Navigating Life with Ease – What Validation Means from a 3 Principles Perspective

Welcome.

This podcast is a series of candid conversations exploring the human experience from a completely new perspective. In it, we will be diving deeply into the meaning of commonly used words and pointing you away from that old, stressful way of looking at life towards a new paradigm. This will help you find a sense of calm, cultivate meaningful relationships, and create harmony in every aspect of your life. Here is Navigating Life with Ease with Michaela Ellis and Claire Downer.

Hello. Hello.

How are you, Claire?

I'm good. I don't know why. I had two hellos waiting to come out. I'm good. How are you?

Yeah, really good. Really good, thank you. And I have a word for you. Marvelous validation.

Ooh. Ooh. That's not a word I've ever really contemplated, but how cool to do that. I mean, I think for a long time I probably wanted a lot of that from other people. And I think probably for me, I think that transferred to being an inner voice at a pretty early age because. Because I don't think I've ever been. I've not been too caught up in what other people think about me and trying to get validation from out there. But there was, there was a voice in there the whole time always telling me that I was not doing enough or working hard enough or I wasn't far enough on the ladder or. Well, just all of it, really. And so, and that drove me, you know, it's. It's 10 years ago this week that I burnt out, that I walked into work, took one look at my computer, walked out and never went back because I just couldn't. I couldn't switch it on. I couldn't do what I was supposed to do that day and never did again because I was utterly shattered. And actually, when I think about, when I think about the run up to Burnout like I, I did a lot of online dating, I would say I was a high achieving online dater. Well, I should have had a certificate or a gold medal or something, but that wasn't forthcoming. But during the online dating process, I had a lot of anger. That's probably the time in my life that I've, I've never, I've never experienced a lot of anxiety. I say I might go more towards low mood than anxiety, but that period of time I was anxious all the time because I wanted to be approved of by these random men that I was meeting online. You know, if they didn't message back, I did not feel that I was validated as somebody who was desirable. And at that point, I think I was pretty desperate to find somebody to be with. Yeah. To the point where it was pretty unhealthy. I mean, I, I did wait for this listeners. I, I did actually go on three dates in one day on more than one occasion. So that's how insane it became, that seeking. That was a. Seeking a validation. If I could just get all these men to like me, then I, I'll be okay. But I think whenever we're trying to get it from the outside, it's just exhausting, isn't it? Absolutely exhausting. Because, well, first of all, we can't control what other people are going to do or say at all. Second of all, it's got nothing to do with us what other people do or say.

Like, it, it's.

That's to do with them. That's to do with their perspective and their thinking and what's going on in their mind and, and their mood and whether they got a bed the wrong side or, you know, all of that stuff. And, and if we're waiting to be validated by other people's random thinking, which is really what we're saying, isn't it? With validation, we're saying, let's just hope that whatever I do lands right in somebody else's head and has them say the words of affirmation of some description that I want to hear or, you know, the pat on the head. And that's just impossible. And if you're going through life waiting for that to happen, you will. Well, first of all, like, what happened to me was burnout because my mind was busy all the time with trying to work it out. Trying to work out how to get people to like me. Men in particular, how to get, you know, get somebody to go on a date with me, get somebody to reply to a message. All things that were completely outside my control. But we don't see it till we see it, do we? And, and I would say for me, a lot of that has fallen away now. Like, I, I create as, you know, a lot of content in the world and I, you know, yes, I like to get nice reviews and if somebody likes something, our comments, lovely. But I'm not. I, I put it out because I believe in it and I put it out because I think it might help people. But I'm not particularly looking for that validation anymore, which means actually, like, when we stop looking for that volition, we're kind of free to go. This is what, this is me, and this is why I want to save the world and just spout forth, you know, whatever it is. We can be authentic when we're not looking for validation from other people. Yeah. Interestingly, I just made a course on insight Timer this week about, about authenticity and I missed out actually, that piece about validation, about looking for, you know, looking for something from somebody else. But it's key, isn't it, towards being able to show up and be ourselves. Because we're people pleasing otherwise, aren't we? Or we're trying to people please. I mean, the irony with people pleasing is that we're actually pleasing the voice in our head which says somebody out there wants something that is nothing to do with what somebody out there actually wants. And you know, sometimes when you're with somebody who's a bit people pleasing, they do do things for validation. And you're like, oh, well, I'm not really bothered about that. I don't really care whether you've done it or not really. And that. That can feel awful, can't it? As well. So, yeah, yeah, it's. It was key in my burnout, no two ways about it, because it was. It was control freaky on acid, which is just impossible. You know, I always call myself a recovering week. Probably a recovering perfectionist as well. Yeah. A lot to do with validation in all of that. I think so. Yeah. Let me know. What, What, Yeah, why this word and what's coming up for you around it?

Yeah, well, it just came to me really. The word in something I was reading this morning and maybe it was your inner critic book. I'm not sure because it was already there. There was someone I'm doing something in.

On.

I'll call it a neighborhood. Not, not a physical neighborhoods. It's. It's online, but I'm sort of leading a piece of something that we're doing. It's a cowork session and it's in what. I kept seeing it as someone else's home base and I wanted to get it right. And I had a conversation with him and he's just like, yeah, there's no, you know, no need to, like, you don't have to do things like to, to. To make it right to please me. And it's like. And that was so interesting because I never saw it like that. I said, I said, I. I so get how you see that. And I was just trying to not get it wrong. And yeah, it was really about not getting. Not getting it wrong and getting in trouble. So there was some revealing things that came out of it and, and the validation was kind of part of it. Am I doing a good Job am I doing?

Is.

Is it good? Is it good, my dude? You know? You know, like.

Right?

And it. It's like, dang, it really is. And you said it. You said, you don't see it till you see it. And it may be a roundabout way that you see it. He saw it as was. Like, he said, you don't have to plead. He said, this is the community. This is like the neighborhood, and you're just joining in. There's no getting it wrong. There's no nothing like that. So he saw one way, I felt it a different way. I felt it around this other side of it. But of course, entangled in all of that was me seeking validation, me being okay, being like, yep, you're good, you're good. You go, okay, okay, okay, now I can carry on. And it's like, no, it kind of wiped. It kind of wiped that out. And it had me look at. Where else am I seeking validation? But I'm not seeking validation.

I just.

I don't want to get in trouble. I'm trying. It's actually protection, validation. It's like, you can't. It's hard. You know, I know we look at one thing at a time, one word, one concept, one idea, but it's tricky to look at just one without seeing the rest because it's often tangled up in a ball. So I really. I really kind of. It opened me up into seeing how. And I know that no one, like, in this. This idea of even seeking validation, no one sees your relevance or until you see it. You know, when you said that, you. You. You know, you have this content, these words that pour out of you on insight time or in your YouTube, wherever you show up, substack on platforms, it just comes out of you. And the.

The. The.

The energy from which it's coming out of you is pure. It's. I know this will be helpful, or this is something that was helpful for me, and I just want to share it, you know, whatever. It's not, ooh, I wonder if this will go viral or, you know, you don't have any of that kind of crap in there, so it's. It's clean and it feels different. Yes.

Oh, yeah, that. Because that shifted recently, and now creating content feels very different to how it felt. Yeah, just. It felt like, well, what's the point? Because it's probably not going to do anything. So then I didn't do it. And, you know, and now I'm getting into a nice rhythm with it and everything, because that. That whole. It's got to be successful. It's got to make h. Something else happen. Which felt. Yeah, like. Like it's got to make other people behave. It's got to. I've got to have the validation of the likes and the comments and whatever else. And now I really don't care, you know, that. And that is freeing because it's like, I can just say what's in my heart and I'm not going, oh, but it's got to have an end. Something's got to happen at the end of that. Somebody's got to validate me in some way. Yeah. Huge.

Yeah. That's really cool. That's really cool. So, yeah, this is. You know, oftentimes I'll bring things that are still quite alive that they haven't all settled. I've begun to see something around this and that. The conversation with this person yesterday, it. It's like, ah, yeah. You don't see it until you see it. That there's something else that's got a grip on me and it's. Good girl. Michaela. Not wanting to get in trouble, not wanting to do it wrong. Oh, freaking frack. You know, or wanting to do it right. Whatever. Whatever it is. But why. Why does it matter? You know? So I'm. It's. It's amazing to me, the tangle underneath, because, you know, I had a. An insight a couple of weeks ago and it's like, wow, this is going to change everything. And it did and it didn't. It did. And there was more. There's more. It's like it's never alone. You know, the root is not often just one deep. It could be one deep root, but often there's like these tendrils that have also made their way out and have a footing. And they. They need to be seen too.

They.

They do. And I do see that we don't necessarily have to see them all. Sometimes we can just pull out a big root and lots of things will be released or. And I think it's both. It brings other things to light because now the soil is loosened. Right. And other things are more easily able to come to the surface. So, yeah, I see it as this. There's this gardening metaphor coming up now around this where there's. It's like turning the soil kind of thing, not just the surface. Like, you know, digging deep and just seeing what is going on. And we may not even know, you know, when you first. It's like, I just know, like, you. When you left your job that day, you maybe didn't Have a clear knowing of like, what the heck. All you knew was, okay, I'm done, I'm done with how this is and I'm not rooting into that anymore. And then you went away and then there was space for other things to show themselves that you could then take step you, well, you did. The moment is like, I'm done with this. You took a firm stand for your health and your well being. So yeah, this whole validation, it can show up in so many, in, you know, insidious ways. So it's kind of cool. But understanding, knowing that even if you don't, even if it begins as an intellectual thing, that right until I recognize me and I, I see me and I be me, I'm only going to be putting garbage out there for a purpose and it's not going to land purely right. People will feel it. Like this gentleman, and I'm so happy that we have this relationship that he could say, hey, you don't, don't try and please me here. This isn't what this was about. And if he wouldn't have said that, I'd still be walking around today with this, you know, eventually I'm sure it would have come out, but with this other thing that I didn't see until he said that because I knew it wasn't that, but this, it's this. So, yeah, anyway, that's where that all came from. And I was just curious what would come out of your mouth and through your wisdom and around validation.

I think I love the bit when you were talking about the garden metaphor and how deep we need to go. And I think that for me is there's something there around emotionally how it feels and how like I think when we first come into this journey and we're perhaps not in a good place and we're maybe very anxious or we've got lots of low mood stuff or whatever. We, we, we don't have an awareness of our body really what's going on because. And we don't understand that our emotions are letting us know about our state of mind. So we're kind of merely just distracting, I guess, most of the time and just managing our emotions and being dictated by them and everything. And I think for me what seems to happen is that then there's a little bit more awareness. But as the mind quietens, the depth is, it's, this is something physical about really tuning into the body and pausing kind of enough times in the day to go, oh, you know what, what actually, what is the. There is my body relaxed Is, is therefore my mind calm and have I got clarity? And I think the, the feelings get a little bit more whispery, that they get quieter because you're not having that great big, those great big emotional reactions anymore. So I think, I think that's the only real tool or technique that I really share with people much is, is the, is the pausing and just checking in, you know, for how we're feeling. Because I, I, I strongly, well, I'm pretty sure that if we're seeking validation in any way that is going to come with some feeling of discomfort in the body, it's going to feel icky because we're believing that we need it. We're believing that there's something wrong with us. We're believing that we need the other person to, to say that we're not, there's not anything wrong with us or that we're right in some way. We're forgetting that we are, you know, God or universal intelligence or love or peace or whatever, whatever anybody wants to call that we're forgetting. And when we forget, our body kicks off and says, what are you doing? You know. So I think it's key that every so often we do just pause and feel what's going on and use that as guidance. Because the mind, we can go just round and round in circles in the mind trying to sort this stuff out or trying to work out where it's come from or trying to fix it in some way. The mind thinks it's got the answer to everything, doesn't it? But actually when we drop below the neck into our bodies, we get much clearer guidance. Even if that's just a nudge to say you're believing something that isn't true now. You're believing that you need this validation from outside of you to feel okay and that you've got to do X, Y and zed in order to get it. Which I think is, you know, when you've got no boundaries and there's people pleasing and imposter syndrome. All those things, you know, make us feel that we don't feel good when we're thinking like that about ourselves at all.

Yeah, yeah, Yeah. It really, it always comes back to presence, doesn't it? Getting present to what's alive in us, what's, what's speaking to us from within, in, in the moment and having the, you know, the, the hood spot to like sit with it, you know, to just get curious about it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Because otherwise we'll just act being dictated to by those because we want to get rid of that uncomfortable feeling. And we think the mind's saying, well, you just have to be validated. And then that feeling will go away. They get a short. A short, you know, from that. Which is why perpetuates because these little. These little hits of relief, probably bits of dopamine and stuff. And. And then we keep doing that again and again.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's really good. Really good. Really good awareness.

Great.

Yeah.

Really good word.

Yeah. Very good. Thanks for your insights on that.

I shall see you again next week.

Till next time, have a lovely one.

Take care. Lots of love. Yeah. Ciao.

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