Perfect Validation
Take a moment to visualize this: the feeling of truly believing you’ve done a great job with something. This something is a bit more important to us than a regular moment or activity and is, most importantly, independent from the event’s actual outcome. Like when you felt confident you crushed that exam, only to find out you got a C-. Like when you thought you were so smooth when trying to flirt, only to realize you looked a fool. Like when a performer is certain in the quality of their showing, subsequently learning from their audience based on the claps and boos! Like when you are in the moment, simply proud of what you did. I could keep going with examples if you want, but I think you get the gist. While it may not lead to a perfect outcome every time, it’s important to recall this sense of internal validation. It serves as the complement to the external form of validation many focus on pursuing. What about when we have both? I was recently inspired to write about this.
Let’s start with some background. OPEN Finance is an LGBTQ+ nonprofit volunteer organization based in New York City. It’s a valuable way for LGBTQ+ professionals in business and finance to meet other out peers and collectively drive LGBTQ+ equality and inclusion across our industries. I am proud to be a contributing member of this organization both personally and on behalf of my firm. The organization recently approached me with the opportunity to stand up a book club for them. When I asked them why me, the chairman responded: “Why? You come to every meeting with a book!” He had a point there; I just like wearing my glasses and bringing my little canvas book bags to professional events so that people know I read!!! Anyways, I accepted the challenge and developed an approach to establish my very own book club for business gays.
Fast-forward, the inaugural meeting of the book club was done. I was thrilled! I skipped home feeling over the moon, confident with all of my prep work, meeting facilitation, and engagement from the group.
“Who cares what anybody else thinks, I crushed that!!!”
That was my feeling of internal validation, whether or not anyone felt the same didn’t matter in that moment. What mattered was the allowance given to myself to feel pride in my work. Following this meeting, the organization leads greenlit my book club to continue, establishing my position as a literary resource in this industry, but this isn’t the moment I was inspired to write about.
A half-month trip to Japan later, I return to NYC just in time for OPEN Finance’s monthly happy hour which I typically volunteer for. One check-in shift later, I’m finally off-duty upstairs with my friends thoroughly enjoying my payment of 1 free drink (gin & tonic w/lemon). Completing my laps around the venue, searching for familiar faces, I run into numerous people from my book club. It was a joy to reconnect as well as advertise the next book to them, which I luckily already had in my book bag! They were very complimentary of the event, looking forward to the next one, but one specific moment stuck out.
One of the book club attendees came over to me a second time later in the evening, I believe on his way out. He stops me and says: “I just have to tell you; your facilitation really was incredible. That was a high-quality book club, and you did a great and professional job.” He had felt like he hadn’t communicated that directly enough and wanted to ensure I understood that his previous words were by no means hollow. I did, in fact, look him up on LinkedIn later and not to brag, but he’s a lawyer from an Ivy, so I’m taking this compliment with a little extra professional confidence.
Now, I have done plenty of things that haven’t resulted in such a “success.” But in this moment, as he said “see you at the next one!” and walked away, I noticed my face went bright red and two invisible strings were suddenly holding up the corners of my mouth. I had achieved the book club and was proud of what I accomplished, but this moment of connection between the internal and external, the simplest and most genuine version of both, transformed my achievement into a success. While you may consider the other compliments I received for the event to have done the same thing, this specific interaction became the success that I wanted to internalize, to stamp into my memories, to write about. To me, this was perfect validation. This was the external validation needed to match my internal. I will never forget this moment, the proverbial click in my brain as these two pieces snapped into place forever.
This raises many questions. How do you define achievement and success? What forms of validation are required for you to feel both? What degree of external validation is enough to match your own internal? What does your perfect validation look like? What does it feel like? The self-awareness required to respond to these questions is incredible on its own, perhaps enabling us to better understand what it is we need from ourselves and others, and even how to recognize when the validation is genuine enough to remain with us. This moment of perfect validation helped me remember that, so pay attention the next time the internal and external genuinely click, it’s a feeling to relish.
Optimistically,
Jon
