by Margaret Paul Ph.D.

Created on: February 21, 2011

From the time we are born, we need validation. Loving parents offer consistent validation to their children, validating their feelings, their perceptions, their gifts and talents, their particular form of intelligence, their interests, their kindness, caring, and intuition. You are very fortunate if you received this kind of validation from your parents.

If your parents also validated their own feelings, perceptions, and so on, then you are extremely fortunate, as you likely learned to do this for yourself from their role modeling.

However, if your parents did not validate you or themselves, then the chances are that you not only don't know how to do this for yourself, but you don't even know that it is your responsibility to do this for yourself.

Since I received very little validation as I was growing, and I never saw my parents validate themselves, I had no idea how to do it or even that it was possible to do this for myself. Now I know that self-validation is not only possible, but absolutely necessary to feel happy, inwardly peaceful, secure, worthy, and have loving relationships with others.

HOW TO VALIDATE YOURSELF

In order to validate yourself, you need to start to notice two things:

* You need to start to notice how much you judge yourself rather than value yourself.

* You need to start to notice your feelings, your inner knowing, and your acts of kindness to others, and consciously value them.

Judging yourself is the opposite of validating yourself, and creates much inner pain and insecurity. Self-judgment is generally a form of control to get yourself to do things "right" so that others will validate you and approve of you. But as much as you may succeed in getting others to approve of you, as long as you are judging yourself you will continue to feel badly about yourself.

All feelings are informational, letting you know when you are abandoning yourself with your self-judgments and various addictions, and when others are being uncaring toward you and disconnected from you. As you learn to attend to your feelings and validate the information they are giving you, you will start to feel a deeper sense of self-worth and self-esteem. As you learn to trust your inner knowing rather than make others your authority for what is right or wrong for you, you will start to feel more inwardly powerful. When you choose to be kind to yourself and to others and value yourself for your kindness, you will find yourself feeling very happy with yourself.

Think of your

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