Are You Seeking External Validation?

In today’s blog, I would like to share with you my experience of ‘external validation’.  Now more than ever, because of social media pressure, we can often find ourselves comparing ourselves  to others or seeking ‘external validation’ to feel worthy.  We can lose our identities because of this and all the people pleasing can leave us feeling exhausted and not really understanding who we really are.

So, here is my experience that I shared in my book ‘Understanding Human Nature – A User’s Guide to Life’.

With external navigation we tend to make decisions based on the value judgements of the people around us and societal norms when making choices in life, whereas in internal navigation we are making choices that come from within. And over time I’ve increasingly moved to internal navigation; I get my answers within and act on them, and have very much narrowed the gap between soulless aspects of my life and peak experiences (such as the retreats and workshops) which were full of soul. Now every part of my life is touched by soul – or else what’s the point? I cringe now when I hear family members proudly asserting what a great job a younger relative has because they are working for so-and-so and earning big money, even though the younger relative hates the job!

As I’ve developed, sometimes I’m in situations where I feel like I’m living out my soul; it’s so on the surface, it’s like my entire being is a giant beating heart of what is important to me. Then life is easy. I don’t have to ‘think’ or do intense practices to find my love and soul. I’m just happy as I’m in my essence.

I tend to feel completely soul embodied when I’m doing acupuncture treatments, teaching yoga or giving workshops – it’s as if all other internal chatter drops away out of my mind and I feel totally at ‘One’2. For want of a better description it’s as if I totally drop into my body and there is no longer any division between me and the world around me. When I’m doing something that I love so much there is no need to have any trepidation of the world around me; I’m in my ‘element’.

A RETREAT FOR YOUR SOUL

A remarkable time for me is when I’m facilitating at Moinhos Velhos retreat in the Algarve. When I’m there I feel like my soul can just be so on the surface and met on so many levels. I do all the things that I love, offer loads of healing work, have great connections with people, community, professional development, fun, all in one place. Times like this can really help to shift your template and raise the bar of what you think is possible. Although we evolve and need change to keep the soul stimulated, don’t ever dismiss times like these as simply being a ‘holiday’ or somehow not ‘real life’, which is something the naysayers will have you believe!

However, listening to the soul also isn’t a one-hit wonder which always takes you towards the fun stuff; it’s something you have to do often, and you have to find ways to constantly access it. Here’s where your regular practices need to come in, so you don’t lose track of what’s inside and talking to you. Things evolve and sometimes we have to do what I think of as the ‘long walk’.

The long walk is where the soul is seemingly asking to move on from a situation we have become overly comfortable with, or which is no longer feeding or nourishing us, since the soul prompts you when you aren’t living fully as it likes to evolve and have new experiences. I’ve had this many times in my life.

Today, make space to rest and reset your mind.  Get in tune with whether you are internally validating yourself or trying to validate yourself through external measures.