Validation

From a very young age we learn to look to others for validation of our goodness and worth. We seek approval from our parents and other caregivers, from our peers, and from our teachers and other authority figures. We learn to believe we are good and worthy when someone else tells us so. We feel good when we receive praise, but then that feeling wears off and we seek desperately more.

Our way out of this cycle is to turn inward to the truth we each carry. The inner guidance, the inner knowing we each have that can inform us about our own goodness and worth. We have learned to mistrust that wisdom and to trust only the judgments of others. We have turned a great power over to external control. And in doing so we lose our touch with our own innate goodness.

When we reclaim our power and turn to our internal knowing, praise becomes an affirmation of our own truth. Praise is no longer a drug we need. Our truth allows us to understand when there is room for improvement without any accompanying defensiveness or shame. Our truth allows us to acknowledge and own our gifts without doubt and without arrogance.

External validation takes us on a wild ride of emotion with highs and lows far out of our control. Internal validation brings us peace and equanimity, a rock solid knowing of our worth. It transforms our interactions with others. We are no longer desperately grasping at praise to validate our being, but instead find ourselves relaxing into the expansiveness of truth.

It is our willingness to look deeply into ourselves, to listen intently to our truest selves that allows us to develop a relationship of trust with our own knowing. It takes practice to recognize that voice that knows from among all the others. Listen. Just listen.