Have you ever desperately craved validation from somebody else? So many people seek fulfillment from others, and they attach their worth and success to this external validation. But when you look to others for confirmation of your own success, it can work against you – especially if you don’t get the validation you seek.
Confident people don’t require validation from others, and it is up to us to confirm our own self-worth. When we can free ourselves from the need for external validation, we can look at our own successes, be proud of what we’ve accomplished, and appreciate our own brilliance.
Join me this week as I share a 4-step framework to help you stop seeking external validation from the wrong people. I’m sharing why other peoples’ validation doesn’t serve you in getting what you want, and why the only validation that feels good is the kind you give to yourself.
If you’re resonating with what you’re hearing on the podcast and are ready to learn what’s been holding you back so far, click here to learn how you can work with me and get some help to move forward!
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What You’ll Learn from this Episode:
- How to stop seeking approval from others.
- Why we crave validation.
- How to empower yourself and gain more confidence.
- Why you get to decide how you show up in any situation.
- The best thing to do if you’re constantly wishing for someone to be different.
- Why we create lower self-confidence for ourselves.
- Some signs you have some work to do around your relationship with yourself.
Listen to the Full Episode:
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DOWNLOAD TRANSCRIPT
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Welcome to the Get a 6-Figure Job You Love podcast. This is episode 35, The Illusion of External Validation.
Hey there. Welcome to the Get a 6-Figure Job You Love podcast. I’m your host, Natalie Fisher. I’m a certified career mindset coach who also happens to want to skip all the BS and get to what it really takes to create real results for you and your career. On this podcast, you will create real mindset shifts that will lead to big results and big changes in your career and your income. No fluff here. If you want to get a six-figure job you love and create real concrete results in your industry and make a real impact, you’re in the right place. Are you ready? Let’s go.
Welcome back to the podcast this week. If you are new, nice to meet you. I’m Natalie. If you’re back, welcome back. Happy to have you here. Just imagine everybody sitting in a group and we’re just having this discussion. But really, I’m just talking into a microphone.
But today, I’m really looking forward to unraveling this topic of external validation. And hoping that by the end of the podcast, you’re going to feel a lot more empowered and have a completely different view as to whether or not you feel the same way about other people and what they’re going to say and how their validation is going to impact you.
So the problem that I see come up with my clients and the thing that mostly holds them back is these beliefs that we’ve always kind of had from childhood or from being human. And they’re totally normal things to think. But I’m going to unpack them today and why they don’t actually serve you in getting what you want.
So we feel other people should validate us, notice us. So I see it in situations where a client believes that they should get promoted. They should get the opportunity to interview for a job that it looks very obvious that they should have had that. And I’ll give some examples of some of my clients throughout this episode. I think I’m going to have two examples to share.
So one scenario where this could come up is you think that somebody should just see your work. They think that people should just see your work, and your work should speak for itself. Your experience, everything that’s there should speak for itself. So you feel like they should be recognizing. You think they should be saying, “Of course you’re going to get it. You’re the best person. And you did great.” And we think other people should see our work and validate it. Whether that be in the scenario of you’re already in the organization and you want to move forward, and you think that should be a given. Or maybe another scenario is clients are in an interview, and they don’t see that validation coming from the interviewer or the person who’s on the other side of the Zoom. They’re not seeing the nodding, or the approval, or the smiling, or they’re not seeing that response that they want to see. So they are craving that and they feel like they should be getting it. And then they don’t know what to do when they don’t get it, and then it can throw them off. So that’s another scenario. And I think those are the two main scenarios.
And generally also in the corporate world, when I worked in HR, it was a lot of people would come to me and be like, “Well, I really deserved to at least get some credit for that. They should have said thank you to me. They should have given us some sort of team recognition. They should have, they should have, they should have. They should see it. They should do that.” Or they should, it’s basically that theme, but it can show up in a lot of different scenarios.
So what I want to offer is that first of all, and this is kind of the premise of the podcast is there’s no guarantee that when we show up as us, as our true selves, as our best, that people are going to shower us with appreciation. There’s no guarantee that they’re going to approve of us. There’s no guarantee that they’re even going to acknowledge our existence.
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And while I have my own opinions and have been through my own journey on it, I know that anything can happen. You can have any response. And since there’s no guarantee, we need to be willing to have any response happen, and allow and trust that through it all, the right people are going to resonate. And we just need to adjust how we’re showing up and if that’s how we want to be showing up.
So nothing wrong with it. It’s the human condition. And it’s totally normal that we would think this. And the reason is because we crave validation. It’s the human condition to crave validation, because it goes back to our primitive days when if we’re excluded from the pack, that probably means we’re going to die. We really needed that for survival.
And then it also goes back to in your family, growing up, right? Your teachers, your parents they said, “Good job,” and they gave you a reward. Or they said, “Bad,” and they sent you to your room. Right? So we had dopamine hits from validation, right. From good job, attaboy, boy you know?
So we grew up, and still for these two reasons, we still crave that. Right? So we think that we need that in order to feel good, in order to feel how we want to feel, in order to feel at ease. We’re someone who did good, we’re someone who added value, we’re someone who’s worthy. We think that we need somebody else to tell us that. Right? And that’s normal. For the reasons I just said, it makes perfect sense.
So we think that more validation means more success in life. It means people recognize it’s more, we’re going to go farther. We’re going to get more of what we want, etc., etc. So we try all things to get it. And this makes sense that we would do this. However, it’s actually a counterintuitive way of getting the result we want from other people. And I’ll explain why.
And I get it because I’ve had experiences that triggered this for me. Like I really wanted to get my dad’s approval when I was younger. That was the approval that I craved. And I had stories that I unpacked on a previous podcast episode I think, where I talked about how I wanted approval from those popular girls on the playground. And how I tried a bunch of things to get the approval. And at the end, I was never going to get it.
And in my relationship, I was doing so much, trying so hard to prove myself to be this person that he wanted me to be. Doing more than what I wanted to do. So it wasn’t even showing up as my true self, just for this drug of validation that I thought I was going to get once I did all the things, right?
And then I did all the things and I realized well, I’m never getting this validation. So it’s kind of where I learned that I could give it to myself. And because I had done so much and shown up in the way that I was proud of, I got to have that and then give myself that. So I’ll talk about that in another podcast, but that is essentially my experiences with it. So I’ve been through that whole thing, and it used to be my drug of choice. Validation, craving it from other people. So my journey with it is pretty close and I want to share it with you and how I worked through it.
So the common thing that we do is we tell ourselves that we’re not doing enough, that we’re not good enough, that we need to do more. And then we do more from a place of wanting someone else to approve, wanting someone else to see us, wanting someone else to have a different reaction or a different behavior.
And then in the process, this can hurt us because we ignore all the things that we have done. And we’re always saying, “Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I didn’t really do that big of a deal. It wasn’t that special.” So we can try to always be doing more and then downplay the things that we have done, or forget about them altogether. So what we try to do is we try to do more to prove more for other people. Sometimes we’ll ask for validation. “We’ll be like, “So what did you think? Did I do a good job? Do you like me? How am I doing?” And sometimes it’s fine to do that, right? To ask for feedback.
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But there is a difference between the place you’re asking, like, “Can you tell me specifically what could be done better to get to the results?” Or if it didn’t hit the result you could say, “Did you see something that I missed?” But it could be coming from a different place than, than seeking it from, “Do you approve of me? Do you think I did good? Do you think I did good?” So I’m going to get into that a little bit further on the difference between being focused and really just wanting, you know how people can fish for compliments. And sometimes people do that and it’s kind of like fishing for validation. And it can be subtle because you might not know you’re doing it. But that’s another thing that we might do is we might ask for it in a kind of unproductive way because we’re not focused on the right thing.
Or, another thing that we do that I see people doing in the patterns is we get upset and frustrated and when we don’t get it, and we feel like others should be different because they should be validating us. So when I worked in corporate as I mentioned earlier, I would have people come to me all the time and about a particular manager who didn’t seem to recognize his team very much. Right? So he just didn’t have that awareness, or that wasn’t something that was under his radar that he kind of thought was important. He wouldn’t acknowledge people. He wouldn’t recognize them. So they were working on a big project, and their experience was they worked really hard. They had been spending nights on call. They’d been doing all this stuff, and their manager didn’t say anything.
So they were telling me, “You know what? It would be really nice if he would just give us a thank you, or a team lunch, or something.” Right? And a side note, I can totally agree. And I think that it helps all organizations to be able to motivate their employees and engage them more by having those things worked in, and having manager training so that that happens. And I love giving credit to people where credit is due. I love honoring people for the work that they do and showing accordingly to others how great things are when people do great work. But, the purpose of this podcast is if you’re not getting the validation, and also for you to get to the point where you don’t need it. Now it’s always going to be nice. And my opinion on that is yes, we should all be giving people validation. But I’ll explain to you why and where it should come from.
So the goal for you and the thing that’s going to be most useful for you to hear is that you don’t want to need it. You don’t want to require validation, or you don’t want to have to need the reward or the comment from someone else to be able to fully give it to yourself and feel fulfilled yourself. That’s the goal. Okay? And how you can give it to yourself and approve of yourself in such a deep way that you don’t really need it anymore is when you know you’ve done this when you don’t even think about it, right? You’re not even thinking about the fact that that person didn’t say anything. Because you’re proud of what you did and you’re just so happy with the accomplishment in itself and what you were capable of, that you don’t need anyone else to say anything to you. Right?
And then counter-intuitively, this is what starts happening is that starts to happen more. So once you don’t need something anymore is when you start getting it, is often what can happen. Now, not in every situation. Some people are just never going to give you validation. And they’re just not those people. And that’s what I kind of want to encourage you to see is that you can work really hard to do a really amazing job. And somebody might be like, “Yeah, you missed a spot.” And that doesn’t take away from your work. And it shouldn’t make you feel like you did any less of an amazing job than you did, right? They shouldn’t have that much power over you. And that’s kind of what I’m getting at.
So the reason why this whole paradigm of needing the validation, wanting the validation, craving it, doing things to get it, complaining when we don’t get it doesn’t work for us is because the validation that actually makes us feel good is only the one that we give to ourselves anyway. And I’m going to prove this to you right now with an example. Because when we do something and we don’t really believe that it was a big deal, imagine the most menial task ever that’s not impressive at all. Like you tied your shoes, or you made a copy, or you just did something. And it wasn’t impressive, but you did it.
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And then if somebody goes, “Oh my God, you’re so great. Thank you so much. You did such a great job of tying your shoes.” You’re not going to feel validated. You’re probably going to feel patronized and weirded out. Right?
And the reason for that is because you know that you tie your shoes every day obviously. So another example that I kind of thought of was if for example, you have been training for a race. And you’ve been training for this race. You’ve been very diligent in doing it. You’ve been showing up for yourself, training and working really hard towards this particular time that you had in mind. And you think you have an idea of what time is going to be required to run the race and to win it. You anticipate it’s going to be really hard. You anticipate the competition is going to be really hard. And then let’s say hypothetically, now this is just a hypothetical example. I don’t see that this would ever happen. But you show up and then the people who are running the race with you are all very out of shape and they’re completely not at your level. Right?
And then it turns out that yeah, you end up winning by several miles, and it was very easy to do, right? So say this happens, and then you win. And then people are like, “Oh my God, you’re so amazing. You’re so great.” Then you’re getting this validation, sure. And then they throw this big party in your honor. And it’s this big deal. And then you’re thinking, “Well, that wasn’t hard. There was no way I wasn’t going to win. It was ridiculous because my competition was so not on my level.” Right?
So if that happened, the validation would not mean the same thing to you at all. Right? Because you know what you really had to put in. You might feel really good about your time, about running that race. But the reason why you feel good is because you made that commitment to yourself to run it in that time. You put that time in, you trained, you did all that for you. And then you got a result that you looked at and said, “Yeah, I did that.” Right? That’s pretty cool. Right? But not because you beat other people, and not because anybody said to you, “Oh my God, you won.” Right? It wasn’t because of that.
So that proves that getting validation on its own is kind of hollow, because you would know that winning in this situation, winning this race was not the real victory. The victory came from internally, came from inside you. It has to be that way. Right? And it’s always that way. Right? And it has to be your thoughts about your accomplishment and what you achieved. Not because you won, not because other people congratulated you. But because you did your best race. And it came from that place of like yeah, I did that.
So switching gears back into the corporate world, now that we know that external validation isn’t really what makes you feel good, that’s because of the two examples that I just shared, that’s good news. Because in a lot of cases, we won’t get this external validation. And maybe it does make sense that we should get it. But if we don’t, there’s no point in complaining, wishing it were different, trying to change people. Right? So we can take certain steps. And I’m in favor of that, like management training that helps people do that better just so that the organization is going to run more efficiently and people are going to be more productive. And I’m a big fan of that. But if you personally are in a situation where you’re just not getting the validation and you feel like you’re craving it, and you’re feeling upset and grumpy that you’re not getting it, then you want to realize that that is just something that you can completely give yourself.
Because people are not going to change. We can’t change them. We can ask them for things. We can make requests. We can try different solutions, and we might be successful with some of those things, if we’re productive and effective in implementing. And sometimes they will work. But sometimes, the person is just the person, and they’re just going to go back to how they were. So they might be like, “Yeah thanks, good job,” a couple of times. And then they might just go back to how they were.
So that’s just kind of something to notice that if you are continuously wishing, hoping, wanting somebody to be different, the best permanent solution is to evaluate your own success and get excited
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for how you will recreate it next time, based on what you did. Right? And get excited about your accomplishment for you. Not for anyone else. Because it’s wasted energy. Because we instruct other people how to treat us. And it’s important to know this for interviewing and for places where you want to be showing up confidently that confident people don’t require validation from others. That’s essentially what confidence is somebody who takes care of their own validation first. They are completely validated themselves. And then they show up from a place of giving and not needy to receive. Right?
So for example in an interview, if we show up and there’s a whiff of seeking approval or needing validation, it’s likely people will sense that. And it’ll be a turnoff, right? Depending on how the energy is showing up. But that’s something that happens a lot. And it shows up in different ways. You can go to an interview, and then you can not know an answer. And then the person might look at you funny, or they might not nod their head, or they might not say something. And then you get in your head and like, “Oh no, they don’t approve of me.” And then that can completely derail you. When you know that you have what it takes, you are able to do the job. You have the information in your head to share with them why and how, but you get thrown off because you’re like, “Well, I don’t think this is going very well.” Right? Because you’re not getting this validation. Right? But who cares about the validation? What you really want to ask is did I answer this question how I would like to answer it? Do I like how I’m showing up right now? That’s a better question to ask then do they like me right now? Am I coming off? Do they think this is going well. The better question to ask is how am I showing up, and do I like that right now?
Because when you like how you’re showing up, chances are way higher that they are going to like how you’re showing up in. And they’re going to engage the best way that they can. Right? So when we raise ourselves up to our best level, then other people are going to meet us there. Not everybody, but that’s okay. We instruct other people how to treat us with our energy and our behavior. And just to recap that, confident people don’t require external validation. They don’t even think about it. That’s essentially what confidence is.
We can spend our whole life wishing that one particular individual or other people in general would approve of us or validate us. Or, we could just decide that we don’t need it because we know what we’re doing. And we know that we will decide how we need to show up in any situation. That’s much more useful, when you focus only on how you are operating.
So what happens when we do this, when we hang on to the need of validation from others and we place a high priority on it. And you’ll know if you do this if you feel particularly low if somebody makes a comment to you that you didn’t like. Or if you feel particularly high when somebody gives you a compliment that you really believed, right?
So for example, for me, it doesn’t really affect me a whole time. Someone can give me a compliment. I feel like that’s nice. And somebody can say something mean to me. And I could be like, “Yeah, that’s okay. They’re not my person.” So it’s just more of a neutral standpoint. It’s not like, “Oh my God, thank you so much.” It’s nice. I do revel in the nice comments, and I surround myself with the wonderful people. But if somebody is going to say something mean, I don’t put attention to it or spend time on it anymore. I used to for sure. So if you’re still doing that, totally normal human condition. And that’s just something that you work on. And I work on that with my clients all the time, and it’s just a part of the journey.
So we create this lower self-confidence for ourselves when we’re needing this validation. Because every time we feel like we need it and we don’t get it, it erodes our self-confidence because we make it mean that we’re not good enough because we didn’t get it. Or we didn’t meet the expectations. We’re not up to par. We’re not cutting it. So usually when we feel bad because we didn’t get this validation, we’re either making it mean that we weren’t good enough, or we’re feeling frustrated because somebody else
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should have been different. And neither of those things is ever going to serve you in getting where you want to go. Okay?
And then the big problem that it creates is that we miss the things that we do that really work well for us, right? We miss our own opinion. We miss our own validation. And then we miss ourselves.
So for example, I have a client that came to mind here. And when she came to me, she had this story about how her bosses and how the people in her environment were not seeing all the hard work she’d put in. And they were not seeing her long list of accomplishments, and how she was obviously the choice for the job. And she had many years of experience. And she had done all these things, and she’d taken every opportunity to learn. And she’d worked on some pretty amazing projects and stuff. And she was feeling frustrated because people were not seeing this. And they had not given her the opportunity to interview for this position that she felt she really should have gotten.
And in this space of being frustrated and being annoyed that she wasn’t being seen, she was really missing her own brilliance. Right? So she was not stopping to take a moment to notice or reframe her own story. She was just believing that she wasn’t capable because of what other people did or didn’t see. Right? She was seeing herself in a lot lower light than really she needed to be, to get to where she wants.
So when we’re able to kind of free ourselves from the need of external validation, we can kind of look at our list of accomplishments, and our characteristics, and who we are. And when you can paint your own story and you can look at it for a second and be like, “Yeah, that’s pretty cool all that stuff I’ve done. I am pretty bad-ass.” And when you can do that, and you can take the time … this is what I work on with my clients is we reframe these stories.
So when we were able to reframe her story and she was able to kind of see it, she was like, “Wow, you know what? Yeah.” And then she also started seeing herself as more fun. She was like, “Yeah, I realized I was just presenting myself as this really boring person.” Right? And the only reason is that she was needing people to validate her. She was needing things to be different, people to be different before she could see her own success. Right? And she’s amazing. She took the bar while pregnant, and she passed it. I can’t imagine. She’s now a lawyer. She’s taken all the opportunities to grow and learn where she is. And she’s been doing it for 15 years, basically the work. And she’s just wondering, “Well, why isn’t everyone seeing this yet?”
So the reason was is because she wasn’t seeing it herself. Right? So once you can see that for yourself, you don’t need other people to validate you. Then things start to change once you really get it. So when she stopped looking for external validation from the wrong people, because some people are just never going to give it to you. And sometimes they’re never going to give it to anybody. And we can have compassion for those people because maybe they never got it themselves is what I’m thinking. They probably had a set of parents who was always like, “You’re not good enough. You’re not doing it right.” So they don’t want to give validation to other people because they never got it. Now, that’s just the thing I made up. Who knows why they don’t do it? But some people are just never going to, right? They don’t have it in them.
But when she was able to pause to give it to herself, be proud of her own story, and the by-product of that was that she started acting and showing up differently, and taking different actions. And not surprisingly, she started reporting that she started to get all this validation now from these people she was sharing her story with. And the work there was believing that her story was strength first. Right?
So if you have this feeling that people should see your value, if you feel that your work should really speak for itself, that you’ve done everything and that they still can’t see it, and that it’s not fair. If you’ve had thoughts like this, I would invite you to look for the answer within yourself, not outside of yourself.
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And it’s kind of like making them responsible for how you feel about your own accomplishments. When really, they don’t get to decide that anyway. That’s up to you.
So let’s assume that it’s up to you and no one else. Then what? So I have a step solution for you. So let’s say validating yourself is completely up to you. So whose job is it to like you? Whose job is to approve of you? If you answered you, you’re right. So the answer is always you.
So here’s the four-step framework that you can use when you get stuck in this place. Step one, bring your attention to your own accomplishments first. Really take time to marvel in what you have done, who you are. And some people don’t even know who they are. They’re like, “Well, I’m just doing this for this person,” or, “I’m doing this for this person.” Right? They’re just so busy trying to meet the demands of everyone else, trying to meet everybody’s else’s approval that they don’t even know who they are or where their brilliance lies. But I can have a pretty good guess that you probably have an idea of where your strengths are. Where your zone of genius is, how you can back that up, who you are as a person, what you really like about yourself as a person.
And if it’s hard for you, then it’s a sign that you have some work to do around your relationship with yourself. Which is essentially the most important relationship you will ever have in your life is the relationship with yourself. And if you have stories about your past that make you feel like you need validation. So if you have a lot of regret, or you look at how you don’t understand how you can validate yourself, because you’re just beating yourself up. If you’re like, “I just really did things wrong. I should be in a different place.” If you have that, I want you to think of how you would talk to your child or your best friend if they told you the same story. Right? And my guess is you’re probably not going to agree with them and say, “Yeah, you’re right. You messed up. You should have done it differently.”
My guess is you wouldn’t talk to them like that, because it’s not going to serve them. Right? and if we do, it’s just a misguided misconception thinking that beating ourselves up is going to serve us in getting more motivated to do more. But it’s a misconception. It doesn’t. It just makes you feel crappy. And then when you feel crappy, it’s going to be more difficult to go back and try again. Right? So this is what I do in coaching. I’m kind of the master at reframing a story that doesn’t serve you into a story that turns you into the hero of your story. And then you start acting like it, and then you start getting different results.
So step two is notice, be aware that you’re craving validation from other people. Maybe if you’re like, “I’m kind of upset, I’m kind of triggered that that person didn’t notice my work. Or I’m kind of triggered that this person isn’t nodding their head right now.” Ask yourself why you need that. Why do you think you need that? What do you think it’s going to give you. Then ask yourself what are the ways in which you can give that to yourself? In what ways do you already approve of yourself? And in what ways are you already proud of yourself? Okay? So in what ways are you able to give yourself the same thing that you want from an outside source?
Step three, give up trying to change or wish that other people were going to behave differently than they do. And don’t waste any more time or energy thinking or wishing that. If we could change those people, I would be doing that. I would be doing a podcast on how to change other people. How to change your boss. But it’s literally 100% not within your control to do that. All you can do is change yourself. And then either two things will happen. One of two things will happen. Those same people will see you doing your own thing. They’ll see you kicking butt, taking names, being proud of yourself. Coming back, creating more success to a higher and higher level. And then they will rise up and they will take your instruction on how you think about yourself and how you treat yourself. Because if you’re doing that, you’re feeling pretty good about yourself, right?
Or maybe they won’t, and you will seek out people and an environment that match up to how you are now thinking about yourself and how you’re validating yourself. You’ll seek out places and people that elevate you and are a joy to be around. So there’s really no downside to this.
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Because when you’re constantly seeking that validation and finding yourself and getting frustrated when you’re not getting the validation, if you can get into a cycle of trying to prove yourself, if that’s what you do. And I did this in the relationship. And if you get yourself to stay into the cycle of I’m trying to do better, I will do it better. I could show up how I wanted. And the person may still not approve. Right?
So then, that’s when you know. You’re like, “You know what? I’m showing up how I want. I’m very proud of the work I’ve done. I’m very proud of everything that I’ve done. And I choose to leave this situation now.” But I validated myself first. Right? I loved myself first. So then it wasn’t a fuck off I’m out of here. It was an I love you, but I choose to move on because I want to. And I know in my heart, there’s more for me. And this is where my growth is, and I no longer think I belong here. But it’s because you do it for yourself, from this place of love for yourself. Not from a place of spite, or frustration, or anger towards someone else.
Step four, focus on the result you’re creating. So not for other people, but for you. What results are you creating because you want to? And what standards are you holding for yourself because you want to? So do everything as if you were just showing up for you and do the best that you can do. Don’t do it because of what you think others will think or say, but focus on the result you want and be proud of that. And then know that you’re like, “If I do this, I will be pretty happy with myself.” You can ask yourself some questions like, “What will this look like? What will my best work look like when it’s done? How do I want to show up in this hard situation? What do I want to do that will make me proud by the end of the day or by the end of the week or by the end of a month?”
Because like I said, you can run a great race. But if everyone else is totally out of shape and you are always going to win, the victory isn’t that sweet. It actually doesn’t matter. The race doesn’t matter, because what you really wanted was your best race. You wanted to run your best race. And the same goes on the reverse side. If you trained, you ran your best race, you got your best time, and you still came in last, that’s still more of a victory than if you beat a bunch of completely out of shape people, right? It’s still more of a victory. The reason is because, well we talked about it. Your opinion is what matters. And it’s just a bonus if it times out and you end up winning against a bunch of other really fast runners, right? That’s a bonus and it makes it a bit sweeter for you. But really, it was just about you doing it.
So make sure that the victory you’re after is really your own victory in your own heart to show yourself what you’re capable of, but not for the sake of someone else’s approval. That will mess you up every time. You have to do things for you.
The reason why this is so effective is because at the end of the day, what you’re really after is a feeling of fulfillment for yourself, right? And we know this because people can make a ton of money and still not feel fulfilled. People can have amazing achievements and still not feel fulfilled. And at the end of the day, you want to be left with some good thoughts about yourself. Because at the end of the day, you’re the one you’re left with. Your own thoughts. Are you happy and at peace with yourself in your own head? Can you be totally okay with you? All of your humanness, all of your mistakes, all of your past decisions, all as you are. While still learning, evolving, being more, and still wanting to be better. Totally fine.
At the end of the day, your own validation is the only thing that actually matters. We need to approve of ourselves first always. Because before we can approve of ourselves, it’s going to be harder for other people to approve of us and agree with us too. The right people will always resonate with you when you resonate with yourself. Some people will never resonate with you no matter what you do. And that’s okay. They’re not your people. We can navigate as effectively as we can around those people when we need to. But we can’t make their behavior mean anything about us. And we can’t make their lack of validation mean that we haven’t done amazing work when we truly know that we have.
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So what’s going to be required to do this is you’re going to need to have self-awareness. Awareness of what you’re thinking about yourself and your own accomplishments. You’re going to need to know what do I really think of that job that I did? Do I think I could have done it better, or am I very pleased with the results? Either way, it’s fine. Willingness to see this differently in a new way. Willing to let go of your validation habits. So if you’re somebody who has needed and craved the validation, then you need to be willing to let go of that and see this differently.
And what ends up happening, the result that’s created is you will create a lot more and a lot better results for yourself because you will feel better. And you will have a stronger purpose. You’ll set up the game so that you can win it because it’s your game to win. You’ll no longer spend time or stress on what other people are thinking or how they’re judging you. You will no longer second guess yourself, because you’ll see that you can have your own back no matter what. You’ll either rise to the top of where you are now, or you’ll find a way to move to a situation that does honor and appreciate you for you. Because why not? If you’re working at that high level, why wouldn’t you?
You’ll show up in a way where you’re accepting of yourself, proud and happy with your own work. You won’t devalue yourself. And you won’t even notice if other people are validating you or not. You’ll start giving other people more validation, because you’ll feel full. And you’ll be giving from a full cup. So without even thinking about it, you won’t have a thought about it. You won’t wish other people did or said other things, because you’ll internally know that you are doing your best work. You’re showing up at your best, and you are doing your thing.
And then compliments or criticisms, they don’t send you into a very deep, emotional state, high or low. You know the truth about. You know where you’re going. You know what you’re doing. You know the results you’re going to get no matter what. And you’re proudly showing up until that happens. And you’re probably showing up as the true you, in your truth. Right?
So another thing that I didn’t mention was when you’re scared of what other people think, and you’re scared of if they’re going to validate you or not, then you’re not going to show up as yourself, right? So you’ll be showing up from a full cup when you do this work. Not trying to get something from someone else, but just there to give, right? And if they want to give to you back, great. And if they don’t, it’s fine. You don’t need anything from them. You are whole, complete, just as you are my friend. And that is the best way to go about anything you’re trying to do.
Thank you so much for tuning in this week. I hope this hit home with you as it has with me. It’s been a journey. And I look forward to hearing your reviews and comments on the subject. Thank you so much. I will talk to you next week. Bye.
If you’re a resonating with what you’re hearing on the podcast, I want to tell you something. If we ever talk, or work together, or interact in any way, I will not even for a minute buy into the story that you can’t get the job you want at the pay you want and deserve. I will not buy into the story that the recruiter said you needed to have more experience, or that you were told that you needed to get another degree or certification before you could be considered. Or that there are so many other great candidates out there that are more qualified who have already applied. Or that you need to check with your accountant first, or whatever the excuse you have that robs you from your power. I will not buy it. Because what I know for sure is that if you’re not being valued and if you’re not being paid at the level you can and deserve to be, there is a clear reason why. And it is a reason that is completely within your control.
If you want to learn what’s really been holding you back so far and you’re ready to get some help, head on over to www.nataliefisher.ca/apply. I will be able to help you identify why you’ve been stuck so far and exactly what you need to do to move forward. And I will help you do this by showing you how to
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take control of your career. How to set the frame for what you want, instead of thinking that you have to be at the mercy of what you have. And as we all know, if you don’t believe that the job you want is available and that you can have it, you will always settle for the jobs you don’t want. If you are ready to move out of that space and into a better situation, I am here to help you. I’m going to teach you exactly what to do with lots of examples. Head on over to www.nataliefisher.ca/apply. I’ll see you over there. And when you leave me an iTunes review and send me a screenshot of the review directly to my email at natalie@asknataliefisher.com, I will send you a free gift as a thank you. And this free gift, I usually sell it for $100. So it’s $100 value. And it contains 50 examples of behavioral interview questions. So if you’ve ever stumbled, second guessed, rambled in an interview, not sure exactly what to say, I have this free guide that’s going to give you so many examples, that there’s no way you’ll be confused at the end. It’s helped thousands of people land jobs just from understanding so clearly what needs to be included. So if you don’t know how to tell a good story, inside, you’ll find the exact words. If you don’t know what stories to tell, you’re going to see the components of a successful story in action, and 50 at that. You don’t think you have any good stories to share? Don’t worry. There’s 25 questions in there to ask yourself to pull the stories from your own brain. To get your hands on this, all you have to do is leave me an iTunes review and send it to me to my email. And I will respond with this guide. Thank you so much for listening, and I will talk to you soon. Bye. Thanks for listening to this episode of Get a 6-Figure Job You Love podcast. If you’re ready to dive deeper into your career mindset and start creating bigger, more impactful results in your career, join me at www.nataliefisher.ca/getstarted. I’ll see you over there.
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