Overachievers + Validation

[00:00:00] Hello! Before we start today's episode, if you would like a condensed version of what I'm talking about in this podcast, go ahead and subscribe to The Perfectionist Guide, you can read the entire thing in three minutes or less. To access this, go to Perfectionist.Solutions/newsletter

[00:00:21] com slash newsletter. 

[00:00:23] Are you a bit of a perfectionist, type A, hyper performer? Then you know that having the audacity to see an ideal and bring it into reality while breaking generational habits of hustle can be tough but it doesn't have to be. If you are ready to burn bright instead of burning out, to lead without losing yourself, and to enjoy the life you have worked so hard to create then keep listening.

[00:00:50] I'm your host, America's leader on rewiring perfectionism, CLG, and this is Perfectionism Rewired, the podcast. Welcome to Perfectionism Rewired Episode number 66. 

[00:01:04] Today's episode is validation, , external validation. 

[00:01:09] As a child or as a baby, we are unable to validate ourselves. But if you were never taught how to validate yourself then as an adult, you are still seeking validation from other people from accomplishments, from the number in your bank account, from how much you weigh, from house successful your children are, maybe a cinema of your Instagram followers. 

[00:01:30] This happens because when we were little, we needed validation from our parents and our family. And if we didn't get it, it crushed us and when you become an adult and you are a overachiever, you are a high-performer our system, meaning our nervous system, we are repeating that need for validation because we never received it. 

[00:01:53] The programming that we received was we need validation from other people and that we need to do certain things in order to get it. We need to behave a certain way. Maybe we need to hide parts of ourselves. This is how you can end up people pleasing and perfecting and feeling like you're never doing enough.

[00:02:16] This can show up when you're outwardly needy of others. Maybe you get overly attached or maybe you are very emotionally demanding from the people around you, from your friends, from your partner, from your children. This can also swing the other way where you can be super detached from others. You can withdraw. You can be very rigid and defensive and super sensitive to any sort of rejection. You go out of your way to make sure that you never ask for things and you set your life up so that you never need anything from other people. Theclients that I work with fall on both ends of the spectrum, but I want you to see that it is the same.

[00:03:01] Cor, issue that lies underneath it. It just outwardly might appear in different ways.

[00:03:06] This shows up in your performance and achievements because the energy, when you are accomplishing all of these things, it's not clean. 

[00:03:15] Our caregivers, our core units that we were exposed to early in life did not provide us with validation. There is a lack of validation, you don't feel seen and you don't feel truly witnessed as you are. Your core self is hidden under this programming because that is what you had to do to survive those environments.

[00:03:35] When we don't get that validation that we so craved and needed as children and as teens, as our brains and bodies are forming, we end up needing it so badly and deeply and adulthood, and it ends up being an open wound.

[00:03:49] My clients are overachievers type a high-performers successful as fuck super, super creative. They come to me and they're doing all of these things because they need to fill this deep need of validation. And this is where you suck your business, your career, your money, your relationship into this thing where like they need to validate you or you end up pushing other people away because you're so afraid of them touching on that wound, on that need for validation.

[00:04:24] What ends up happening is that we end up developing this really, really crooked self concept where you place your esteem and what other think about you? You like place that higher than your own opinion of yourself and having your own back, and you will never be able to reach. The level of self-actualization Maslow's theory of self actualization we've talked about in other episodes, and you'll never be able to focus on fulfilling your potential as you desire to as long as there is this unmet need, an unhealed coping mechanism for validation. 

[00:05:06] The way that I like to define validation is validation is when we recognize or affirm that we are valid, that our feelings are valid, and that your experience is real. 

[00:05:19] We have been taught to perform for external validation, and then we can feel worthy. This totally fucks you up when you're an overachiever, you accomplish all this stuff and you still don't feel happy or worthy or joyful. This is because , it is up to you to validate yourself. Or you will always be chasing the result in order to validate yourself.

[00:05:42] And it is an insatiable hunger.

[00:05:44] We can create inspiration and motivation from within, regardless of our results. Too many of us want to rely on approval from other people and immediate results and gratification in order to continue 

[00:05:57] you can be self-motivated. Inspiration comes from within you regardless of your results. And when you do this, you keep moving forward and those results will appear. In our society today, we are so used to instant results and we want to use the results as the motivation. What I teach my private one-on-one coaching clients is that you don't need to rely on instant results, instant feedback, instant approval from the world in order to keep moving forward. You depend on yourself instead of looking outside of yourself or someone else to tell you that you're doing a good job you refocus and you learn to be dependent on that from within yourself.

[00:06:44] You get to decide who you are and your opinion of yourself is the one that not only matters the most, but it is the one that informs other people's opinions. Human tendency is to look outside of yourself to confirm, validate, or define who you are.

[00:07:02] Another way validation can be tricky and affect the way that we operate in the world is when you are looking to get your self esteem from the outcome of your actions, instead of the intention behind your actions. Listen to the recent episode trauma of overachieving for more on this.

[00:07:20] When you are seeking external validation, you are slowing down your soul's evolution and your own growth. You gotta learn to start affirming yourself to start learning, to celebrate yourself. If you are constantly waiting for external validation, it's because you don't know how to give it to yourself, or you have accidentally shut off the valve of giving it to yourself, like inside your head, the volume of criticizing me, what's wrong with you is just up so loud that you cannot hear the beautiful, beautiful, harmonious soundtrack of everything about yourself it is worth celebrating. 

[00:07:58] When you don't know how to validate yourself, or you have shut off the valve of giving validation to yourself it stops your evolution and your growth. You're living in this very small, tiny box of reality. And you're saying that the only way that you can deem yourself as important or as powerful as if someone else raises their head up from what they're doing to validate who you are. 

[00:08:22] When you are using all of these external marks and measures to reaffirm who you are, it comes from traumatic conditioning you are not enough, and therefore you must become like these other people, or you must change yourself in order to be better, in order to be accepted.

[00:08:38] For many of us, high-performance. You base who you are on these external things. And I know that you have gotten to a certain level of success from living in survival. You have achieved egoic success when you do this, this used to be me. You still feel the deep physiological implications and the emotional implications of a lack of overall health and wholeness within you.

[00:09:05] It is like you are living a robotic life and it is empty inside.

[00:09:09] One of the most important things you learn as you approach healing as a high performer, a high achiever and a successful person is to adopt an internal motivation and to release the attachment to the external markers of success that are driving you currently.

[00:09:27] This is one of the number one things that I help my private coaching clients with. And it is one of my super powers. For us, high-performers a big part of how we coped with the feelings of inferiority and unworthiness. And if we ended up blaming ourselves while we were growing up in our adolescents, we deal with that through achieving success and external validation. Being a high performer, you go out, you do it, you get the things and you work hard and it feels good. I am not denying that. Right? Like trophies awards, pat, on the back, praises bonus, money, success, all of that stuff feels great, an, I get it. But you know that there is something else that's missing.

[00:10:07] You want to develop your internal sense of self separate from the external outer attachments that we sometimes hold onto for dear life. What happens if you're not careful and why I do the work that I do. 

[00:10:24] What can happen is when you are a high performer, a high achiever, and you get into the personal development world. And this healing process, you start to measure yourself and your progress and how you are healing. Using external markers. 

[00:10:38] That comes from the attachment to the things in the external world. I experienced this too. As we heal and as we integrate and we connect to ourselves and we become embodied, we release the unhealthy attachment to things and our identity, whether that is our career, our successes and our achievements.

[00:10:57] As we draw closer to ourselves, We find our essence and the infinite wealth that exists within you. In the beginning before you've developed this awareness and this embodiment, a lot of high functioning people high-performers see healing as a means to an end, you think, okay, I'm going to do this work, right?

[00:11:18] Like maybe you think you're going to hire me and you're going to have a better business, a better marriage, a better body will be a better leader. It'd be a better friend. It'll be a better mom. That is true. Those are all the results that come from coaching with me and from the healing process that we do together.

[00:11:31] Those are all external factors that are a result in a residual effect from healing. That is because of this work that we do together touches every piece of your life. It is really change at a cellular level.

[00:11:46] When you're externally motivated, you resist the healing process and the process of surrender, you're thinking that you're trying so hard, you were working so hard on this because you're doing this and you're doing that.

[00:11:58] But really you end up holding onto this construct of yourself. This externally built separate from yourself, construct of your success and your self-concept and your identity. And you falsely think that makes you who you are because back in the day, yes, it did save you from inferiority and shame.

[00:12:19] I get it. None of us want to be judged by other people. But when you falsely, hold on to this old idea of who you used to be.

[00:12:28] I compared it to one of my clients this week, your past and who you were, has nothing to do with who you are now. So stop dragging around that ratty ass Halloween costume from fourth grade, like it doesn't fit you anymore. 

[00:12:38] It's a good thing to leave some of these things behind. When you fear your authentic truth and being your authentic self, it is because you are externally attached and motivated by these external sources for validation. Then you're wondering why you feel so misaligned. All of this it's just the brain and the ego. We want to get beyond the ego, it has done an amazing job, but now you can let more powerful sources guide you. 

[00:13:06] This takes practice. Think about how long you have been on a steady drip of external validation and external motivation. For many of you, it could be your entire life up until now. 

[00:13:15] I rehearse positive thoughts about myself. I practice them all the time.

[00:13:19] I practice being internally motivated. That is how you gain this skill of self validation. I suffered from depression pretty exhaustively throughout my teens in my early twenties. And still do work really hard on telling my mind where to go every day, because it's easy for it to be looking for what's wrong.

[00:13:39] I could sit around and beat myself up all day long. My mind is vicious. It was conditioned that way. That's the way that my caregivers raised me. When you are told that you were worthless every day, you start to believe it and you start to embody it.

[00:13:51] But the difference is I don't allow that bullshit anymore. The reason I don't is because I've realized that there is absolute no positive benefit to it. And there is no usefulness to it. I don't care if your brain wants to go there every day and sit around and tell yourself, you might not be able to change this.

[00:14:07] Or this is only going to last for so long. Or I wonder when the bottom is gonna fall out. There is never an upside to this. And so I always challenge my private one-on-one coaching clients to start being very aware of the internal dialogue that you have all the time. That is more important than your daily thought work. The number one thing is to really get a wrangle on what it is that you are thinking about yourself.

[00:14:32] You've got to be reminding yourself how amazing you are 10 times as much as you want to tear yourself down. Whoa, you mean it will be a full time job. What are you talking about? Like some of my one-on-one coaching clients have asked me, will it ever be easy?

[00:14:46] I'm so tired of thinking about this all the time. Well, it's part of it. We are retraining our brains and our nervous systems. Yeah. It is difficult, but it's just like, you've been sitting on the couch for 40 years and now you're learning how to walk.

[00:15:00] It's going to be a little sore. it does take work to find the things that are going right, because that's not the way that your brain normally works.

[00:15:08] You have got to work on the self-love and the self-compassion and the validation itself to where you have practiced it so much that it is an unshakable and it is natural.

[00:15:19] Having it be natural doesn't mean that it feels amazing all the time. It just means that you don't automatically go to this is what's wrong with me. And I need other people to feel this way about me or say this about me in order for me to feel good about myself.

[00:15:32] If you're nodding your head yes, listen closely because I might have the solution you've been searching for my Perfectionism Rewired Accelerator, a six week, highly individualized, one on one coaching experience designed exclusively for perfectionists like you.

[00:15:53] Your perfectionism is actually your greatest asset and leveraging it can be hard work or take years of guesswork.

[00:16:03] That's why in Perfectionism Rewired Accelerator I give you my key frameworks. to taking charge of your Ferrari drive proven to work even for the most type a high strung stubborn perfectionists. In the first 30 days you will cut your burnout in half, increase your professional fulfillment by at least 150% and your self compassion will go up at least 250% and that is just your first 30 days. So, if you want to save yourself years of trial and error, go to perfectionist.solutions/acceleratoday, or if you want to take the easy way, just click the link in the show notes to check out the Perfectionism Rewired Accelerator.