Your Life, As It Is Right Now, Is Completely Valid.

Photo by Motoki Tonn on Unsplash

Here’s How to Feel It.

The Cambridge Dictionary defines validity as “the quality of being based on truth or reason, or of being able to be accepted.”

How often do you feel your life to be “based on truth,” or “of being able to be accepted?”

Like many people, I’m interested in self-improvement. We’re constantly looking for tips and tricks to make our lives better, run smoother, work smarter, make more money, have more time, and find someone to love and be loved by.

But underneath this search is often a sense of dis-ease, a restlessness that points to a perennial feeling that we’re not doing enough, or not doing it right or perhaps that we are fundamentally flawed, that we’re not enough. I witness this anxiety in my clients daily.

So underneath our quest to do more and better, we may find that what we’re mainly trying to do is to get away from ourselves, our “bad” selves, in search of our “good” selves.

When I catch myself in this state, I find it really helpful to stop. And breathe. Won’t you try it now? It’s pretty simple:

Take a slow, deep breath in. Pause there for a second. Then release the breath back out, making it last just a little longer than the breath in.

You can do it once, or twice. Why not three times while you’re at it? Slowly, no need to rush.

Strangely, slow, mindful breathing like this is the best way I’ve found to reset. Conscious breathing brings me back to calm. It also prepares the way for another important step: self-validation.

Now, what does that even mean, self-validation?

As I said above, so many of us are looking to things or other people to validate us, that is, to make us feel valid. We think more money will “make us happy,” or retiring will do it or traveling or falling in love. All of those things may be good goals to aim for, and personal accomplishment no doubt inspires feelings of validity. But what about validating the self? Again, what does that even mean?

Validating your self means taking time to be consciously aware of your existence and to be able to say to yourself, “My life, as it is right now, is completely valid.” To know, as a sure feeling, that your life makes sense, that you are in the exact right place, right now.

When we’re young we may have a sense that our validation comes from others — parents, teachers, mentors, etc. In actuality, the experience of validation lies inherent in the brain circuitry of all human beings and arises as a felt response to others’ mirroring or praise. Mirroring is an important concept. When we are mirrored by caregivers, that is, when our facial expressions, words, gesture, etc., are literally reflected back to us on the faces and in the bodies and voices of another, special neurons in the brain called mirror neurons, start to fire. These mirror neurons essentially tell us that what we’re seeing in the other is a reflection of ourselves. They tell us that we exist and that reflection of our existence begins the story of ourselves.

Many of us did not get adequate mirroring as children — or worse, what was reflected back to us, by insufficient or psychologically wounded caregivers, was that we are “bad.” This is like a garden full of weeds with poor soil. The plants we want to grow (the sense of a valid self) can’t get enough nutrition so the weeds, which will often grow even in the worst soil, take over, further stifling out the plants we want. It is the responsibility, the role, the job of every mature individual to weed the garden of one’s mind regularly, to stimulate new growth through proper feeding and watering, giving oneself the nutrition of feeling one’s own validity.

How to feel your own validity, today, now

Going back to the definition of the word validity, you may not currently feel your life to be “based on truth or reason, or of being able to be accepted.” You may have good rationale for this feeling. Perhaps you’ve done something to harm someone or you witness how you harm yourself or fail to grow your potential. It’s a difficult and complex struggle to wrestle with one’s self-feelings, especially when we can point to harm we’ve done.

But that doesn’t have to be the end of the story. You can determine — right now — to work at living a life that is based on truth, your truth — and work at discovering your truth — and of becoming acceptable to yourself, to find validity in yourself. One basic way to do this is to realize that Nature has allowed your existence. That’s right, Nature said you get to exist. In Nature’s eyes, you are a valid being.

Also, you can breathe. Breath is tied to our existence. Without breath, we die.

So you can align yourself with Nature’s validation of your existence by breathing. You can practice conscious breathing. Remember how? Slow, steady breath in, pause for a second, then release slowly before allowing the next breath to drop in.

Breathing means you’re alive and therefore, a valid human being.

Here’s another thing you can do to feel your validity: As you’re breathing in, you can say to yourself, “Given my past, given the life I was born into, the strengths and weaknesses of my caregivers, my culture, the age in which I live, the experiences I’ve had, where I am right now makes perfect sense.” And you can repeat that: “Where I am right now makes perfect sense.” Take that in: Your life makes sense. Your life is valid. As it is right now.