We're often told we need to validate ourselves - and not rely on our partners or friends to validate us.
But.... how do we actually do that?
In this episode I'm talking your through 4 simple steps for validating yourself in any situation - so that you can stop relying on other people to say the right things in order for you to feel good.
Ready?
Mentioned in this episode:
We're often told we need to validate ourselves - and not rely on our partners or friends to validate us.
But.... how do we actually do that?
In this episode I'm talking your through 4 simple steps for validating yourself in any situation - so that you can stop relying on other people to say the right things in order for you to feel good.
Ready?
Mentioned in this episode:
Hey guys! How’s everyone doing? The latest round of my 12 week group coaching programme came to an end this week, and I’m so sad that it’s over! I do have a few 1:1s left with some members but other than that, I’m saying goodbye to an amazing group of clients. And this round really has been amazing, people have been showing up - putting in the work, and I’ve seen so many huge shifts and changes that people have created for themselves. Which is amazing! And often the shifts aren’t huge epiphanies that happen in one session - that’s very rare - it’s the small tiny shifts and changes that add up over the 12 weeks to create the biggest results. So I’m so proud of each and every one of them!
I’m going to be launching the next round in May - so I’ll tell you more about that at the end, so definitely stick around if you think that’s something you’re interested in. I also wanted to start this episode by answering a question I got in my DMs a while back - someone was asking me to do a podcast episode on anxious thoughts around the fact they listen to this podcast. Their brain was saying that the fact they have to manage their mind so much or struggle with these things MUST mean something bad, I’m not sure if it was something bad about them or bad about their relationship - but I wanted to touch on this quickly before we dive into today’s episode.
So - as long as you have a human brain, you will have unhelpful thoughts that create unhelpful feelings, that drive unhelpful ways of showing up to your life and that stop you creating the results you want. And for those of you that resonate with this podcast, your human brain has just picked up some unhelpful thoughts and beliefs around relationships, around rejection, about yourselves and your own worth and value - but that doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you OR that your relationship isn’t right.
Having a human brain that absorbs unhelpful ways of thinking like a sponge, just makes you a human! And if you weren’t having unhelpful thoughts about relationships - maybe your money mindset would need work! Or your thoughts about your career! Or a goal you have. Your brain would find some other thing to have mind drama about because it’s a human brain, not because there’s something wrong with you or your relationship. So please know that these thoughts and beliefs are super common - and be kind and compassionate to yourself as you work through them.
And to the listener that wrote in with that question - I hope that was helpful! And for today’s episode, I wanted to talk about How to validate yourself. Because we’re often told that it’s our jobs to validate ourselves - not our partners - which makes sense and sounds good, but so often I see people getting confused with how to actually do that. What does validating yourself even mean? And how do you do that practically in your relationships?
So the first thing we need to consider is - what is validation? Now most people will think of validation as a feeling that someone else gives you - we say ‘They validate me’. ‘They make me feel validated’. But as you all know if you’re regular listeners of this podcast - other people never create our feelings. It’s always our own thoughts. So what’s really happening when we’re feeling validated by others?
Well - your partner may say words to you, maybe ‘You look amazing today’ or ‘You were right to quit that job, you did the right thing’ - they’re just saying words to you. And then your brain has a thought about what they’ve said. Maybe it’s ‘They’re right, I do look good today’ and then you feel confident. Or ‘Yeah they’re right, it’s okay that I quit that job’ and then you feel calm and at peace with your decision. You feel validated. But it’s important that you understand that the positive emotion, the validation you feel, doesn’t directly come from what they’ve said or done.
Because think about it - someone could say something with the intention of validating you - and you could have the thought, ‘Nope, they’re wrong’ or ‘They’re just trying to be nice, they don’t mean it’ and you wouldn’t feel validated, you’d still feel terrible. Their words or actions don’t directly create what you feel - a sentence in your brain always does. And this is really important to understand because a lot of us are using our relationships as validation vending machines - which is an amazing phrase I heard from one of my favourite coaches Kara Loewenthile. And it’s totally true - we expect our partners or friends or family to exist solely to dish out positive affirmations and words to us, so that we can have nice thoughts, and feel good.
We subconsciously use them like validation vending machines, and then become frustrated and resentful when they aren’t doing it right or saying the right thing. But your partner, friends, family members, colleagues - whoever they are - don’t exist to help provide your brain with nice thoughts to think. Their job isn’t to act in ways you like so that you can think highly of yourself. And when you’re believing you need them to act in certain ways so you can feel good about yourself, you’re going to end up resenting them when they don’t play along. Or when they don’t follow your manual for how they should act.
And this doesn’t make you a terrible person by the way - my brain has definitely been guilty of this in a lot of relationships. We subconsciously make how someone else acts mean something terrible about us - and so then we need them to change or be different to validate us and make us feel good again. It’s like - if them not texting you back means you have to believe you’re boring and unlikable, you’re going to be very frustrated and angry at them when they don’t text back and you’re going to want to force them to do it, so that you don’t have to feel so bad about yourself. Crazy right?
So one of the most important things we can learn to do is separate out how they’re acting, or what they’re saying - from what WE are thinking and feeling. Because as long as you believe that how they act, or what they say, is responsible for how you feel - your feelings of confidence and validation will always be out of your hands. And I’ll give you an example from one of my 1:1 clients. She often feels resentful towards her partner when he says he isn’t in the mood for sex. And the reason is because she makes him not wanting sex mean that she’s not attractive enough.
So she wants him to initiate sex more so that she can have the thought ‘I am attractive’ and believe that about herself and feel good. She believes she needs him to do that to validate that for her. But actually - did you know that she gets to believe she’s attractive and feel good about herself, regardless of how often her partner initiates sex? Those two things aren’t linked together. How often he initiates sex is not something that determines how good she gets to feel - it’s her thoughts about it that do. Think about something this applies to in your own life.
Maybe you want more matches on a dating website to validate the fact you’re a good catch. Or maybe you want your partner to text you more often, so you can believe they care about you and therefore feel loveable and fun and good enough. Did you know you get to believe you’re loveable, fun and good enough - regardless of their texting habits? You get to believe that about yourself even if your partner never text you again and didn’t want to see you anymore. Because believing those things about yourself is something you can do, regardless of the circumstance. Really think about that. Who gets to decide if those things are true? Who decides who’s loveable? Or who’s fun? Or who’s good enough? Nobody! It’s totally made up and subjective. And even if one person thinks you’re not any of those things, someone else will think the opposite. It’s all completely subjective. Meaning - YOU get to decide what you think about yourself regardless.
An example of my own life is within friendships. I wanted my friends to text me more often, text back faster, and make more plans with me so that I could feel likeable. I was using how often they were in touch with me to validate that belief for myself. So IF they text me and ask to see me, I can believe I’m likeable. But if they don’t reply for a few days - I have to believe I’m unlikeable. Can you relate to this? And in these moments, we’re using other people to validate ourselves and we end up making ourselves feel terrible when they don’t follow our script or our manual for them. We begin to see relationships as transactions. Like it’s a job description or contract they didn’t even know they’d signed up for. You must behave the way I’ve decided you should in order to make me feel good and secure - or I’ll be angry and resent you. Or feel miserable.
But they didn’t sign up to be your source of validation. And noticing how - they’re never the ones creating it in the first place, and what thoughts actually ARE creating it, is such an important place to start with this. So I want you to think about the last time you felt validated or good or pleased with something your partner, or friends, or family did - maybe someone paid you a compliment, or gave you good feedback, or bought you a nice gift. Whatever it is - consider what the facts are of what they did, then consider: What did I allow myself to think about myself in that moment?
If your brain goes to, I made it mean that they like me or care about me - that’s good - but go one level deeper. What does THAT mean? If this means they like you, what does them liking you mean you get to believe about yourself? Is it that you’re likeable? Attractive? Interesting? Fun to be around? Enough? Safe? Smart? Interesting? Notice what your brain decided you were allowed to believe, based on their behaviour. Then consider - do I believe that about myself all the time? Or does my brain only allow me to believe that IF someone is showing me attention or affection? Do I base my belief of this on how others treat me? And if they don’t treat me in the way I’d hoped, do I struggle to then believe this about myself?
And so many of my clients - both 1:1 and the clients that come to the group coaching - struggle with this same belief. And I did too for so many years. The idea that IF they like me, that means I’m likeable. And IF they don’t like me, that means I’m not likeable. IF they find me attractive, that means I’m attractive. But IF they don’t find me attractive, I’m not. Our brains do it so often and we have to challenge that story. Because did you know that some people not liking you or finding you attractive, doesn’t make that a fact about you?
Think about someone you like and find attractive. Maybe it’s your partner, or a celebrity crush of yours - did you know some people won’t like that person and won’t find them attractive at all. Won’t want to date them. Won’t even want to hang out with them? It’s true! Some people wouldn’t want to date Beyonce. Some people don’t find her attractive, some people find her wildly attractive. And the fact that some people don’t doesn’t mean that NO ONE will, and doesn’t have anything to do with her. It’s down to their unique brain. And it’s the same with you. Them not liking you has nothing to do with whether you’re likeable or unlikable, it’s down to their brain and it’s unique preferences and thoughts.
And any thought they have about you is just an optional opinion, not a fact. So we have to challenge our brain and what it makes other people’s perceptions of us mean about us. And notice in what ways we’re basing OUR thoughts about us on THEIR thoughts. I swear working through these beliefs and cleaning up these thoughts will change all of your relationships in so many ways, but most importantly - it’ll transform the relationship you have with YOURSELF.
So coming back to how to validate ourselves. I’m going to offer you a few key steps to walk you through how to do this, so if you want to grab a pen and paper and take notes - do it! Or you can always just listen and then come back to the recording when you need to. But the first thing we have to start off with is - noticing our own thoughts and feelings in the current situation.
So let’s say you’ve had an argument with your partner and you’re really wishing they would say some encouraging words to you to help soothe you. But your partner is just not in the frame of mind to do that - maybe they feel annoyed and triggered too. They’re just not in a place to be dishing out kind words and validation. So you just sit there feeling miserable, spiralling in all your negative thoughts. OR you can ask yourself: What is it I’d love for them to say to me right now?
And even better - write it down. I did this once during an argument with my partner, she was upstairs having space, and I was sat downstairs and I wrote down what I’d love for her to say to me in that moment. So write it down if you can, or just think about it in your head - what words would you love them to say? Then, next question - IF they said those things, what would you then get to think? For example - in the argument with my partner, I wanted her to say she loved me, we were going to be okay, she trusted me, and that I hadn’t done anything wrong. And IF she’d had said those things, my brain was telling me I could then believe - I’m okay, I’ve not done anything wrong, I’m loved, I’m good enough, I’m a good person. All those kinds of thoughts.
So really consider those two first questions - what is it you’re wanting them to say? And if they said it, what would you then allow yourself to believe? It could be about something totally different - maybe it’s you wanting them to initiate sex, and if they did you’d get to believe you’re attractive. Or maybe you want them to compliment you more, and if they did you’d get to believe you’re a good enough partner and likeable or loveable. It’s really important you get to the root of what you’d make it mean about YOU. Not just their feelings for you, but what THAT would then mean about you.
Because that’s what it always comes down to - it’s always a thought about ourselves that creates our validation, confidence or security - so really dig deeper to consider what that thought is. Maybe you want them to tell you they think it’s okay that you cancelled plans with your friends or that it’s okay that you called in sick to work. Consider - what would I get to believe if they said that to me? Would I then give myself permission to believe that those things were okay? Notice how you imagine you’d get to feel if you really believed those things. THAT is what your brain is after. It wants the validation from them so that you can have that feeling, but that feeling is available to you right now! Regardless of what they say or don’t say.
Then - the next step is to consider: How can I believe that about myself, or my decision, or whatever it is - right now? How can I decide that those things are true, without needing them to say them to me? In what ways aren’t I believing those things, and why? Why am I choosing not to believe them? Really get curious with this step - because it’s the part where YOU are owning your own power. The power you have to believe anything you want, regardless of what other people say or do.
Maybe this is a thought you have a lot and struggle with - and so your brain is just using their behaviour to prove it true. Maybe it’s not. But really owning that it’s your own thinking here that’s either going to keep you feeling miserable OR make you feel confident and secure is so empowering. And this is where you get to choose a new thought that you want to think on purpose to validate YOURSELF in this moment. And you can use what you wanted them to say to you for inspiration. I did this during that argument I was telling you about, when I wrote down what I wanted her to say, I read the words back as if I was saying them to myself - I said to myself ‘I love you, you’re going to be okay, I trust you, you haven’t done anything wrong’ - and I felt a warmth go over my body, I felt genuine love for myself in that moment. And I was able to validate MYSELF.
Or maybe you want them to compliment you so you can believe you’re attractive. Okay - what can you believe right now that’ll create that experience for you? And it might be that you’re not ready to believe the thought ‘I’m attractive’ - maybe that is too much of a reach. But consider, what could be a believable thought to you? Again, if you’ve been listening to this podcast for a while, you’ll have heard me say that new thoughts have to be believable to our brains for them to have any impact. When you think them, they have to create a shift in your body. So if you come up with a new thought and it doesn’t feel good - it’s not going to do anything. So keep brainstorming until you find one that’s believable.
I talk about this in the episode from a few weeks back, the How to think and feel differently episode. Maybe you can add in some phrases like ‘It’s possible’ or ‘Open to believing’ to make your new thought more believable. For example - ‘It’s possible there are some attractive things about me’ or ‘It’s possible there are some things about my body people may find attractive’. I have one client who’s thought about her body is ‘It’s hideous’ - so she’s now practising the thought ‘I have an average human body’. Doesn’t sound like an amazing thought - but she feels so much better when she thinks that compared to ‘My body is hideous’ - so it’s a step in the right direction, and it’s a manageable shift for her brain.
Consider - what is it I’d love to be feeling towards myself right now? And what would I need to be believing to feel that way? What thoughts would someone who felt that way be thinking? And if that’s too much of a jump and doesn’t feel believable, what’s a more neutral version of that thought my brain COULD get on board with.
Maybe you’re doubting your decision to leave your job, and you want someone to tell you it was the right decision - could YOU believe it’s the right decision right now, without them saying it? If not, what could you believe that feels more true? Perhaps - I did the best I could with the information I had at the time. Or I made the best decision I could in that moment. Brainstorm ideas and explore how YOU can validate yourself and create the feelings you really want to be having.
So let me do a recap of the steps. 1) Ask yourself, what is it I’d love for them to say to me right now? 2) What would I then allow myself to think or believe IF they said that? 3) Get curious - how can you believe that regardless of what they say? And what’s stopping you from believing that? And then 4) Come up with a thought you want to think about this situation or topic. What do YOU want to choose to think and believe right now? And brainstorm ideas. Use the answers to the first 3 questions to help you come up with how YOU want to think and validate yourself in this moment.
Those are the 4 simple steps. Practise them over and over - and notice how much more empowered and confident you feel in all areas of your life.
Okay guys - that’s all I’ve got for you today! And if this resonated with your brain, I will be able to teach you how to properly use and apply thought work tools to your own life in my 12 week group coaching programme - Master Your Relationship Mind Drama. So if right now you feel like it all sounds good and makes sense, but you’re really struggling with challenging your default thoughts on your own, or coming up with alternatives - this is where having the guidance of a coach is going to be really powerful for you. I definitely wouldn’t be where I am now without the help of some brilliant coaching minds, helping me to see blindspots I didn’t even know I had!
The next round is in May and when I open the doors, there will be a 10% discount available for the first 24 hours. So I’ll put the link for the waitlist in the information section of his episode and I highly recommend you go get yourself on the list. This round has been amazing and the next round is going to be even better! So you do not want to miss it! If you have any questions at all - my email address is in the show notes or come find me on Instagram and ask me any questions at all.
And, as always, If you’re loving this podcast, please could you do a little something for me? Could you give it a rating on whatever platform it is you’re listening from? That would mean the absolute world to me and keep me reaching more and more people with this work! I hope you all have lovely weekends, and I will speak to you all next week - bye!