00:00 

This is Intentional Living with Tanya Hale and this is episode number 29, "Validation." Welcome to your place for finding greater happiness through intentional growth, because we don't just fall into the life of our dreams...we choose to create it. This is Tanya Hale and I'm your host for Intentional Living. 

00:20 

Well, hey there everybody, how are you today? I hope you're having a really really great day. I am having a good one. This is my first full day off of school from this school year, and so I'm super excited to get to sleep in a little bit this morning and also to get to spend some more time doing this, which is what I really love. So I spent this morning preparing this podcast. So here we go. 

00:45 

We are talking today about validation. So while exercising this morning with some of my friends, we started talking about the validation we receive as a mother. Well, I guess to be more exact, the lack of validation we receive as a mother. If you were ever a stay-at-home mom, you know that you bust your butt every day to get kids up and dressed and fed and cleaned and to keep them safe. And you're constantly making a meal and cleaning up a meal and getting out craft projects and cleaning up craft projects and cleaning up the kitchen and then cleaning the bathroom and then cleaning the kitchen and then cleaning the bathroom again. And then you're changing a dirty diaper only to have to change it again in 10 minutes, as well as changing the baby's clothes because this time it was a blowout and doing laundry all day long only to have hampers half full by bedtime and washing the sheets every day because little Boo is working on potty training. 

01:40 

But as kids get older and the messes...they just get different, right? So rather than toys and clothes all over the bedroom floor, now we're dealing with food containers and papers and projects and trash and gifts from friends and handouts from young women and crap from boys camp that hasn't been put away and we're working so hard to get them to be responsible and clean up these messes themselves, but that just seems to breed contention and everyone hates everyone and there are slamming doors and there is screaming. On top of that, there are books to be read to little ones and reading to be done by the older ones and homework and learning and playing. 

02:18 

And amidst all this chaos, we need to get the kids to doctor's appointments and to dental appointments and to soccer practice and dance recitals. There are play dates and piano lessons and shopping because in January, the shoes and pants don't fit your teenage boy anymore. Not to mention the multiple gallons of milk that have to be replenished every week. And if you're a mom who works outside the home, you're doing a lot of all that while also being gone eight to nine hours a day and fitting in so much of what we just talked about in just a few hours at night. 

02:51 

No doubt it's an exhausting job. If you're married, you may have a spouse that comes home and jumps right into the fray. He sees himself as an integral part of these processes. But you just might also have a spouse that comes home and feels they've worked hard all day and they need a break and they don't partner up. And if you're not married there isn't any hope of partnering up with any of this and you soldier on as we've always been taught to do, right? 

03:17 

And also as we've been taught to do we very often don't bring attention to all of the things that we've accomplished during our day. Even to ourselves a lot of times we don't even pay attention to how much we do and we can work all day long and finish the day saying "I haven't done anything," right? But we also don't let anybody else know that we're doing anything. We place ourselves in the role of an unsung hero, often playing the martyr until our resentment grows so big that we finally crack. We lose it and we start screaming and we break into tears and we run to our room or out of the house because if we don't get a break from it all we're going to need a much longer break from it all, right? I'm speaking from experience here. Powered by Notta.ai

04:03 

And this is the deal, that at this point our resentment has grown and grown and grown because we often feel that no one sees what we're doing and no one appreciates what we're doing. No one is telling us that we're doing a great job and that they appreciate that we haven't had a Saturday to ourselves in 15 years. It feels sometimes as though nobody appreciates that we care, that we cook, and that we clean until we're exhausted. Once a year on Mother's Day we get a few cards and a thank you and maybe breakfast in bed but the rest of the year we feel we don't get much appreciation and gratitude for sacrificing our lives and even our bodies for all of these little and big people in our lives. There's a lot of buildup isn't there? But don't we just feel the resentment growing and growing and growing sometimes and it's a resentment that could be alleviated by some sincere thank yous. 

05:00 

But here's the thing: kids don't know what they don't know. It's our job to teach them. Let's add one more thing to that list, shall we? If they are ungrateful and if they don't see what we are doing for them, it may just be time for us to help them see it. If we want our children to grow up aware of what others are contributing to their lives, we need to teach them to be aware. Somewhere, so many of us have gotten the idea in our heads that we should be doing all of this without bringing any attention to it. And we feel that if we bring attention to it, that it wasn't selfless service after all and it somehow negates the goodness that caused us to to do it in the first place. We must be super prideful if we need to bring attention to it, right? 

05:49 

But then again, kids don't know what they don't know and neither do the spouses. Really, for no other reason that it's important for us to teach these people in our lives that we have responsibility to be aware of what others are doing for them, we need to help them see what is being done in their behalf. To help them become functional, productive members of society, awareness of others is a skill they have to learn. So this is one sort of validation, and it's always nice to be appreciated, but we cannot count on, nor should we depend on, this type of validation. And a lot of women who are stay-at home moms go to work because they feel that will feel their need for validation. As a woman who works outside the home myself, even when my kids were small, I will say that there was some validation working outside the home, but for me, not a lot. 

06:48 

So I went into teaching, right? So there's never a lot of validation with teaching, especially middle school kids. But it's fascinating that in a few books that I've read lately, they've talked about how important it is for us, especially women, to bring attention to the great things we're doing at work. And that rubs so many of us the wrong way. To send our boss an email every Friday and say, hey, just wanted to let you know these are the main big things that I accomplished this week. Most of us are like, eeee! Right? But again, our bosses don't know what they don't know if we're not bringing attention to it. 

07:20 

I know this has always been super hard for me because for years I just thought people should know. They should just be more aware of what is happening and I should get kudos for the great thing I was doing at work. But usually I didn't because people are not more aware. Everybody is so caught up in their own stuff and their own busyness and their own up-to-the eyeballs in trying to get things done that they don't have time to see what everybody else is doing. 

07:52 

So why are people not more aware? Well, I think it starts off with the fact that because their mothers and their fathers didn't teach them to be more aware. And here it comes full circle, right, here we're right back to we don't want to teach our kids to be more aware of what we're doing and so they never learn to be aware. So the main point is this: if our expectations are that other people will and should validate us, we will always walk away disappointed. It never works to rely on someone else to give us the validation we need that we're doing a great job and that we are of worth to our family and our work or in the world. And why is that? It's because validation is our own personal job. Recognizing my worth in the different aspects of my life is up to me. 

08:51 

Now that's not to say that having someone else say thank you isn't a sweet thing. It totally is. It's those niceties in our world that can often be the balm to wounded and hurting souls, right? Those are the things that sometimes just help us out that little bit of extra. But this is the deal: if my emotional well-being is dependent upon somebody else validating me, I will never be fulfilled and content in my life because my confidence and my growth as a person rests entirely upon me. The validation I  really need is internal validation and not external validation. But most of us are constantly seeking for external validation and we don't even give thought to the internal validation. 

09:50 

When I can get to the point that I can recognize my own contributions to my children, to my marriage, to my family, my job, my community, without needing others to point them out to me and acknowledge them, then I am in a place where I can find fulfillment in whatever I am doing. Because hopefully the things I find myself doing are the things that I can tap into as being part of my purpose in life. As I've tapped into what I feel God wants me to do and to be and to become, I can start to feel the internal validation that is so, so satisfying. 

10:31 

So many of us, unfortunately, are looking to other people's validation to find this deep fulfillment, not realizing that their validation is like a band-aid to our souls that are bleeding out. A band-aid isn't going to do much. What our souls really crave and ache for is our own validation that acknowledges that we are on the path God wants us to be on. We are tapping into our potential and growing into our best selves ever. When we can find joy in our own unique individual path, we will no longer need other people's validation to sustain us. It will be like icing on the cake when somebody does give us some validation. It's a little something extra, but it is not necessary for our well-being. 

11:26 

I know women who struggle every single day with accepting themselves and where they are. And this is where some serious soul searching needs to start happening. Are they on the wrong path? I don't know. That's for them to answer. Or are they fighting against the path God currently wants them on? Again, these are big questions that we all have to ask ourselves and figure out because all of us have different things to do. I've known so many stay-at-home moms who don't want to be a stay at-home mom, but are there because that's where they feel they should be. And with that kind of disconnect going on, there is some serious work that needs to go on there. Maybe that's not really where you need to be, or maybe it is, and God needs you to learn to be more submissive and trusting. Again, these are serious questions we need to ask ourselves, but either way, the answers are available, and we can support those answers by how we choose to think about the path we're on. 

12:32 

So when I first found myself in a place of necessity to go back to work, I was really resistant. I felt spiritually that it was time to go back. I knew that financially we were in a situation that I needed to go back, and yet I loved being a stay-at-home mom, and I thought that I would do that forever until I was a stay-at-home grandma, right? Until I was always doing that. I never imagined myself working outside of the home. I was one of those women who embraced being in the home, and I loved interacting with my kids. I loved helping my house to get more organized, and I looked forward to the day that my kids were in school, that I could spend more time really organizing and really doing good, nutritious meals. 

13:16 

I mean, this was what I thought, right? I didn't feel a lot of anxiety or stress when it came to my role as a mother. My own mother was very laid back, and so that was my model. Growing up was a very casual, like, "oh, whatever" kind of mom, and so that's kind of how I parented my kids, and I didn't feel a lot of stress as far as parenting goes. I was feeling stress in my marriage area of my life, and I know that that bled over into my parenting, but the actual parenting part and being a stay-at home mom loved it. Loved, loved, loved it, and that's where I wanted to be. 

13:49 

So when I felt that it was time for me to start working outside the home, it was really hard for me. I felt like God was changing my path and He was.Bbecause my season had changed. And thank goodness. I thank Him that He changed my path. It was time for me to walk a different path, a path that would prepare me to get divorced a few years later and to be able to support myself financially. So this required a serious thought change for me. I went from loving being a stay-at-home mom. I loved being with my kiddos and taking care of my home. Now I would have to do something I didn't want to do. Could I do it for sure? Would I be good at it? Yes, I knew I'd be good at it. I love to teach but I really didn't want to do it. I wasn't super excited about going to work so I could have gone to work every single day bemoaning the fact that I was there, resenting my students and my co-workers, resenting my life. 

14:54 

If I had gone to school every day with the thought, "gosh, I hate this," then my feelings...let's look at the model, right? The thought, "I hate this," my feelings would be irritation, maybe anger, and then my actions would have been saying curt things  to my students or my coworkers, or maybe isolating myself from the other teachers, being grumpy and unapproachable. The end result of all this would be that I would not find satisfaction from my job and I would hate being there, which was all created for my original thought that I hate this, remember that circles right around. I hate it and I create a situation that I hate. 

15:40 

But that's not really my way and I've always been able to be a little bit more positive about things. So if I can choose to create a thought that served me in my path better, such as "I really think I can make a difference in the lives of these kids," which is how I went into it, then everything else in my life is going to change as well. I'll have feelings of compassion for my students, which will then create actions of kindness and understanding and listening, right? I'll listen to them more, I'll be more kind. And this creates the result that I really do make a difference in the lives of my students. 

16:22 

And this is what validates me. Bam, listen up. This is the climax here. This is what validates me. The feeling that I am fulfilling my purpose, whatever it may be, whatever path I may be on, wherever God wants me to go. When I can do it with full purpose of heart, tapping into thoughts that will align my will with God's will, I will start finding my own validation, the results of my life will validate where I am and what I am doing. When I know I am on the path that God currently wants for me, and I submit and I think thoughts that align our wills, my will with God's, the validation comes and it comes big. But when I am constantly fighting against what I feel God needs and wants for me by thinking negative thoughts, I will always need validation from outside because I am not receiving it from the inside. 

17:35 

So how do we get to this place of internal validation? Well, I am going to suggest we engage in the thought model that we talked about last time, the self-coaching model. So the first thing we have to do is learn to separate our thoughts from our circumstances. Identify just the facts. Right? We've got to do a thought download, write it all down and then identify just what the facts are. The second thing we need to do, we need to figure out what thought we are thinking that is causing the negative feelings or the negative actions or the result that you don't want to be living. And we do that, if you recall, by identifying the feelings or the actions or the results that we don't want and working that model up or down to fill in each of those lines. 

18:24 

The third thing, we need to acknowledge how that thought is creating the rest of the model. That thought is creating your feelings, your actions, and your results until we really start to see and understand and acknowledge that I am creating everything in this model with the exception of the circumstance by my thoughts. Until I do that, I cannot get to a place of validation. I cannot get to a good place. I have to really see that I am the cause of my feelings, my actions, my results because of how I am choosing to think. 

19:07 

So fourth, once we acknowledge that, we need to then identify a new thought: one that you can believe in. We don't want to be making up something we don't believe, but we need to identify a new thought that will give us the result we want to have in our life. And often this comes as we work the model backwards. So oftentimes we need to identify the result we want, then work backwards. Then we need to figure out what actions are necessary to create that result. And then what feelings do I need to have to engage in that action? And then what thought do I need to have to create that feeling? So I can just work back up that model, right? So I can identify the thought. 

19:50 

So fifth, once you have identified your new thought, your new intentional model, it's time to start implementing it. And this is going to be hard at first because you're forging a new path in the forest and your brain is going to want to stay on the old path because the old path is already hard and packed and clear of debris. But keep on it, keep at it. Every time you notice you're on your old path of thinking, hop back over to the new path and think your new intentional thought. You have to be consistent consistent consistent with this. We have to start stopping that old thought when it happens or as soon as we recognize it and jump over to the new thought and start creating that and get our brain used to thinking that new thought and get it used to abandoning the old thought. Over time the new thought path will become easier to think and your old thought path will start to grow over and it won't be so easy to think as the new one is. 

20:54 

You will get there. Promise, but it does take time. It does take patience, and it does take persistence. Just keep going there and eventually your brain will catch on to what you're doing. And when you become your best validator, you'll find you don't need the external validation so much anymore. Again, it will be super nice when other people say "thank you" or acknowledge your hard efforts. But those things don't drive you. Your internal validation drives you. You excel at being you, even when others don't recognize what an amazing thing that is. 

21:40 

Gosh, I love growing up. I love hitting the point where I can start to stand up and be me and be happy being me. And I hope you do too. I hope that that you are in this place of growth and development and hitting your stride as we hit this stage in our lives. I love it. If you would like to have some personal help for me to learn how to move into a place of internal validation, or if you just want some help navigating some tough situations, you can contact me at tanyahale.com and you can book a free 20 minute coaching session to get you started. I would love to help you get to a better place. And I will tell you, I will not always be able to offer these free coaching sessions. So if you're interested in working through this with me, I would suggest that you do it sooner than later. Once I get busy enough, the free ones won't really be much of an option anymore. 

22:32 

So beyond that, if you feel this is helpful, please share it with somebody. I think these concepts that we talk about are life changing and can really help us live a better life. So subscribe so you don't miss an issue. It's not an issue, is it? A podcast, we'll say. Leave me a review because that would help me build my business a lot and share it with somebody else who likes it. So I hope that you have a fabulous day. I hope that validation is something for you that you can start to internalize and realize that as you start to to put your put your life and your mind in the place with God and where he wants you and where you need to be your validation will start to come because you will feel it and you will know it. Have an awesome awesome day and I will talk to you later bye. 

23:25 

Thank you so much for joining me today. If you would love to receive some weekend motivation be sure to sign up for my free "weekend win" Friday email: a short and quick message to help you have a better weekend and position yourself for a more productive week. Go to tanyahale.com to sign up and learn more about life coaching and how it can help you get to your best self ever. See ya!