It comes from inside, but how does it get there?

Hi guys!

I've often seen people post that validation, worth, confidence, happiness etc come (or should come) from inside.

For instance, I have seen people write things like, "Stop seeking validation from other people and learn to validate yourself."

I'm sure that's a worthy long term goal, but it's not a single step!

Remember actor Troy McClure's self help video, "Get Confident, Stupid!" We laugh at that because of the contradiction between encouraging someone and calling them stupid. That couldn't happen here, right?

Confidence takes years to build in childhood, and if we didn't learn it then (or perhaps more accurately, if we had it beaten out of us), we're not going to learn it overnight as adults.

If someone doesn't love themselves, is it really that helpful to tell them that they should? Wouldn't it be better to love them and thus show them that they are lovable?

We don't teach children self-worth with chalk and blackboard. It's something they pick up when we treat them as worthy.

I'm not criticising anyone or condemning anyone's opinions. I just wonder...

Does it have to be either / or? Can it be both? that seems to be what many T's of PC people are doing, both at same time.

That statement has two parts:

(1) learn to
(2) validate yourself

Yourself is already there and wonderful! It's like saying, "God is omnipotent"; well, duh? We just don't see ourselves as we are, the wonderful stuff inside ourselves. All that has been buried over with the hurts and pains and struggles of childhood that got us to therapy in the first place. But the good stuff is all already there, inside us, i.e., there must be a pony in there somewhere!

http://mattmclean.blogspot.com/2008/...somewhere.html

Can't explain, your correct we need to be loved before we can use that and make it ours. I didn't learn to love myself by reading mantra's after all saying I love myself and feeling it are to different things. What I know for certain is that bit by bit I have internalised 'remembered' how I feel about myself through T's eyes amd dealings with me and gradually begin to take ownership of it, it becomes mine, T's genuine good feeling toward me is most times now mine. Takes a long time for this to happen as adults but it can be done.

yikes you mean... I have to look in her eyes ?????

I agree completely. Circuits get rewired through new experiences.

Sitting, you know I rarely look at T unyet still have the awareness of her there. When I do dare to take a quick look at her she is sitting with that glint in her eyes which she has whether I look or not. Its funny its almost a spritual expereince we have when someone real cares. You just absorb it in every way.

my favorite punchline!

And it's not just about giving them love, it's about accepting love from them. When you feel you have something to give, and the other person wants it - not in an envious way - you're good.

I don't think there is an easy answer to that - I sometimes think of a computer analogy and default settings. If my hardware was set at low self esteem, low self confidence etc...then my hardware needs to be changed for a permanent long term change to be sustained and I am just not sure if that is possible.

I also think that we could surround ourselves with people saying great things to us and showing us love, but unless we are open to that, it is not going to change how we feel about ourselves. So yes we have to have experiences, but we also need to make sure we are willing to accept those experiences as valid and also become robust enough to take the knocks in life that are inevitable for all of us.