Everyone has their successes and failures, their ups and downs. Whenever we’ve had a lot of positives, it can be effortless to feel good about ourselves. Unfortunately, whenever we’re facing stress, anxiety, depression, or any other negative emotions, beating ourselves up is just as simple.
We’ve all had moments where we get caught in the negative thoughts—sometimes to the point of talking ourselves down. Phrases like “I’m a screw up” and “I’m not good enough” can work their way into our minds. Even worse, these thoughts may not go away over time, instead impacting our confidence and self-image.
What’s unfortunate is that, with all the influences from others around us and the media, it’s not even difficult to learn how to shame ourselves. Over time, we learn how to invalidate our own experiences. We can also start to verbalize our negative thoughts to others, which can cause self-invalidation to impact us more.
To avoid these negative impacts, it’s critical to learn how to take our thoughts in the opposite direction. However, being told just to “think positive” isn’t enough—and it’s not the best approach, either. Instead, we need to learn how to validate our experiences, which takes practice.
Understanding Self-Validation
Before we get into the how of self-validation, we also need to understand what it is. As the name suggests, it’s a process of providing validation internally to our thoughts and experiences. Further, validation can come in many different forms, as you’ll see in our strategy guide.
One thing that can cause a struggle with validating ourselves is that we worry, “Does that mean I need to validate everything, including the stuff I don’t like?” The answer to this question can be somewhat tricky, but it does rely on one crucial distinction:
Validating thoughts and experiences does not mean that we have to think everything we do is justified. Sometimes, we can make mistakes. The key to self-validation is not to push those feelings down, but instead to recognize they are part of us—even if critically looking at ourselves means we want to learn from the experience so we can better ourselves later.
The path to self-validation isn’t easy, and it can take a lot of practice before we get it right. But by taking the conscious first steps, we can lay the foundation necessary to change our behavior for the better. And one of the keys to that rests in setting up the appropriate building blocks through validating our own lives and experiences.
Strategies for Self-Validation
No matter what sort of new skill we’re trying to learn, having concrete steps to follow can be key to our success. Down below, we’re going to explain several different approaches you can use to validate yourself, but you don’t have to use all of them. Everyone has the strategies that work best for them, so feel free to find the ones that fit you and stick with them.
Accept Your Feelings
One of the first concepts that’s essential to validating yourself is accepting your feelings. We often want to have perfect control over our emotions, and that can cause us to try and push down feelings we have, whether they be positive or negative. Even when we deny negative emotions, we’re not allowing our minds to process what we’re going through, which invalidates our feelings.
Our emotions all serve a role in helping us understand what’s happening to us, so they’re essential to have. You should start by acknowledging what you feel and not trying to suppress it. Try saying, “Yes, I am feeling X, and that’s okay.”
Go Over Your Strengths
Another core strategy that you want to keep in mind is to go over your strengths. Whenever we start to mentally spiral into invalidation, we can latch onto our weaknesses and think those are the only things that contribute to our self-worth. To counter this, we should go over our strengths, no matter how small they may seem in the moment. Every little victory is a step forward.
If you have a difficult time coming up with positive traits about yourself, you can slowly practice thinking positively over time. The more you practice validating your strengths, the easier it will be to redirect your thoughts in the future. You can also keep a list of your strengths on a card in your wallet or on your phone for reference.
Refocus on Being in the Moment
Mindfulness has become a big buzzword over the past few years, and there are lots of different ideas of what it means. When it comes to validating yourself, though, we’re going to focus on the practice of being in the moment. Using mindfulness strategies, you can start to become more aware of what’s going around outside you—and inside your head.
Practicing mindfulness can help you recognize whenever you’re starting to mentally beat yourself up, as well as give you another way to work on accepting your emotions. Additionally, it can give you practice in reorienting your thoughts.
Your core goals can include focusing on your mental sensations, the physical feeling of your body, or concentrate on the surroundings around you. The point is to gently yet firmly push yourself towards your desired train of thought, not to beat yourself up for getting distracted. You’re allowed to think, “Okay, I had that idea, but it’s not important now. Let’s refocus on breathing again.”
Think About What Caused Your Negativity
In most cases, negative emotions don’t just spring up out of nowhere. Generally, there’s a cause behind what we’re feeling. If we think we’re overreacting, we can quickly start to attack ourselves with negative self-talk like “I’m over-emotional.” By stepping back and identifying a cause for our emotions, we can begin to see our self-worth in new ways.
Remember that not every cause needs to be immediate. Sometimes our triggers can be as recent as “I got a bad grade on my last test” or as far back in our past “I got scolded for getting poor grades as a kid, so I attach a lot of self-worth to my school performance.” Understanding where our feelings come from can help us prepare specific affirmations for when we encounter our triggers.
Remind Yourself That Your Feelings Make Sense
On a similar note, we can often dismiss our feelings because of how we’ve been raised or messages from the society around us. We can also end up comparing our emotions to those of others and decide that we don’t have a right to feel a certain way in comparison to someone else’s experience—especially whenever we start to compare our hardships like it’s some sort of competition.
The problem with this pattern is that there is no first-place prize for having the most significant issues, and everyone ends up feeling miserable in the end. Rather than using other people as a guidepost for what we think we should be feeling, it’s better to remind ourselves that our feelings do make sense: “My feelings make sense because I’ve experienced X.”
Regularly Note Your Successes
If it’s invalidating to focus on our failures and use them to tear ourselves down, it’s validating to take note of our successes. This strategy can involve celebrating our victories, even if it’s as simple as finishing a task. Additionally, we can also keep a log of what we’ve done well, creating a “tada list” to show what we’ve accomplished.
If you already keep a gratitude journal, you can combine that practice with this one. You don’t only need to note things that you’re grateful for outside of yourself, but also note things about yourself. For example, you can focus on elements of your day like “I’m grateful that I finished a project” or “I’m grateful for my compassion for others.”
Don’t be afraid to spend some time regularly celebrating what you’ve done. You deserve recognition for your victories.
Tend to Your Needs
How often have you been so focused on trying to complete a task that you forgo getting up to stretch? How about skipping meals or deciding to pull an all-nighter with no sleep? Most of us have done these things at least once, and, what’s worse, our society ends up putting merit on those who sacrifice the most in the same way of success.
The problem with these habits is that they hurt us more than they help us. Yes, we can get a lot done by ignoring our basic needs, but is the result as good as if we had taken the time to care for our bodies? In most cases, the answer ends up being no. Even worse, we end up convincing ourselves that our needs aren’t as near as important as finishing that task or answering that email.
Our needs aren’t always physical; sometimes, we just need a mental break. We can only give tasks our full concentration for so much time before we need a breather. Even smaller five-minute rests can do a lot to reset our focus. If you can feel your attention starting to wander, maybe it’s time to take a short breather—which can pair well with getting up to stretch or grabbing a drink.
It’s essential to remember that we’re human beings, rather than machines. If you notice that you’re starting to feel stiff, hungry, or tired, take a break and get what you need. You’ll likely feel refreshed along with validated, which is a nice bonus. If you’re having a hard time stepping away from whatever’s taking your time, schedule in a break, or have someone else check on you to give a reminder.
Understand How Shame Gets to You
Shame is, unfortunately, something that we all can experience, but most of us never talk about it. Shame has a way of working into our brains and attacking our self-worth. Whenever we experience thoughts like “I’m not good enough” or “I’m an awful person,” they eat away at our validation. Even worse, we begin to believe these messages as truth.
Something else that’s essential to consider when talking is the difference between shame and guilt. Guilt can feel similar, but it’s more focused on actions, rather than our state as a person. While shame is “I’m not good enough,” guilt is closer to “I screwed up something, and I feel bad.” And while guilt isn’t a pleasant experience, it’s less toxic to our self-worth than shame.
Whenever you catch yourself feeling shame, being aware of its language can help you start to shift the story you’re telling yourself. Additionally, most of us have physical reactions connected to shame. Once you start identifying the feeling, you can counteract the experience into something more productive than beating yourself up.
Talk to Yourself Kindly
Whenever we’re feeling shame or other negative emotions, our language can switch to things that tear ourselves down. Even simple internal comments like “I’m so stupid” start to pile up over time. Often, we say things to ourselves that we would never say to someone we care about. For self-validation, we should speak to ourselves kindly.
To give yourself some perspective, you can make a conscious effort to act as if you’re speaking to a friend. You’d never tell someone you care about that they’re not good enough, but it can be too easy to say the same things to ourselves. Instead, imagine the kindness you would extend to a friend who’s going through a difficult time.
Shifting your perspective can help you practice affirming language while extending kindness to yourself.
Think About an Outside Perspective
Another approach you can use that involves thinking about other people is considering someone else’s perspective to get in better touch with your feelings. Sometimes, we’re so used to invalidating our emotions that we can’t recognize when they happen to us, or we know that we feel bad, but we can’t pin down precisely what’s wrong.
With this method, you can try to consider your feelings and experiences from someone else’s perspective. For example, you could think, “If someone else went through what I did today, they’d probably feel angry. Am I angry?”
By asking yourself it as a question, you give yourself a litmus test to put your feelings up against and hopefully get a handle on what you’re going through. By recognizing that someone else would likely feel the same as you do, it provides some additional validation for your emotions.
Of course, you don’t need to have the same response that you think someone else would. Eliminating your potential feelings and trying to put your experience into words makes it more comfortable over time to understand what you’re feeling.
Stay True to Yourself
Since humans are innately social creatures, we often want other people’s company. In some cases, this factor can lead to us wanting to seek the approval of others—even at the risk of changing our behavior from who we want to be. In some cases, we can also feel like our true selves don’t matter, and that it’s better to abandon our desires instead.
While it can feel nice to receive affirmation from other people, it’s also important to care about ourselves for who we are. One of the most significant forms of self-validation we can give is the freedom to be true to ourselves. Yes, it can be challenging, but being wholehearted is well worth the effort to move towards validating yourself and your experiences.
Determine Whose Opinions You Care About
No matter how hard we try, other people’s opinions can impact us—sometimes to the point that we begin to break ourselves down. Especially with the internet involved, even the ideas of total strangers can have a significant impact on our day. And while we should recognize constructive criticism where it’s due, that doesn’t mean we need to give every comment thrown our way the time of day.
As a positivity exercise, it’s well worthwhile to take the time to determine who you consider worthy of impacting your self-image. Take a small piece of paper (the less space, the better) and make a list of those who you care about what they think of you. If you can keep this list on you, it’ll be an easy reference whenever negativity seems to be rushing in.
Naturally, we can look to the people whose opinions matter to us for validation, but that’s not all having this list can help with. By having a focused set of people you know matter most, it can help you refocus on what’s important, rather than spiraling, helping you avoid self-invalidation and put you on the path to confirming your own experience.
Have Multiple Areas to Look On
With so many options for what to do available in the world, most of us spend our time engaging in various activities. In addition to work or school, we may have creative hobbies, participate in social media activities, or focus on exercise—just to name a few. And while it can feel great to give something our all, we can face a self-worth danger by only focusing on one area of our lives.
While time management can be difficult, it’s well worth the effort to try and expand what you’re involved in if you’ve heavily focused on just one area of your life. With this approach, when things go poorly in one area of your life, you can remind yourself of the other positive things that you have going on. “Yes, it’s disappointing that I didn’t get that promotion right now, but I’m doing great with sticking to my fitness goals!”
Recognize Negativity Bias
As you’ve more than likely noticed in your life, it’s unfortunately easy to get caught up in negative thoughts. Even if we’ve had a stream of positivity throughout our day, one bad thing can upend our mood. Going even farther, that negativity can impact us for days that follow, and also the people around us.
This tendency to latch onto the bad stuff is called the negativity bias, and almost everyone will experience it at one point or another. Much like some of our other strategies, by recognizing when negativity bias is starting to affect us, we can be consciously aware of it and begin to urge our thoughts in another direction.
Additionally, staying aware of this tendency can help us feel more secure in our feelings. Rather than beating ourselves up by thinking, “I have so much good in my life, why can’t I let go? I’m overreacting,” we can see our experience as usual and valid.
Recognize Your Brain is Telling Itself a Story
Another tendency that our brains can have is jumping to conclusions when we don’t have all the information. Part of why this happens is because we humans are storytellers at heart, and our brains react positively when we bring all the pieces together. Filling in the blank spots in our understanding of a situation can give us that endorphin rush, even when our conclusions are wrong.
Using language like “The story I’m telling myself” is helpful because it helps us reframe what we’re thinking into a format that acknowledges it may not be fact. This technique works well as part of mindfulness, as it recognizes our feelings and worries without letting them completely overtake us.
Consciously Try to Think Positive
Now that we’ve made it to the end of our list of tips, there’s one more core component to keep in mind: making a conscious effort to think positively and think validating thoughts.
While the advice sounds simple, it can be hard sometimes, especially when our brain seemingly turns against us by latching onto the negatives. But that’s why we need to make a conscious effort to move our default thoughts into a different direction.
The process is comparable to working out our bodies. If you plan to run a marathon, you don’t just sign up for the one next weekend and succeed. No, to get there, you do a lot of training, starting at lower speeds and distances and working your way up. Learning how to validate yourself works the same way, where the more you do it, the easier it gets.
While it can be tough at times, you’re well worth the effort to feel better about yourself.
Importance of Validating Yourself
We’ve talked a lot about the what and the how of self-validation, but we haven’t entirely gone into the why. What makes it so important that we should put the time into practicing this skill? In actuality, there are numerous benefits to self-validation.
The first benefit is helping lessen your reliance on other people for determining your self-worth. This doesn’t mean that you should stop connecting to others for validation, but that you should strengthen your ability to support yourself when necessary.
If we rely too heavily on others for validation, there’s likely to become a moment when our support system isn’t available for us. Other people have lives, and those can require attention, even when our loved ones want to be there for us. Sometimes, we’re in a situation where we can’t contact others. By learning to validate ourselves, we can still maintain our self-confidence, even when our support network isn’t available
Another core aspect of learning how to validate ourselves is that we’ve learned to recognize what goes on in our brains and how to redirect our energy. By having the skills to build ourselves up, we can effectively have a buffer against negative things that may drag us down. Of course, we’re not blocking out negative emotions, but learning how to handle them better in our lives.
Being self-validating also helps to stop some of the emotional dissonance that can happen when we try to deny our feelings. Since our emotions are our body’s way of helping us understand what’s going on around us, pushing our feelings down just makes our brains try harder—often making our situation worse off than it already is.
By making a willing observation of who we are, we can have more self-knowledge, which lays the foundations for improving ourselves and taking our life in the directions we want.
When we can validate ourselves—even our experiences that aren’t so great or we’re not acting at our best—we can learn to accept ourselves as human. Overall, we can start to reduce the worries we may feel over needing always to be perfect or live up to others’ expectations. And those gifts can be some of the best we give ourselves.
The Final Word
As we move forward in our lives, there can be many challenges to our self-worth. Between school, work, social media, and other factors, it’s almost scary how easy it is to put our entire worth into one part of our lives—and how often other people end up controlling our self-worth. Self-validation practices allow us to keep our confidence and stay more in tune with who we are.