The Need For Validation

I’ve talked to 30,000 people on this show and they all wanted validation. Everyone wants to know: “Do you see me?”, “Do you hear me?”, “Does what I say mean anything?”
Oprah Winfrey

The article about her last show included this:

“There were no grand surprises, no makeovers, or celebs, Taking the stage of her show for the final time Oprah Winfrey came to teach. The legendary talk show host ended her ended 25-year television run by going back to basics. For one hour Oprah spoke to the studio audience and millions of viewers to thank them for their dedication and leaving us all with lessons to live by.”

And that’s when she said of each of her guests, that:

… they all wanted validation.

We haven’t yet talked with 30,000 people nor had any audiences numbering in the millions. But the people with whom we have talked in our careers have all definitely wanted validation, too.

This understanding is so much at the heart of Someone To Tell It To’s mission; we all have a fundamental need to be heard and to know that we and our lives and our gifts matter.

Just last week, in a press conference after the New York Yankees lost to the Kansas City Royals, Yankees manager Joe Girardi was hit with this question:

What are you going to do about your team’s lack of hitting?

This season the Yankees have consistently lost games by just one run. The press was focusing on what might be wrong, by what might be causing these close losses. But Girardi responded:

We’re not going to focus on that. Instead, we’re going to focus on how well the pitchers have done. We’re going to focus on how good the defense has been. We’re going to focus on how the team has won a lot of games even with a lack of scoring. We’re eight games over .500! That’s still a pretty good record, especially with some of our star players out with injuries and us bringing replacements up from the minors.

Girardi, rather than pointing out his teams’ faults, instead was validating his players.

We ask:

Don’t you think his players don’t know that they are not scoring a large number of runs. Of course, they know. The coach doesn’t need to point that out. How is bringing it up going to be helpful? Bringing that up won’t make them better hitters. But pointing out what they’re doing right will help encourage them and give them more confidence. It will validate their successes. It will help them stand up against the slumps and inspire them to turn those slumps around.

We both played Little League baseball as kids. It never helped when a coach would berate us or embarrass us by calling out what we may doing wrong. But it always inspired us to try harder and gave us more confidence when the coach would affirm what were good at, what was working well to get us on base or to successfully field a ball. Even as kids we knew where we were weaker. It didn’t help to have those weaknesses singled out. But it did help when we could play from our strengths and when we were recognized for them.

We have a friend who needed to be validated. He hasn’t been most of his life. He has an incredible creative and artistic talent. But he was always discouraged from developing that talent. He wanted to cultivate it professionally. But he was always steered away. Now in middle age, the yearning to use it has intensified. Recently, he was given the opportunity to showcase it.

When he did, he felt as if he had “come home”. Given the opportunity to show what he could do he shone and he loved how it felt. Others have seen his talent too. All it’s taken is for just a few people to point out his gifts encourage him using them and suddenly he had come alive. He’s been validated. His life has renewed purpose. Renewed direction.

We all need that in our lives. That validation. That affirmation of our gifts and not the constant pointing out of our weaknesses.

Too often we think we know each other when we really do not. We have another friend who is being pushed into a career she doesn’t want to pursue. Because it’s safe. Because it’s secure. Because it can pay rather well. But she doesn’t want that career. It’s not her. It won’t allow her to use her gifts, the ones that she knows are more fully her. The ones that give her life. The ones that give her life meaning.

She struggles to show those who are pushing her, in what for her is an unfulfilling direction, that she knows it is the wrong way to go. It’s a constant tension in her life. And we have seen that it’s a constant tension in many people’s lives. They aren’t validated for who they are and for what they love. They aren’t validated for what gives them true meaning, true purpose. For what gives them life.

This need for validation, it is real. We all have it. We all deserve it. Why is it often so hard for so many of us to give it?