Silent Benefactors and Seeking Validation
Sometimes when we create something that we’re proud of - something that gives us a sense of true satisfaction - that feeling is immediately followed by wondering what people will think about it.
And in that moment where we start to seek validation - where we start to wonder what other people will think about our work - it pulls us down from the high vibration that allows us to enjoy what we’ve created and continue to show up at our best.
There’s a part of us that still gets caught up in wanting validation from others in order to legitimize how we felt in creating what we created.
In this episode, we explore how to start noticing when we’re seeking validation from others for our work, how validation seeking can interfere with our ability to show up at our best, and the difference between validation and feedback.
Episode Transcription
Intro:
Sometimes when we create something that we’re proud of - something that gives us a sense of true satisfaction - that feeling is immediately followed by wondering what people will think about it.
And in that moment where we start to seek validation - where we start to wonder what other people will think about our work - it pulls us down from the high vibration that allows us to enjoy what we’ve created and continue to show up at our best.
There’s a part of us that still gets caught up in wanting validation from others in order to legitimize how we felt in creating what we created.
In this episode, we explore how to start noticing when we’re seeking validation from others for our work, how validation seeking can interfere with our ability to show up at our best, and the difference between validation and feedback. Here we go.
Main:
I want to take a look at what I see as our tendency to sometimes fall into the mindset of thinking and believing that the work we do is not important.
So at a high level, we should start out by saying that people are impacted everyday by the efforts we make, what we say, and the way we conduct ourselves.
The challenge, though, is that because we each live in our own body, mind and experience every day, we can’t see the strength of the impact we have on the people around us. We’re not able to see how the things we do impact and influence other people.
We almost never can know how big of an impact we’re making because it’s not something we can easily quantify or see.
One of the reasons it’s so hard to measure the strength of something like that is because many people don’t tell us how much what we’re doing is influencing or helping them.
In other words, even though our work may be changing the lives of the people around us, that feedback may never reach us for one reason or another.
I want you to call to mind a time when you thought that you did a stellar job at something – maybe you went above and beyond for someone, created what you thought was an excellent piece of work product or did something that had the potential to really help someone else out – and when you created that thing you had this welling up inside of you, this feeling that what you were doing really was hitting the mark and you felt like it was your best work, or you felt like it was created while you were in the flow.
Call to mind a time like this and think about how good that feels. In moments like that I think it’s a signal that the work we’re doing or something that we’ve created is in alignment with who we are, right - like we hit a pocket of genius or a sweet spot and it feels great to be in that kind of a moment.
And sometimes when we have moments like this we end up expecting to receive some praise or some acknowledgement that confirms what we felt during the process of creating it.
In other words, we had this elevated feeling of creating something and so because we experienced it we expect other people to notice it too - and we also have an expectation or at least a desire that they’ll tell us that they noticed it.
Let me give you an example from my day to day: each week I spend time preparing these episodes, I publish blog posts, and I have a weekly show called 11 at 11.
And sometimes I’ll have a moment of creativity where I feel like I’ve just done the absolute best I can to explain a concept that I want to convey, or I’m really happy with how I turned what I thought was a challenging subject or topic into something that was valuable but also easy to understand.
And when those moments happen I have a feeling of true satisfaction and there’s a sense of excitement that comes with that moment.
But sometimes after I reach that high point and that moment of satisfaction, I have a feeling that follows it where I wonder what people will think about it – whether what I said will resonate with them, whether it’ll make sense, whether they’ll see and understand the thought and effort that I put into crafting something that I took pride in crafting.
In other words, I seek validation
And in that moment where I start to seek validation, where I start to wonder what other people will think about my work, it pulls me down from that high vibration that allows me to enjoy and celebrate what I’ve created and that helps me continue to show up at my best.
It pulls me away from this elevated state I was living at because even though I was excited about what I produced, there’s a part of me that still gets caught up in wanting validation from others in order to legitimize how I felt in creating what I created.
And so first I just want to draw your attention to this thing that we can get caught up in experiencing which is the sense of wanting validation from other people to confirm what we think about the quality and valuableness of the work that we do.
There’s a second aspect here that I want to draw your attention to.
Layered on top of our desire for validation is our tendency to take the lack of responses from people who we show our work to, or who we go out of our way for, or who we tried so hard to help – we tend to take their lack of affirmation around our work as a confirmation that what we did wasn’t as good as we thought.
In other words, when we don’t hear words of approval, when we don’t get the reaction that we want, when we don’t feel like someone comprehends the effort that we put into creating something, we can feel like our efforts were for nothing, or that no one is listening, that no one is noticing, or that we didn’t do as good a job as we thought we did when were creating this thing in the moment.
This kind of validation seeking – where we essentially tamp down the excitement we feel until someone agrees with us – can rob us of the ability to really celebrate what we know was an expression of us being in a sweet spot or in our element.
And if we’re constantly judging the value of our contributions based on what other people say, then we’re missing out on the intrinsic value that comes from creating something that is uniquely in our vision.
But we have to remember that just because we aren’t receiving direct affirmations, that doesn’t mean our work isn’t impactful.
We have what I would call silent benefactors all around us whose lives are impacted each and every day by the work we do.
Our efforts create a ripple effect that’s hard to appreciate or quantify, but that reaches far outside of our immediate awareness.
Of course, it would be great to see and hear the results of our efforts in real time.
But if we’re not regularly getting that feedback, it doesn’t necessarily mean our work isn’t valuable or is going unnoticed. It just means we’re not receiving any feedback.
So I want to give you a way to translate this into your day to day, and I’d like to do that by giving you two things to think about that are in line with this concept of silent benefactors.
First, the next time you have a moment where you’ve put out a lot of effort and you’ve used your own creative genius to create something in your day to day work, and you felt like you created it from a place of total alignment, but you feel like the value of your work isn’t getting through to other people, I want you to take a moment to reconsider that assumption.
I want you to consider the possibility that you probably are impacting lots of people around you through your work, but they may just not be relaying that message to you.
And as a way to think about this, I want you to consider how often you have been impacted by someone’s work or their words or something they said - and how even though you appreciated it or benefitted from it, that appreciation wasn’t communicated to them for one reason or another.
I can think of plenty of times when I’ve been the recipient of someone’s hard work or creativity or advice, and because I was so caught up in my own reality, and my own stuff, it didn’t even cross my mind until later to acknowledge them in a formal way.
So I think we can look to our own experience for an understanding that we are likely impacting so many more people around us than we think, but because each of us processes and responds to information differently the importance of what we’ve done for them just may not get communicated to us.
The second and related takeaway is to remember that feedback is different from validation.
When we put our work or our own message out into the world, it’s great to seek feedback because feedback allows us to continue to refine what we do in a way that it will allow us to help more people and therefore make our work even more impactful.
But feedback is different from validation. Validation is the act of seeking approval of who we are. It’s asking people to confirm that we and our message and work is intrinsically valuable, it’s asking people to confirm that our opinions are valid or have meaning.
And when we look for validation, we end up tamping down who we are and the genius that we bring to the things that we do. And when we engage in this tamping down we can’t ever fully show up as the best version of ourselves, and it forces us to hide away some of our genius because we’re fearful that people may not approve.
So I want you to notice the difference between feedback and validation. Feedback is great because it’s the act of wanting to constantly refine and improve upon what you do - but at its core seeking feedback is not an attempt to validate you or your work.
Feedback is a refinement of your unique abilities but validation is about looking for something outside of yourself to feel whole.
So as you move through your day, if you catch yourself seeking validation, take a moment to remember the difference and try to steer yourself toward seeking feedback instead.
If you aren’t hearing anything from people around your work, it’s ok to ask them what they think and for their opinion - and we should be using that information as a refinement of the work we create. That’s valuable information.
But remember to not take the feedback you receive as a commentary on who you are, what you create, or your innate abilities.
Go have a great workday.