Prospecting for Validation?
You’re probably looking in the wrong place.
The last time I took my son to the park, I met a little boy no older than five or six. He didn’t say hi or tell me his name. He simply made eye contact and riffed into detail about the little Paw Patrol figures lying in each of his two open palms. He was brimming with excitement and could’ve filled the park bulletin with everything he had to say about them.
I tried to keep up, matching my excitement with his, but when he finished, he darted up the stairs of the jungle gym shouting, “Watch this!”
He arrived at the top, raised the Patrol in celebration, and waited for my approval. I didn’t assess his performance. I tried validating his feelings instead:
“Wow, you sure look happy to be up so high! It looks exciting up there!”
He nodded with a smile, but it couldn’t have been the validation he was looking for. In the next breath, on his climb back down, he eagerly began recounting his accomplishments in a well-known video game.
Generations of Approval
This is an illustration of a child yearning to be acknowledged, looking for ways to gain approval, or validation, to build his self-confidence. You and I are not all that different from this boy, nor was our childhood.
Remember the little girl who had to show dad her new dance routine as soon as he arrived home from work or the little boy who couldn’t wait to bring his favorite truck to show-n-tell? Remember, sharing notes of gossip and pretending to know where babies came from? How much exposure did you have to words like “terrific,” “outstanding,” and “wonderful” through school?
Teachers, parents, and peers were assessing us all the time. In fact, most of them still do. The only way to possess and cultivate self-confidence was to continually measure ourselves against the world, particularly in ways we hoped would provide positive feedback.
These were the conditions of childhood for many of us — including generations prior. As we progress through life as teenagers and adults, we continue this battle to preserve our validation through social media, gossip, and saying yes to things we don’t want to do.
And just like us, that boy from the park could end up spending the rest of his life looking for sources of approval to confirm his adequacy as a friend, husband, father, or colleague.
If measuring ourselves up against the world is so good for our self-confidence, why are we still unsatisfied? And why are we so beaten down after taking a hit of negative feedback or embarrassment?
If you’re continually looking for validation to hold yourself up, maybe you lack the infrastructure of self-esteem. You’ve mistaken your need for self-confidence, for a need for self-esteem.
Understanding the Difference
It’s not uncommon to see self-confidence and self-esteem used synonymously. The differences between them are few, but they’re critical to understand why you need more of one than the other.
Self-Confidence
Self-confidence is our assessment of capability. It’s a measure of what we’re good and bad at and how it plays a role in what we can achieve. Self-confident people trust their abilities and possess the conviction to act accordingly. It is an external view of oneself.
What you believe about your self-confidence does not contribute to your level of self-esteem. Imagine a Ph.D. candidate fully confident in her ability to deliver a mathematics lecture, but is too insecure to do it in a room full of faculty and peers.
Self-Esteem
Self-esteem is defined as an individual’s assessment of self-worth. Where you set your standard of worth depends on (a) how you measure up to the success of meeting your own standards and (b) your ability to maintain your sense of self in interactions with others. People with high self-esteem hold themselves in higher regard, have more robust and secure feelings about themselves, and are better at interpersonal communication. This aligns with an internal view of oneself.
How we handle failure can tell us a lot about our level of self-esteem.
Internalizing Failure
Consider two people with the same level of self-confidence to learn a musical instrument. They both feel the same about their ability to learn. After learning the violin for two months, what happens when they “fail” or decide to give up their attempt to learn?
The person with higher self-esteem will react stably. She might end up resigning, “Well, maybe violin just isn’t for me.” With much lower self-esteem, the other person is going to quit far more dramatically. He believes his failure to pick up the violin is a statement not just about the violin, nor about his faculty for picking up musical instruments. He perceives it as a direct threat to his entire identity: “I’m not good at anything.”
Practice is Progress
There’s neither shame nor harm in trying to fuel a greater sense of self-confidence through approval and validation if you possess little self-esteem. And to the same end, parents probably ought to continue working to build their child’s self-confidence. But we can’t make the mistake of believing that a boost in self-confidence is an equivalent boost in self-esteem.
We cannot neglect our need for well-rounded well-being. The best way to do that is to practice behaviors that do greater service to our self-esteem than our self-confidence. There are many ways to do this, enough for Google to yield a billion results. I thought it would be more helpful to list a few of my favorites.
Practice Saying No
If the reason you’re saying yes to things you don’t want to do is only to preserve other people’s approval of you, then you’re just doing things for other people. You’re giving greater weight to other people’s opinions of you than you are toward yourself, the easiest way to undermine your self-esteem.
If your boss asks you to attend a social event that other vendors and clients will attend and you don’t want to go, should you skip it?
Absolutely not.
This is an example of cultivating success and preserving your career, not other people’s opinions. But when your friends invite you out to Friday night karaoke, and you don’t want to go because you hate karaoke, then don’t go. We’ve all heard the advice before:
If they’re really your friends, they won’t care.
You believe that, and you know they do too. It’s time to trust it.
Practice Being Mindful of Comparison
The next time you’re out to dinner, at a party, or death-scrolling Instagram, be mindful of drawing comparisons.
She looks way better in that black dress than I would.
Wow, everyone in that family of five is interacting with one another. My wife and son are on their phones.
That girl is way out of my league.
OMG! Julia is on vacation in Spain. I’m in New Jersey.
Take a moment to stop and reflect on your judgments and comparisons. What are they really helping you accomplish? Instead of seeing the world through a lens of comparison, trying looking at it with innocent observation. If you have to, remind yourself you’re observing, not judging.
Practice Regular Exercise
Even if you made improvements to no other area of your life, regular exercise would do wonders for your health and sense of well-being. If you think about what kind of fresh Nike’s you need or how many 5Ks you’re going to sign up for, you’re missing the point. This isn’t about that.
The goal is to reap the natural benefits of exercise. It doesn’t matter how long you exercise, nor at what intensity, as long as you find it moderately challenging. What matters is the development of your ability to consistently rise to a personal challenge for which there are no other benefits than your own sense of well-being. Eventually, you will feel good. I promise you.
You don’t have to exercise to develop a healthier self-image, but consistent cardio may be the most effective in learning to own yourself. Remember, there’s no benefit to exercise for anyone else but yourself. If your current life and living situation make it possible, try keeping your efforts private as a reminder for whom you do it.
Hint: You.
Practice Recognizing Your Insignificance (in the broader universe)
When it comes down to it, no one cares about you other than the people in your world. I’m sure there are even a few among them who don’t actually care about you.
There’s nothing wrong with caring about the opinions of those in your life. The opinions of people who care about us matter, don’t they? But if you’ve forced yourself to accompany your friends to Friday karaoke and you want to belt some Dusty Springfield, then do that. At the end of the night, no stranger will care how silly you thought you looked or think twice about the line you missed. Nor will they remember you at all.
And here’s the fun part:
If they do, then they’re representations of precisely the person you’re trying to leave behind (i.e., those who gossip and perpetually measure themselves up to others to feel better) So f — ‘em.
There’s a new you.
You’re just half a speck of dust in the space of an infinite universe. It sounds downright morbid, but since I care about you, I want you to know this as a matter of fact and not hear it from someone else as a matter of insult.
The sooner you understand this truth, the sooner you’ll move on to worrying more about the quality of your self-preservation and less about your quantity of likes, claps, pokes, kudos, and the rest of them.