Let's talk about external validation

Not a panacea as it turns out

I was in a David Bowie cover band called Candy Volcano for a while when I lived in Philadelphia. Here I am doing “Suffragette City” at the TLA in 2018.

I’ve spent the past couple of months really digging around in the dirt of my own psyche to uncover all of those little subconscious splayed roots that are impacting my desires, actions and motivations day-to-day.

Lately I’ve been landing on external validation.

I’ve had plenty of it, but its never the right amount. Like success, like money, like anything that is ensconced in “enough-ness,” the closer you get to the goal post the further it gets from you.

And so I stew…

I posted the below in a note the other day, but I’m still in an information gathering stage and would love to hear from others. So please share with me your thoughts!

For anyone drawn to the stage, even if it’s just the “substack stage,” what motivates you? A desire for connection? A desire to be seen? A desire to share your gifts? To be celebrated?

I feel like for me, its all of the above, but I have so much internal tension within this.

1. My desire to be seen squared with the belief that, as a woman, I am supposed to keep myself minimally invasive.

2. My desire to share my gifts squared with the belief that it is conceited and presumptuous of me to believe I have anything worth sharing.

(Elise Loehnen has a lot of worthy insights about the above two points, btw)

3. Whether either of these desires are true desires or trauma responses. Is applause a proxy for the love and attention I didn’t get in childhood?

And if that is the case, am I wrong to still want it?

Do you separate your self worth from the thoughts and opinions of others? How?

Hint: If you’re seeking any external validation at all, you dont.

Interestingly, this is not a wholesale issue in my life because there are many activities that I undertake where I 100% don’t give a flying forking fuck about what anyone else says.

Like Zumba. I give it all and I leave it all on the dance floor.

Writing is another one of those things for me.

You can be the most esteemed author or publisher in the world and look me square in the eye and tell me you think I’m a shitty writer and I will KNOW you are wrong. I just do.

You can be a Supreme Court Justice and tell me that I don’t understand how to craft an argument that is well-reasoned and sounded in the law. I will pretend to take your critique thoughtfully, but I will likewise know that you are wrong.

Yet I can walk off the stage feeling really proud and then look at someones **perfectly neutral facial expression** reading into it a sense of disappointment and embarrassment, thereby destroying any trace of belief in myself for the next several hours or days.

I guess I need to more equitably distribute the contents of my ego.

What aspects of your life do you feel inherently confident in? Where did this inherent confidence come from?

I really don’t know with my writing, except that throughout childhood I did well in school (when I wanted to) and the critique was generally positive.

Which begs the question: Did I get enough external validation about my writing in my early life to be set for life?

Or was it inherently already there, thereby effortlessly ATTRACTING external validation?

It’s a chicken or egg thing and I don’t know the answer. I just hope to one day get to fill my performing bucket with this much swagger.

Lastly, and I cannot ask this enough, SHARE WITH ME YOUR THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS ABOUT SEEKING EXTERNAL VALIDATION.

I am extremely curious and would love to do a follow up post on this to help other writers, performers, zumba practitioners etc., by sharing your thoughts.

Thank you!