Sometimes I Think People Just Try Too Hard to Validate Themselves a Lot

When people share quotes about things they really want, I think it’s because they just want to validate themselves to do that. “It’s okay to do this, it’s okay to do that”. When most people say the same thing, they feel like they’ve won. But if it’s not, they confront it and maybe start looking for validation in other ways.

In fact, I was just surfing on Google a moment ago to validate that my thoughts on this were totally true. What? Yup. I realized I was doing the exact thing I’m writing about. LOL. And I found that there’s a similar phenomena called ‘aestheticizing mental health’ or ‘therapy speak’ — but it’s not totally the same as what I want to say here.

Source: Pinterest

Nowadays, if we’re scrolling through our feed, we see a massive wave of quotes that contain many topics — from the important stuff to the most trivial things. Every time we scroll and find something that aligns perfectly with our current mood or frustration, we feel this instant wave of validation and say loudly in our hearts, “This is so me, this is literally me”. Then we read the comments — see that everyone else feels the same way, we convince ourselves that we must be on the right track.

Think about how it plays out in our daily habits. When we’re having an off day and the guilt of stagnation starts creeping in, we don’t look for a way to fix the problem. Instead, we go hunting for a quote that tells us it’s completely okay to do nothing. Don’t get me wrong, genuine rest is necessary. But there is a very quiet, blurry line between giving ourselves grace and simply babysitting a bad habit.

It gets even more interesting when we look at relationships topic. We love adopting common terms like “red flags” or “green flags” for many kinds of situations. Sometimes it completely changes our POV on how we view a situation. But in real life, it’s just not as simple as that, right?

We even do this when we’re upset with someone. Instead of confronting them directly, sometimes we just instantly having quote about “cutting off negative energy” or anything else that feels relatable. We might “like” it, sometimes just repost it, or even put it on our story just to reach a little more validation.

But what happen when we got something that doesn’t relatable for us? Sometimes we just skip it, close the app, and perhaps immediately go hunting in different corners of our lives until we find words that say, “You’re right, they just don’t get it.”

What I’m trying to say is, finding something that shares and relate to our exact perspective feels incredibly comforting. It makes us feel safe. But if that validation only serves to make us rigid, judgmental, or passive, it’s not helping us navigate the real world.

The real question is: are we looking for a validation to tell us we’re right, or are we brave enough to look at our actual environment and do the real work?

I don’t really know. Perhaps, we can learn to control ourselves so we keep things in check. We have to make sure that even when we feel like we have nothing to rely on, we still trust ourselves to make the best decisions for our own lives.