72. Who's a good boy!?

Someone once told me that I “live for external validation”.

I know, cheeky f***er!

Though to be fair, it’s not the most inaccurate of claims I’ve ever heard.  

And although I wouldn’t say it’s the world’s greatest character trait, I don’t actually think a need for external validation is quite as bad as the rap it gets. 

If we break it down to its core, it’s basically caring (and valuing) what other people think and feel. 

And that can be fairly useful in terms of getting on with our fellow humans. The more we care what people think, the more effort we may be willing to put in with them. 

It can also provide a sense of drive.  

Now, I’m sure the noble thing is to want to do everything for the pure intrinsic love of doing it... but let’s be honest, we like to try and impress other people. 

Of course, they’re not mutually exclusive. I like running, but I also like Strava Kudos. 

Though I’m sure we can all think of countless examples of when we’ve done something to a higher standard (than what we would have done otherwise) in order to gain the approval, acceptance and admiration of someone. 

The classic stuff. Shifting a bit of extra weight in the gym, overachieving at something or other, or just generally trying to be a better version of ourselves. 

And though it does feel slightly icky or embarrassing to admit, I don’t think that using a need for external validation to improve some sort of performance or output should necessarily be completely sniffed at.

However, I guess like most things, the poison is in the dose.

And how poisonous a dose there can be… 

Problem number one, if we give people the power to validate us, then we also give them the power to invalidate us. 

Having our sense of self-worth in the hands of other people doesn’t feel like the most sensible or emotionally resilient of places to be.

And though we can be driven to achievement, success and prosperity by the urge to impress others, we can also be driven to misery. 

Fancy sounding job that we absolutely hate.

Aggressively expensive restaurants when we’d rather a cheeky Nando’s.

Ruining a holiday because we’re so focused on getting content. 

And so on.

The classic sacrifice of what we genuinely want for what looks good to other people. 

Eeesh.  

Which leads us on to problem number two. 

Unless we genuinely feel a certain way about ourselves, no amount of external validation is going to sustainably make us feel better, or fix our self-worth issues. 

In fact, I’d go so far to say that in the long term, it can actually make us feel worse. 

A cycle that goes something like: 

• Want external validation to feel good about ourselves

• Get external validation, and temporarily do feel good about ourselves  

• However, as it’s not how we genuinely feel about ourselves, the effect of the words eventually (slash soon) wear off

• We then crash back down to our baseline (or even lower) level of self-worth

• We therefore need an even stronger hit of external validation to get the same effect

• Aaaaand the cycle continues

In short, we become ever increasingly reliant on an ever increasingly large dose to feel the same effect. 

It’s kind of like the emotional version of The Great Gatsby or The Wolf of Wall Street. The more validation we get, the more validation we need. 

Analogously, Jay Gatsby (hoping my 6th year secondary teacher Miss O’Connell is proud of me for this reference!) had everything, yet it was never enough. 

A constant need for external validation can fuel this anxiety or self-worth issue, rather than fix it.  

It’s a tricky one. 

Evolutionary wise, we’re hard-wired to seek acceptance and approval from others (at least that’s my understanding based on like the 3 books that I’ve read in this area…), and it feels good.

However, and Christ this is something I can speak to from experience, becoming reliant on it can be a hella slippery slope. Hello neediness and general patheticness.

So, what can actually be done to offset the need for it?

Well, who knows. But I do think it’s something that seems to get better with age. The more stuff we do and accomplish, the more proof we have that we’re not the total waste of space that our brains can sometimes like to tell us that we are. 

As such, the less reliant we become on other people to remind us of that fact. 

And as we’re getting dangerously close to the end of this post without a quote, it’s the perfect time to sneak one in. On this sort of theme, I heard the following frame from the maestro James Clear “Praise others, it will bring them peace of mind. Do not expect others to praise you, it will also bring you peace of mind.”

And on that, I’m not even going to ask you to give this post a like.