Why seeking validation is essential to guarantee happiness in life.

You’ve been lied to.  And I’m pained about it. Maybe because I was deceived as well only just taking the red pill recently.

Everywhere you look on the internet you see quotes that read like this, “Approval is for the weak and insecure.” “When you don’t need or seek approval from other people, you’re at your most powerful.”

Now this all seems nice and pleasing to the ear, especially if you’ve just been kicked off your team for being too “quirky”, or if your opinion was shot down in the group chat.

However, validation seeking is a fundamental human need and, the earlier you realize that approval is the fuel that drives goal accomplishment, the quicker and more successful you'll become. 

Now, wait a minute.

I know those many “to-hell-with-people” quotes on social media are popping up in your head right now.

Take a chill pill.

Let’s see what Abraham Maslow, a world-renowned psychologist during the 20^th century, and one of the founders of human psychology, thought about validation.

Maslow put forth a theory that I believe will make you rethink this whole validation thing. It’s called Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and Validation

Maslow classifies human needs into five categories. These needs are arranged in an order of increasing importance.

The first category Maslow called, physiological needs- the barest necessities that every human must have to survive such as food, clothing, shelter.

The second category he called safety needs-employment, security, health, etc.

But, it gets interesting from the third category.

In the third category, human need evolves from a desire to satisfy instinctive biological cravings to a need to meet emotional fulfilment.

The third category of need, Maslow classified as belongingness and love. The need to feel warmth from friends, the desire to love and be loved.

The forth, he termed esteem needs. The feeling of accomplishment and prestige that an individual must possess to develop a positive self-image.

The last, he described as self-actualization needs. Being able to achieve one’s potential, and to be all that one can be.

Here, you'd notice that after satisfying the physiological needs, all of man's psychological needs, require that he depends on other humans’ feedback to determine his worth in life.

How so?

Let's talk about love.

Why Validation Goes beyond Love

Think about someone you love. How do you let that special someone know you love them? You show it by sacrificing time and putting in effort.  But love is meaningless when it's not reciprocated, and that’s why you won’t hang around for long when the person you love doesn’t love you back.

If you love somebody and are expecting them to love you back isn’t it that you want them to validate your feelings for them? Aren't you seeking approval from such a person?

But that's love, and it's okay to seek validation from somebody you trust, you say. 

Alright, I agree.

But this goes beyond love, and the crux of the matter is, whether you trust someone or not, you're constantly seeking validation from people, even if you don’t admit it.  So all those don’t seek validation quotes on the internet will leave you starved of a fundamental emotion. And a starved man is a love interest for the angel of death.   

The example I gave above touches on the third category of love and self-esteem needs in Maslow’s hierarchy of need. But let’s live that and go a step higher and see how the desire for validation becomes necessary for a positive self-esteem and to attain self-actualization.

As a boy, I remember somebody telling me these words, "you're an actor and the world is your stage."

And that's the truth, we're all actors (people) in this world, performing (rendering services) on a stage to an audience (other people).

Now, If the world is my stage, that means as I stand on the platform, spotlight on me, there’s an audience seated in the dark spacious theatre watching and applauding.

And as an actor, I understand that the better I get at mastering my emotions and putting on a good show, the louder the applause I get.

Meaning, as I continually strive to perfect my skills, the applause becomes the loudest, and only when the applause is loudest do I realize that I’ve attained perfection-self-actualization?

Don’t forget that attaining self-actualization means that you’ve pursued your passion to an extent where you feel you’ve achieved your life’s purpose.   And remember that to achieve your life’s purpose you must use your gift to better the lives of other humans, whether it’s entertaining them as a sport/movie star or empowering them as a teacher or philanthropist.

So if achieving your life’s purpose requires you to touch other people’s lives in a profound way, the only way to feel fulfilment that comes from self-actualization is to get positive feedback-validation from others.

Having known this, isn’t self-actualization tied with approval-seeking?

And that’s why I think that people who say seeking validation is wrong are like the cavemen in that Disney animation, the Croods, who just love to remain holed up in a rock, singing Kumbaya as they have a dinner of wild radish and roast lamb around the fire.

If you’re anything like these cavemen, and claim you don’t need approval from people, fine, no problem.  But when you discover that happiness just seems to elude you, don’t bother going for therapy, come back and read this post.

Positive and Negative Validation: How to Know Which is Which

So if validation-seeking is a good and natural thing, why has it been so demonized on the internet?

Here’s why:

https://psychcentral.com/blog/psychology-self/2017/08/validation-from-wrong-people#1

People have sought validation-the wrong kind-and have got burnt.

Now the problem is not validation in itself, because we're all wired to seek people's approval, the problem is the quality of the validation we seek.

Take for instance, the case of a young female teenager who uploads a selfie on Instagram expecting to get thousands of likes, only to have two or three people like her post after a week. She becomes depressed because of her performance on social media, looks at what other girls are age with thousands of followers are doing and figures out where she getting wrong.

The next time she uploads a photo of herself she bares her cleavages and thighs and out comes the boys, ‘wowing’ like ambulance sirens in her DM, flooding her pictures with an avalanche of likes.

In this case, our girl seeks approval from the wrong source hence pursues negative validation.

There are endless scenarios that can be likened to this case.

Conversely, still using our teenage girl as an example, if she were to discover that she was witty and funny, and starts to write insightful but sarcastically biting posts on the internet, chances are that she’d get noticed and draw approval from people who love a mixture of humour and tact.

In essence, there are two types of validation: the positive type that’s good for your self-esteem, and the reverse that’s detrimental to your psyche.

Quality Over Quantity: When Validation-Seeking Turns Awry

Now that we’ve established that seeking human approval is fundamental human desire that must be fulfilled, and that there are two types of validation, negative and positive, there’s something else to note. There comes a time when positive approval-seeking can become too much so that instead of boosting your significance as a human, it does the reverse and makes you question your worth.

Let’s go back to our esteemed female adolescence.

Say she starts to get really popular with her clever remarks, then one day she touches on a super-sensitive conversation and expresses an honest, albeit displeasing truth that makes many of her readers’ eye turn red and the likes on her timeline plummet.

Here the source of her validation, once positive, has now soured and turned negative and, most times in a bid to keep receiving good feedback she may compromise and pander to the opposing views of her readers.

It’s in moments like this that the overwhelming desire for approval can become too much to the extent that one doesn’t care about the soundness of the feedback.

Quote Box

"In this case, the quality of the approval is better and should be chosen over the quantity of the approval." 

So our girl can choose to listen to the right, positive feedback, from the few people on her Facebook page, instead of compromising with the truth to because of the many, negative responses on the same page. 

Conclusion

We live in a people-pleasing-people world, and to attain self-actualization, we must actively seek out ways to please people and get quality validation from them.

The sooner you learn that, your happiness is tied to the depth of happiness you create in people, the sooner you’ll start to seek this people and make them happy. In essence, your feeling of fulfilment comes from seeking approval, other people’s happy feedback about you.

So go out and please as much people as you can, just make sure you seek approval the right way, and remember, that the quality of approval you seek is more important than the quantity of approval you get.

What is your take on this popular opinion twist? Do you agree or disagree? Share your thoughts with me I’d like to know.