I heard this great line a few weeks back: “Validation is for parking tickets: I’m not a parking ticket”.

I’m constantly amazed by the lengths to which people go in order to prove things to themselves. To that end, I keep hearing about people who sacrifice time, relationships, money, fun and most of all, energy.

It’s perhaps understandable that in early career, a young professional would want to prove themselves. Or that those of us who are not so young would still want to run races, if only in competition with ourselves. To a certain extent, this is fun… even healthy. Anyone who has values around Growth or Excellence will always take on challenges: both in work-life and beyond.

However, it’s one thing to enjoy challenge: it’s quite another to need all that validation to feel OK with the self! Whether it’s the approval of others, or being right, or being the center of attention, or being clever, or being attractive or being funny… why do we need it?

Usually, it comes back to self-esteem: these conditions that need to be fulfilled for a person to feel good about themselves.
It certainly was for me: I shudder to think of all the energy expended down the years to meet the conditions for my self-esteem. It took a long time to discover the deeper roots of self-worth, that eventually satisfies that hunger.

As you look at the future, it’s work asking yourself where you could skip the validation. For example:

– Who are you battling with (or competing with) and is this worth it?

– Which battles do you no longer need to fight?

– What’s your biggest worry right now? If that happened, what would that say about you?

– Why are you embarking on that (expensive) course? Is it for the validation that completion will give you? Do you really need that?

– To what extent do you seek validation through brands / luxury / spending? What is the deeper need?

– If this is a real need, how else could it be met?

Shifting our mindset often entails letting go of old stories, including the need for validation. In many cases, we have everything we need already.