows you to accomplish anything that you want to accomplish because we are using the beautiful tool of our brilliant brains instead of the variable circumstantial external world. Because circumstances do not need to define our lives, our realities, and we are free when we stop the practice of looking to the circumstances around us to determine how we feel, how we act, how we think, how we perceive, how we behave, how we decide things. When we stop depending on circumstances around us to determine that, our reality becomes a moldable, bendable things where our efforts and our reality escalates quickly in our favor. I've seen it time and time again. Okay, here are the reasons. I'm gonna

Why External Validation Keeps You Stuck

SPEAKER_01 6:40

first create an argument for why this is an absolute game changer for you to stop looking for external validation. The first reason, reason number one, is because when our idea is in our head, whatever the thing is working that we're working on, whether that's changing our physical body, whether that is creating a business that doesn't exist yet, going, uh changing cities and creating a whole new reality. And I'll give you the example of when I went and changed my careers. I've talked about this before. I had a whole vision in my head. I'm gonna run retreats, I'm gonna have a podcast, I'm gonna teach online classes about what I'm passionate about. I am gonna coach female leaders, I'm gonna change the world by helping us all find our moxie, by changing, sort of transmuting the pain that I have lived through, the trauma that I have lived through into healing for myself, the world, and everybody whose lives I touch. I'm gonna write books, they're gonna be bestsellers, I'm gonna serve thousands of people. I shared some of these ideas. And I remember I felt sheepish. It felt ridiculous. I got some looks because the idea wasn't real yet. And the reality that I was in was so far away from that idea that people were like, okay, great, you're gonna do all that. And I mean, these are people that really believe in me too, but they still were like, okay, all right. I cannot, I could not depend on their belief in me. I had to believe in myself, in my vision enough that it was more powerful than the reality I was in right then. I call that believing in the after until it's real. And you know what happened? It worked. The best-selling book, that's that's next. I'm gonna write that next in 2027. I uh am excited about that. And I have served hundreds of people, not thousands yet, but that is just in progress. That is uh, what do we call it? Inevitable. That's the word I'm looking for. It is on its way. So these things, everything else that I said exists. And I had also told people I'm gonna love what I do all the time, every day. I'm gonna work long days. On the days when I work a long day, I'm gonna feel super energized and fulfilled. That is my reality every single day. So you can't depend on other people to validate your idea, your effort, your vision, because they won't. They can't, they can't see it. It's in your head, it doesn't exist yet. They can't be inspired by it unless you're in a super inspirational mode and you're sharing it with them, then they can. But you still cannot depend on them being inspired to keep you going. You got to create that inside yourself. Now, the second reason is because when we are uh chasing external validation, we're chasing the dragon. It will never end. We are chasing our tail in circles, like a little dog running in circles, barking at its own tail. We're stuck in a loop. We are going to need more and more and more of it. We become dependent on external validation to keep going. It's gonna rob us of our authenticity because we're chasing, we're gonna be acting in ways to receive validation instead of just being real. It's gonna rob us of our ability to make decisions clearly based on our values and our own internal compass because we'll make decisions based on external validation as the priority. Ew, right? We don't want that. We don't have control over that variable of whether people like or don't like, appreciate or don't appreciate what we're working on. So we're gonna chase that dragon, become dependent on it, and it's gonna influence and impede our progress in many areas. Third, we're giving our power away. When we create our own validation, it's within our control. We can pull it up anytime we want, we can create it. We only have control over what we focus on with our thoughts and our brain, our perspective on things, our energy, meaning how we feel, and our action, the action that we take. That's all we have control over. So when we are depending on someone else and something else and others around us to determine our focus, our belief in ourselves, our perception, our I'm on track, our motivation, all of that, our focus and our energy, which then determine how we act, right? If we are only gonna keep going if other people like what we do, we have no control. We have no power. Right? So we don't want to give our power away. Who wants to do that? Again, ew, we're not gonna do that. So creating our own internal validation gives us all our power. And lastly, it's our moxie, baby, embracing all the parts of us we thought we had to hide. We don't need validation, we're gonna give it to ourselves. We don't have to hide anything because we don't need people to like us or not like us. It means being hell of non-codependent, creating our own safety, our own motivation, our own validation. And it allows us to trust ourselves, which is the thing that creates success in people's lives when we follow through every time on our own di ideas and on what we committed to. So if I feel the need to seek something from somebody else, some validation from somebody else, every single time, my job is to give it to my self instead. If you need your partner, your romantic partner, to tell you you're beautiful in order to feel beautiful, that's codependence. If you need validation from a boss or a coworker, that's gonna create overwork and burnout. You're never gonna be able to just stand on your own two feet. That's the opposite of leadership, right? If we're out in a social situation, let's look at this one, and we need validation on how what we said, because we're like, oh, did I say something weird? Did I talk too much? Did I take up too much space? Was I too wild? Was I not wild enough? Was I not charismatic enough? Was I too weird? Whatever. We gotta give it to ourselves instead. Because if we're always waiting for someone to reach back out and say, you weren't weird, it's never gonna happen. And we're gonna get stuck in the wondering and the worry.

A Simple Self-Validation Process

SPEAKER_01 12:53

So, in that instance, here's what you do. First, you be with the feeling. If you're feeling awkward, if you have a bound of what is it, a vulnerability hangover or a boundary hangover, first be with that feeling of shame, of anxiety, of worry, whatever it is. Be right there with it. Hey, worry. I'm so glad you're here. You're here to protect me. Of course you are. I'm so grateful that you're here to protect me. Thank you for showing up, for having my back. What is it you want me to know? That's number one validation for the feeling, being with it. Where is it in your body? Drop down into your body. It'll only take 90 seconds, most feelings to pass through. Get some information from it. Then whatever it's telling you, oh, I think you were too much. I think you took up too much space. Maybe you did. Embrace it. Maybe I did take up too much space. Maybe I can be too much sometimes. Maybe I'm okay with that. We're all nobody's perfect, right? Embrace those little things about yourself and they will lose their power. And ironically, when you embrace your bigness, your too muchness, you stop needing to take up so much space. When you embrace your introversion, you're like, maybe I'm okay being introverted. Sometimes you're a little less introverted. Not that introversion is a bad thing. I'm just saying, whatever that thing is that you're critical about in yourself, if you totally embrace it and accept it, sometimes it stops being so big of a thing, anyways. It loses its power. You're just looking at what works and doesn't work, and then you can shift things a little bit. When we reject that feeling, that shame spiral, we end up doing more of it usually. We get a little weird, a little awkward. Here's some examples of how this creating our own validation has helped my clients.

Client Wins Without People Pleasing

SPEAKER_01 14:48

One of my clients used to always look at facial expressions, kind of threat scan, and ask her partner, Are you mad at me? Are you mad at me? After we did some work on this, now we tricked her brain into being like, if he's just making a facial expression, he's probably thinking about something totally different, which the data supported. He's probably just like passing gas or thinking about something from his day. And every single time she checked in with him before, it was actually one of those things, but she was still believing her brain that he was mad at her. So instead, now she literally just tells herself he's probably just passing gas or something and makes herself laugh. She never checks in with him anymore. She just knows he's never mad at me. She's not threat scanning anymore. She's just giggling about the way she tricked her brain. Literally. Another client used to check in with her boss before she left the office every day, despite having kicked ass all day and working an eight to nine hour day. She realized I'm just people pleasing. I'm just looking for like people pleasing him. I'm asking him if there's anything else he wants me to do, even though I know I'm done with my day and I did everything I needed to do. She doesn't do it anymore. And she feels so awesome. She's creating her own validation when she leaves. She just tells herself, yeah, that was a day well done. And she leaves with a peaceful heart. Another one with her family used to allow her family, who was all upset about all kinds of different things, she would just fawn over them. Try to take actions to make them feel better and seek validation that they weren't mad, right? Because they were all over the place. And now she gives herself her own validation. This is not me, this is them. She sets different boundaries and limits with her family, spends less time with them when she doesn't want to. And she feels so much more at peace. Same thing with clients with hormonal teenagers. Instead of asking them, Are you okay? Are you okay? Are you okay? She's like, Oh, they're hormonal. This is normal. And her kids just feel more relaxed around her. With businesses, I cannot tell you the progress that I see with people posting to social media and telling themselves, This is good, this is fine, this post was great. Going and leading a class, starting to promote their business, getting out there, being visible. And instead of needing a million likes or followers or people telling them that was great, they create their own validation and they show up consistently and their business thrives.

Enjoy Praise Then Give It Away

SPEAKER_01 17:22

So our goal is to never need external validation. That's step one. Never need it to be okay. And by doing that, we create our own power, we maintain our own momentum, we write our own future. It's inevitable. But we enjoy it when it comes because it feels great to get validation. So we soak it up, we love it, right? I know a lot of coaches and people will say, feel neutral, whether it's positive or negative. I think it's great to have positive feedback. So, like, I'm a fan of letting yourself feel thank you, receive things, feel great about the positive feedback. Feel neutral about negative feedback. I just think that's helpful to take the feedback, look at what you can do differently if you want to, consider it. So never need validation, but enjoy it when it comes. So that's the never needing. And the second part is always give it because it does feel great. And words create reality. So when we walk around in the world and we say, Hey, that dress looks great on you. Oh my gosh, I love how that speech went. You did so great in that presentation. Here's the specific ways I thought you killed it. In the way of validation, in the way of gratitude. Thank you so much for taking out the trash today. That was such a big help. Thank you for taking care of signing the kids up for camp. Thank you for showing up and helping me with my event. Thank you. So that's the always give. Because if we're all always giving validation, it would be great. But we all need to not need it to be okay. So never need the validation because we create our own safety. We create our own love. We are responsible for how we feel. We can enjoy it when it comes to us, but we never need it to be okay. And also, whenever it's authentic for us, we'll give it. Lots of gratitude, lots of appreciation. Living in the miracle of the world around us creates the most awesome ecosystem in our body because I don't need anybody to validate me when I walk into a room, but I am full of appreciation and gratitude because I am living this one incredible life in my skin with my face and my ideas and my voice. And the combination of those two things, never needing validation because I'm never giving my power away, but always creating validation for the world around me because I'm appreciating it out loud, or at least in my head, gives me so much agency in my life. Gives me so much, nobody else controls how I feel I do. Gives me so much power and I'm proud of who I'm being all the time. So your two steps, your process is how can you never need validation because you give it to yourself, but give lots of validation in the form of gratitude, appreciation, presence, living in the miracle. That combination is everything.

Final Takeaways And Closing

SPEAKER_01 20:17

All right, that's what I've got for you today. Enjoy it, and I will see you next week. This is a year-round membership where we take all of these concepts and we apply them to real life in a community where we have each other's backs and we bring out the best in each other. We're all there to make our ideas real. One idea at a time.