Validation Translation

Have you ever talked to a friend after having a rough experience?  Wanting them to tell you how horrible it was, wanting them to tell you the same things that you are telling you about that experience?

Why aren't your own feelings about that experience enough?  Why do you seek external validation for your experience?

Because there are, if you will, different "forms" of self-validation that show up in different ways.  If you're rejecting you before you approach another person, if you tell yourself that you will end up failing even before you make an attempt, etc.  I want to focus on self-validation and trust here in a limited way.

We seek that external validation because we don't trust ourself, therefore any feelings we have are invalid until proven valid externally.  We compare our experiences to others' experiences and tell ourselves that although we have these certain feelings about those experiences, we shouldn't be having those feelings about it because of one reason or another, and our feelings about it are therefore, invalid.  So we seek out the external to help us be more accepting of our own feelings about it.  Our experience.  And our experience versus others' experiences.

Who matters most when it comes to having an experience.  Whether it is a good one, bad one, or an unbelievable one?  The person that is having the experience or someone or some thing outside of that experience?  Doesn't the experience validate itself just by being experienced by you? (My use of labels is not to negate the nature of duality itself, as everything always just "is")

Validation.  I am right.  I am wrong.  If you are seeking external validation for your experiences, both of those thoughts will come to your mind.  And both of those thoughts will be validated externally.  Uh oh, now what do you do?  Who do you believe?

You seek the external validation to prove yourself right, in one form or another (but we're just scratching the surface when it comes to that for this post's purpose).  One would think that self-validation would seem to look like this:

"This is bad because it is bad."
"This is true because it is true, so it is true."
"This is real because I say so, I trust that it is real"

If this is what self-validation looks like, then there is validation, but a temporary one that will keep going back and forth.  At some point, doubt will sneak it's ugly head back into play and you're right back to where you started.

Validation goes hand in hand with trust.  And if you do not trust yourself, how can you validate yourself?  You can tell yourself a million and a half times over, "I am right because I believe and trust in myself, I am right because I am right" and doubt will still creep in.  Why?  Because you don't trust yourself.  Once you build a foundation of self-trust, this kind of dialogue can help in getting you a step towards self-validation.  But self-validation goes deeper than that.

Self-validation looks more like this:

"This experience is real because I am experiencing this and I am real"
"This is bad because I am experiencing unpleasant feelings and it feels bad"

If you are in a room with someone, and you take LSD and start to hallucinate, is that experience less real to you because someone else cannot see what you see and cannot experience what you are experiencing?  They can't validate it for you, because they are not you.  Does it make the experience less real?  This rings true regardless of the circumstances.

You are the only you that is out there.  Nobody else is YOU.  Nobody can validate your experiences for you, as you own your experiences.  If you are having an experience, and if you are looking towards the external to validate your experience, what is that telling you about your self trust?  The only way for your experience to be invalid would be because you are not real!  Do we think that we are not real?  Do we think that our experiences are somehow inferior to others'?

We are so caught up in others' validation that we cannot even own our own experiences unless someone else does it for us?  If we were riding a rollercoaster, having the time of our lives, we're laughing, screaming with joy, do we look at the person sitting next to us and if they look like they aren't having too much fun, do we change our demeanor to match theirs?  Or do we live in the moment, experience the experience for what it is, and not worry too much about whether or not we are "right" or "wrong" in our experience and how we feel?  There are some that do so in certain social situations.  Probably not while riding a rollercoaster, but you catch my drift 😉

Self-validating your experience is not about establishing fact.  It is not about establishing trust that establishes any fact.  It is about establishing trust.  Self-validation is about trusting that what you are experiencing is what you are experiencing, and there is nothing more to it, nothing makes it false because YOU are the one experiencing it inside of YOU.  And that experience is a part of your life, your journey.  You are the experiencer.  Stop looking for validation for YOUR experience, it is real because you are experiencing it; it exists solely because you are the experiencer - so get on and start experiencing you little experiencer you! 😃

Check out my blog's Facebook page and Pursue You Coaching Facebook page for more information and join my Facebook Group or contact me at pursueyoucoach@gmail.com for a FREE 30 minute session. You can also check out my website: https://pursueyou.org

I'm Positive You Shouldn't Think Positive

It's a common Newer-Agey Self-Helpy subject that says we should always be thinking positive.  That nothing "bad" will happen to us if we just have the right mindset.  Although this is true.  Your perception DOES make your reality and in no way am I discouraging positive thinking, however, positive thinking abandons a part of you that is just as much you, just as much true, as your negative thinking and negative thoughts.  Things we label as "bad" like being sad, angry, or having negative thoughts about ourselves are seen as unacceptable and we must change them into "good" thoughts or "happy" thoughts in order to live a better more-fulfilling life.

If you are crying, you are obviously sad (or so happy that you're crying, but we'll pick sad for this explanation) and if I were to come up to you and ask you "Hey how are you feeling?" and you answer "I am so happy, this is the best day ever! 😊" - are you truly doing yourself a favor by ignoring the raw emotion you are feeling in that exact moment by masking it into something that is not true?  Let's say I don't even ask you that question.  Let's say you're crying your eyes out in sadness and you keep telling yourself "I am so happy, this is the best day ever! 😊" would this not be the same lie that you told me, only you're telling this to yourself?  Now, you not only have the mask that you wear towards the outside world, but you have also created a mask within your own self as well.  And deep down, somewhere, it doesn't feel right.  It doesn't feel right to deny it.

Not to mention the fact that you have now "employed" a tactic of positivity in order to attempt to change your outside circumstances in order to make you "happy", to which positivity is inauthentic and not in alignment with what you are in that moment, and you are expecting something outside of you to change in order to make you "happy."  (I realize that may sound contradictory to some)  This is one of the bigger issues, I feel, with this kind of stuff.  We try and utilize the "power of positivity" in order to change our outward circumstances which we then expect it to change our inner circumstances.  This is not the case.

The positive cannot live without the negative and vise versa.  In the end, everything just "is" until you choose to label something as "good" or "bad" or positive/negative.  As humans, we naturally label events, or other things in our lives, as positive or negative.  It's a part of who we are as humans.  In truth, positive and negative only exist in the mind.  Despite this truth, the positive and negative are a part of who we are.  Why deny this to ourselves?

How authentic are we living if we do not recognize the negative, express it without judgment, and live in our truth?

When negative thinking causes suffering, this is where it can change.  Picture this: you find yourself in a sad moment.  And you decide to take that moment in time and re-live that moment over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, then you enter suffering.  When you bring that past negativity into the present in thought, you cause suffering.  Suffering doesn't live in the present moment.  Suffering originates in the past and is brought into your future based on that past!  Negativity, pain, it is all a part of human life, and to deny your emotions, your feeling, in any exact moment would be to deny a part of your existence in that very moment.  And when it is time to bring yourself out of it, it will feel right to you, you will feel in alignment with your heart, with your body.  It won't feel like you are going against yourself.  And, in order to change something, it first has to be recognized for what it is in the first place.

What can happen when you're going against yourself, you will try to turn the negative into the positive is, if you fail - you have yet another reason to beat yourself up even more than you may have already been.  And so the cycle continues, but this time, the thought process is harder to reach, it's harder to expose because it's now been covered up with another thought process.

Let's say I'm beating myself up because I tell myself "I suck at life".  So now I'm going to try and force positive thoughts and negate it by saying "I don't suck at life" - but it doesn't make me feel any better about myself, even though I know that I don't suck at life.  So, then, what I do because I have yet again - "sucked at life" - and failed to turn the negative into the positive is now, I have yet another reason to tell myself "I suck at life" because "I failed to turn the negative into a positive."  But now this is harder to detect because with that positive thinking I have a thought process that now I am doing the "positive thinking" strategy in order to try and make my life better and to not "suck at life" and I don't even see that the same thing is happening there too!  "Suck at life" is still sucking my life! This is especially true if you do not trust yourself.

The power of positivity is a strong one.  BUT there is a difference between authentic positivity and inauthentic positivity - this is where the difference is.

Check out my blog's Facebook page and Pursue You Coaching Facebook page for more information and join my Facebook Group or contact me at pursueyoucoach@gmail.com for a FREE 30 minute session. You can also check out my website: https://pursueyou.org