Wouldn’t it be cool if you could just stop caring what people think?    Imagine how confident you would feel if criticism bounced off your psyche like pebbles off a suit of armor. Imagine all the mental and emotional energy you could free up if other people’s opinions stopped taking up space in your head. The fear of judgment or rejection would no longer be a concern for you. You’d be an unstoppable force, ready to conquer the world!    Of course, not caring at all about other people’s thoughts isn’t a goal you’re likely to achieve. And you wouldn’t really want to — having some sensitivity to how other people think and feel is a prerequisite for having healthy relationships. But we all need to strike a balance between concerning ourselves with what other people think, and using our own internal wisdom to tell us who we are, what’s important to us, and how we want to spend our limited time on Earth.    To strike this balance, you need to learn how to rely less on external validation. You must know how to validate yourself, so you can feel good about who you are and confident living your life based on your own values and priorities, no matter what’s going on in other people’s minds. If you struggle to validate yourself, learning how to do so may be the most important step you ever take along your journey of personal growth.    This is the kind of work that can take months or even years of therapy, but this podcast will give you some ideas about where to begin. I hope it helps you think about some areas where you might be relying a little too much on external validation, and how you can begin to shift that.    xoxo, Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby   P.S. — I’ve created a library of related content, all about how you can become the best version of you. For more podcast episodes and articles, check out our “personal growth” collection.