Not one drop of myself worth depends on your acceptance of me – Quincy Jones
In today’s episode, I talk about how to always feel ‘good enough’ without being so dependent on external acceptance/validation. Inspired by Quincy Jones quote {“Not one drop of myself worth depends on your acceptance of me”}, I discuss my thoughts on why we are constantly seeking external acceptance/validation and how this prevents us from taking risks and living joy filled lives. We tend to be so scared of failing, so resistant to failing and judge ourselves so harshly when we do fail. The clarifying questions I love to ask when trying to discern our resistance to failures are as follows:
1. Why are we so scared to fail?
2. What is the worst thing that can happen if we fail and/or when we fail?
In the past when I’ve asked people question 1, the common answers I receive are:
a. “I don’t want to seem or look foolish”
b. ”I don’t want to be embarrassed”
Basically, the reason why we are so scared of failure is because we are so scared of what people will think of us. We are so scared of others judging us. I can completely relate because for a long time, I focused on external acceptance/validation as I so deeply wanted to be liked by others, as I just wanted to feel ‘good enough’. But everything changed when I realized I was already ‘good enough’ because I exist.
In this episode, I share my observations on how society has raised us to focus so much on external acceptance/validation, even though we have no control over what people think or their acceptance of us. I share how I’ve learned that it doesn’t matter what people think of us, what truly matters is what we think of ourselves. I’ve found that our self-worth doesn’t depend on what other’s think of us.
I also explore our unhealthy relationships with external acceptance/validation especially on social media and how we can begin to make our relationship with social media healthy again. I ask that we consider focusing more on internal acceptance/validation and less on external acceptance/validation. We can choose to accept, like and love ourselves harder than anyone else, rather than always waiting for others to like, love and accept us first. Our freedom and joy lies in our hands. There is so much sweetness in life when we validate ourselves without waiting on others to validate us.
In this episode, I also go in-depth on how the book “He’s not just that into you” changed my life and made me realize that we all don’t have to be liked. Not because I’m not someone’s cup of tea, doesn’t mean I’m not a delicious cup of tea. That’s really the beauty of life, there is something and someone for everyone.
Let us all love ourselves. Let us all validate ourselves. Let us acceptance ourselves, so we can fail more, and live more joyful lives no matter what!
For more juicy bits, listen below.
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Until next time, live a joyful life no matter what!
Joy