Internal vs. External Validation
Host: Isaac Mashman · October 11, 2021 · Episode 85 · 14 minutes
Transcribed from the episode audio and edited to read cleanly: names and terms corrected, grammar fixed, filler words and false starts removed, punctuation added. Words in [brackets] could not be made out with certainty. Wording can differ slightly from what was said; the episode itself is the record.
Hey, what is going on, everybody? Isaac Mashman here. Really quick, as you guys know if you're a frequent listener, I do not do intro tracks or introductions to my episodes anymore. I did that early, early on, but the only time that I do them now is if it's a particularly special episode, and today it is not a traditional episode of Chase the Vision with Isaac Mashman. Rather, it is a talk that I downloaded from a new social media app. It's a voice-only app called Wisdom. Over the past month, I have been in the beta version of this application giving talks, and it's really unique because it's not like Clubhouse, where you have 25 different people talking at once. You only have two people, or one person as a top mentor, in conversation giving advice on a particular subject.
In this case, I was having a talk on internal versus external validation, and listening back, I'm like, man, this is a really, really great talk. I felt like I could go ahead and turn it into an episode of Chase the Vision. Now, I am not sponsored by Wisdom. I'm not being paid for recording this message, but I've been on the app for the past month, and I've seen value. I've built out an audience of a couple hundred people on that platform. The day after publication of this episode of Chase the Vision, Wisdom is going to be available for download on all iOS devices. They are working on an Android version that is coming down the line. So my apologies if you only have an Android, but the app is going to be available. Again, over the past month.
It has been beta only, and the response has been cool. I haven't really seen the response in beta that I've seen on Wisdom [on] some other applications in the past that I've been a part of. So I'm super excited to see where the app goes, and without further ado, enjoy this talk on internal versus external validation. Good morning, happy Monday, Wisdomers. If you're listening to this replay, then happy day to you, I guess. I really didn't know how to start that off, but I do want to preface this talk today about internal versus external validation by saying I am not here to motivate you. This isn't a motivational speech.
This isn't some [hoo-rah], feel-good kind of thing. This is reality. This is something that I have seen. This is something that I felt driven to discuss starting out this week, just based off of some recent, I guess you could say, conversations that I've been having and what I've been seeing.
Now, we as humans are social creatures. If we get down to the instinctual level, we have always stayed together, going back prior to civilization, when mankind was still hunting in groups. Notice the keyword there: groups. We were always together because there was strength in numbers, because, hey, if we're together, we are stronger. It's the same with society today. We are better together than we are separated. It's the same thing with, think about a rope. I don't know if you've ever taken a piece of rope and torn it apart or cut it or whatever. The rope is a series of single threads and strings that are banded together.
They're braided, almost like you're braiding your hair. With one single thread, you could easily snap it. You can pull it apart, you can break it, and you could do that with two or three even. But when you take a hundred threads and you thread them together, you braid the strings together, you get this really strong rope that can withstand hundreds, if not thousands, of pounds of pull pressure. You see, so that right there is a testament that humans are better together. Throughout society, civilizations were formed, and people of like beliefs, of cultures and religions, got together to where it's like, hey, we are over here, and we are over there.
But in this instinctual nature that we have, we also have the tendency to seek approval or validation from other people that are in our social circles and our social sets. That can be extremely damaging and dangerous, both damaging and dangerous, if we're not careful, because we will end up seeking more external validation than we will our own internal validation. This can be seen with somebody going to college. Let's say you have this 18-year-old kid or 17-year-old girl, and they're right around the age of, hey, I'm about to graduate [high school], and then I need to go and get a degree. Do they really need to go get a degree?
Well, it depends, and I'm not here to talk about that. But what they do is they seek the validation and the approval of their parents.
It's not so much out of respect. I think the parental idea of respect has really started to fade out in recent years. I think it's more so because the child, or the young adult, young woman, wants the validation of their parents. They can take it a step further and be validated based off of the college of their choosing. So one parent might be wanting this college, or maybe both of the parents want them to go to Florida State. You [want to] go to the University of Florida, but instead the child is not going to go to UF. They're going to go to Florida State, because that is the college, the university, that their parents approve of.
You see what I'm getting at? So as we grow, as we get older, as we make decisions on our own, it doesn't matter what stage of life you're at, you are probably seeking external validation before you take the leap of faith and do what you really want to do.
Before you make and implement the life changes you want to make and implement. You see, what you need to start doing, because you cannot rely on external validation, is giving yourself permission to take that leap of faith. Giving yourself permission to have that independent thought away from everybody else. Now, this does not mean turn into an egomaniac and a narcissist where you're like, I don't care about anybody's opinion. But there is a healthy boundary that you have to lay down with the people around you, and tell them, hey, I appreciate your concern, I respect your opinion, I hear your opinion, but at the end of the day, I'm going to choose what is best for me.
I don't think that I want to listen to that right now. I don't think that that is truly what is best for me. Because at the end of the day, you do know what is best for you, unless you're listening to a mentor or somebody who has more success than you.
Now, when it comes to the people around you, chances are it's your family, it's your high school friends, your buddies, the people maybe you're going to church or social clubs and activities with. I can almost guarantee none of them are as successful as you want to be in the future. Not just in business, but I'm talking in life. You might not have too many people in your friend [group] who are in better shape, and you're trying to get into shape, and you're asking them if you should get a gym membership. It's the equivalent of asking a homeless person if you should start a business or if you should do something.
Now, you can learn just as much from a homeless person about what not to do as you can learn from a millionaire about what to do.
But with the people around you at this current moment, I want you to take a second, before we even progress with this talk on Wisdom this Monday morning, and ask yourself, are the people around me the kinds of people I really need to be surrounding myself with or listening to? If you answer with a sigh, eh, I don't know, or a no, then that right there means that you need to start introducing people of a higher caliber and a higher frequency and vibration into your life. Now, what do I mean by frequency? What do I mean by vibration? You see, whenever we wake up in the morning, sometimes if you get a great night of sleep, you wake up, you are charged and ready to go. The days that you have a horrible night of sleep, you wake up, you're going to feel extremely low.
That means that you're at a low frequency, and [on the good days] you're at a high frequency. Our emotions dictate what we do in that day. The way that we feel determines the outcome of our day, because whenever you feel bad, you're not going to be as productive. You will not have as much mental clarity. You see, the way that you think is largely determined by the external influences around you, and you have to start monitoring those external influences. So chances are, again, going back to what we were talking about, most of the people around you are going to be on a lower frequency, talking about the same problems and the same issues they have been faced with for years. Now, this is more of an opinionated topic, but that is their fault. That is their fault.
Every single person has a choice to raise their frequency and go for more out of life. However, many people do not even know that they need to go to a higher level. They do not have the awareness that there is more out there. That's why you go shopping and people are saying, oh man, am I getting the 59-cent Great Value mac and cheese, or am I getting the Kraft mac and cheese? Am I getting the Bush's beans, or am I getting the Winn-Dixie special? So most of these people are so trapped in this scarcity mindset, they're not even thinking about the abundance and the opportunity for more that exists in their life.
So why would you be listening to those people? You're not going to listen to the person who has been married six different times, six different wives, six different husbands, about how to have a happy and healthy marriage.
You don't do that. You could learn what not to do and how to ruin a relationship, but you're not going to sit there and listen to them and learn what you can do to have a healthy relationship. That's counterproductive, because you can't learn the right things from them, because they have been in a situation and they have had a track record of negative results. So why would you seek that external validation? Rather, what you should be doing is saying, hey, I want to start a business. I want to make a career change. I want to take this leap of faith. I want to pick up a new healthy hobby.
I want to start riding my bike. I want to start, I don't know, weaving. I want to start basket weaving. You're not going to ask the people around you. If you want to do it, then that means you have the desire, which means now you need to give yourself the internal validation rather than wait for somebody else to give you the external validation.
The moment you make the decision to start making decisions for yourself, at the end of the day, you're going to be so much further ahead, because now you're going to be choosing and determining your life, your actions, the outcomes. And this is also healthy. This is preferred, excuse me, because if somebody else tells you not to do something and in the future you look back and you're like, I wish I did that, you're going to think about the person who told you not to. You're going to think about how that person held you back, and they weren't purposely holding you back. But then that is going to grow an animosity in your mind and in your emotional state against that person because they held you back.
Now, they didn't hold you back. You held yourself back because you relied on their opinion and their emotional responses to determine your opinion and emotional responses.
That's no way to live life. The moment that you stop listening to everybody else and you start listening to yourself and trusting your gut, trusting your instinctual nature (that isn't so much the social aspect, but more so the determining, devil on the shoulder, angel on the shoulder, right and wrong, what you should do, what you shouldn't do), then you're going to be farther ahead, because we are given that instinct. We are given the ability to make decisions, not to rely on other people for decisions and not to make decisions for others, but rather to make decisions for ourselves. Guys, internal versus external validation. Listen back to this talk multiple times if you have to, because this will completely change the rest of this year, 2021, going into 2022. Even if you're listening to this talk after the new year, this will change your life, because I was always an opinionated kid.
I didn't listen to the people around me, and that has gotten me much farther ahead than the people who listened to their parents and who are doing whatever they're doing in life. I'm feeling fulfilled. I'm feeling like I am growing. I'm doing the things that I want to do. Now I don't have to worry about any other person having control over my outcome and over my life.