Do you seek validation from work?
Because that would be terrible
I made a really bad mistake at work last week.
So bad that the client wrote a very long email complaining furiously and copied all the stakeholders at the company.
I thank God I wasn’t at work physically that day because I would have just entered the ground.
I beat myself up over it so much. I cried to sleep that night. I even woke up in the midnight and began another round of hot tears.
The thing is, this thing wasn’t even my fault. Unfinished work was sent out mistakenly to the client.
But my perfectionist self felt like, Why would a client even have such terrible complaints about my unfinished work.
Couldn’t some parts of it even have impressed the client?
I eventually got out of it and put myself together, but I just realized how there’s a tendency to make external feedback of work become your validation of being brilliant.
Don’t get sucked into that.
You see, we exist in a culture that relies heavily on external validation.
When we were in school, or if you happen to still be, external validation shaped our behavior. Good performance at school earned you As, while bad performance earned you Ds to Fs.
We then grow up defining ourselves by these standards of achievement, and once we get into the workplace, we expect the same sort of system. But, as we come to learn, that isn’t exactly how adult life works.
Because we don’t receive tangible measures of our performance (you may get a performance review at the end of the quarter, but most of the time, you’re just getting verbal feedback), it can be easy to equate your work product and colleagues’ perception of you with your self-worth. You begin to rely on and external validation to feel accomplished and worthy, and in the process, you slowly sacrifice your confidence.
In reality, constantly seeking and expecting external validation in the workplace is unrealistic.
People are stressed out and busy, pretty much all the time, and they don’t always have patience or excess praise to spare.
If external validation is the only thing that can make you feel good about yourself and the work you’re producing, you’re going to have a miserable work life. Point blank.
External validation is like a pat on the back, it’s nice to receive, but it’s never something you should become dependent on. Self-validation should carry more weight, and you should be proud of yourself, period.
Don’t be like me, who got some bad mail and felt like that external feedback meant I was dull.
It’s never a reflection of who you are.
So till my next newsletter, stay employed!
EYE CANDY CAN BE JOBS TOO
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