The Viable Alternative

Hey guys, forgive me for being away for so long. I do YouTube videos in which, in the beginning, I give the address to this site, but always wind up apologizing for having not updated this for so long. Well anyway, finally I don’t have to do that any more. 🙂

Lots of growth has been going on in my life due to the continuous healing I’ve been undergoing via therapy which I’ve been now doing for 4 1/2 years and counting. I’ve been touching upon deeper places within me which has led to more solid connections with myself, and as a result, one of the concepts I’ve gained a deeper understanding about is self validation.

Self validation is an interesting and powerful idea that is bandied all over the self help industry in books, seminars and motivational speeches. It sounds great to hear, it feels great to say, and it is nice to think about, but the disheartening thing is that idea of self validation has become exactly just that – something great to hear, think or talk about without having any idea of how to actually apply and cultivate it in one’s life.

Unfortunately, we can say that about a lot of the concepts talked about in the self-help industry. They’re nice to talk about but most people don’t really know how to implement them in their own lives. Nonetheless, for the sake of brevity, I’ll keep this about self validation, and not get into the long laundry list of all the other concepts can be included.

The idea of self validation is that that good feeling of being valuable we get when someone gives us approval or positive acknowledgement for activities we engage in – chasing after success, buying status symbols such as a nice car, expensive clothes or that big house, bragging about our accomplishments, trying to have sex with as many women as possible, posting on social media for likes, behaving a certain way – we can instead give to ourselves. The benefit of this is that when you learn how to do this, you can shed the massive insecurity that comes with having how you feel about yourself being controlled by the whims of people’s fickle opinion and gain the space to finally become secure within yourself. The other benefit is that all that energy you wasted on creating a life that you thought was pleasing to others can be redirected in creating a life that’s reflects the true desires of your heart and is first and foremost, pleasing to you

Again, this all sounds well and good, but how the hell do we get from drooling over this idea to actually taking it to a place where we can make some actual, concrete use of this?

From what I learned, it comes with the experience with learning how to EXPERIENCE a deeper connection with ourselves.

Yes, I said it in all CAPS because I meant it, you have to EXPERIENCE a deeper connection with yourself to fully understand self validation. Let me explain.

People who know me know that I’m a secretive person. Part of it has been my insecurity about being judged, part of it is not really trusting most people with telling them all of my business (which is part wisdom and honestly, part insecurity as well), part of it is truly liking to keep things to myself, part of it is the Leo in me liking to be the center of attention because the more secretive you are, the more people notice you, part of it is my Moon in my astrological birth chart being in Scorpio which means I’m predisposed to secrecy (yea, I believe in astrology, and this one discovery of my chart turned me from one who thought it was all bunk to a believer…so, get over it…haha), part of it is my issues with being vulnerable (yep….insecurity again), and finally, part is because as an extroverted introvert, I have a strong introverted nature.

Well, when you’re secretive, you only have to share your victories and triumphs with yourself, therefore, there is no one there to validate you but you.

Add to this, when you step out of your comfort zone in order to accomplish a task or a goal that was initially seen as beyond your ability, there is that proud feeling of pride, self respect and accomplishment you experience from having started something and seeing it through to its completion despite all the trials and tribulations you faced along the way. There is also that self respect gained from having learned new things about yourself and having created a stronger bond with yourself as a result of journeying outside your comfort zone the way two different individuals grow closer as result of going through a harrowing experience together.

Those feelings of validation we get in these instances are stronger than any external validation because they originate internally not from some unstable, outside source. It’s like the healthy high you get from eating a healthy meal, working out or doing yoga as opposed to the cheap, dirty high you get from smoking crack (nope, never tried crack before but that’s the way someone described it to me).

Through my own personal idiosyncrasies of being secretive, and my experiences of stepping out of my comfort zone, I was cultivating self validation without even knowing it.

So, here I was, over a week ago, going into my wounded child mode of obsessing and stressing over the fact that some girl wasn’t giving me the attention I wanted i.e. she wasn’t validating me the way I wanted, and my mind went back to all the times I felt validated from within myself and how good it felt and it dawned on me, “WTF? Why am I stressing over something that I clearly have within myself to give and can actually recall instances of when I validated myself and how good it felt? I’m not a wounded child that needs Mommy. I’m a grown man that can give to myself” At that point, the neediness disappeared and a new awareness of my personal power was revealed.

The problem is that we don’t value ourselves at all so we think that external validation from others is more valuable than the validation we can receive from within.

Here’s my solution to all this that has worked for me. External validation should be seen as an addiction just like any substance addiction, so to overcome it, we have to learn to wean ourselves off of it. One way is to become more “secretive,” not to the pathological level that I’ve become, but in a more balanced way. This means that taking a look at all the things you do that you feel a need to let others know in order for you to feel validated and instead keeping it to yourself so that you can learn to have your own self validation be enough. It also means when someone gets credit for something you did, letting that person take the credit, knowing that you knowing what you did is good enough without others having to know or acknowledge you for it. It also means becoming more mindful of the times when you feel the need to get others approval, and realizing that external validation is something we do to avoid uncomfortable emotions like anxiety, fear or shame, and instead choosing to experience those uncomfortable emotions rather than avoid experiencing them by approval seeking.

You will find over time when you change this validation seeking behaviour, the resulting feelings of self respect, as well as personal pride, self connection, and self appreciation you experience are so fulfilling and pleasurable that they dwarf those feelings you get from external validation because you’re keeping your power instead of giving it away. As a result, you’re less inclined to seek validation from others.

This is The Viable Alternative.

Hope this helps,

Ike Love