Validation
I am currently re-reading Siddhartha (by Herman Hesse) and am very thankful to the author for having written this one. Herman, while speaking about introspection and validation says-
“We are not going in circles, we are going upwards. The path is a spiral; we have already climbed many steps.”
People talk about validation and how seeking validation is a futile activity. How our constant search for an external stamp of approval will only leave us tired and anxious. I like to think of validation a little differently. It’s important to ask ourselves if we are doing meaningful work every now and then. It’s important to ask ourselves if we are regularly being kind and grateful. And we might not always be the best judge of that. Our friends and family help us out here. Validation from a select few is helpful. We’d be surprised at the obvious things that they could spot that we’ve been missing all along.
More often than not, we are doing well. We are making progress. We are being awesome. We just might not be able to see it. Being kind to ourselves by receiving the select validation and muting the ‘self-critic’ voice within ourselves every now and then can be a helpful exercise.
