How to Build Self-Confidence to Stop Seeking External Validation

Understanding the need for external validation and building self-confidence is crucial in your post-divorce journey. We, women, have all been there. We crave validation that we’re not crazy, we’re lovable, we’re desirable, and that our hearts matter.

When I exited my marriage, I did not have the skills to self-soothe and to feel grounded in my sense of being ‘enough.’ I was a full-blown hot mess. The things I share with you today are what I have learned over a decade.

Building Self-Confidence By Taking These 10 Steps

#1 Learning By Doing

My secret sauce is action. We learn by doing. Too often we women get bogged down and say, “Oh, I made the wrong choice” and then we wallow in self-pity.

The faster we can re-roll and take another action, the faster we learn and the quicker we internalize the lesson.

Let’s be honest, you will do things, and you will not like other people’s feedback on your choices. It’s not a mistake, it’s a process of learning and sometimes that can be painful. Hang in there.

#2 Overcoming the Good Girl Syndrome

You need validation because deep down, you are terrified that you are not good enough; you are not lovable; you are doing it wrong, and you are not a good girl. You believe if people do not approve of you, you will die alone and not fulfill your dreams. Self-doubt and insecurity manifest on a physical cellular level and can feel like a pain in your chest, thickness in your brain, or butterflies in your stomach.

Overcoming Good Girl Syndrome is a key step to thriving without other people’s validation.

We do a deep dive into overcoming Good Girl Syndrome in this blog. Read it.

#3 Start Believing In Yourself

You can’t build confidence if you don’t believe you’re a badass and you’re powerful enough to manifest your dreams.

Whatever you want to have in your life after divorce is available to you.

Of course, there will be moments of self-doubt where you need to phone a friend and hear that you’re pretty and you’re worthy. But ultimately, it comes down to you and your self-belief.

#4 Manifest Your Outcome

It may be really hard to manifest the life you want in your post-divorce recovery, but you can.

Anytime you’re doubting that, I want you to think of me saying: “You are powerful as fuck. Get up. You’ve got this.”

I want you to be tackling some bigger, deeper strategies. I need you to tap into the deepest levels of knowing how magical you are. It’s a spiritual strategy. Manifest what outcome you want in your new life.

#5 Everything is Energy, You Too

At a deep spiritual level, you are a child of God, or you are a child of the universe. You are a spiritual being having a human experience. 

If you boil it down to the cellular level, you are energy, I am energy, and God is energy.

When we are hyper-focused on why this divorce happened, or on what an asshole he is, or a wrinkle on our forehead, we become bogged down in self-absorption. These small things are not the big picture of your energy. Without tapping into the power of energy, you cannot achieve your goals and move forward.

#6 What You Focus On Becomes Your Reality

You will go through some shit experiences in life that will be heavy, hard, and painful. These experiences will stretch you, challenge you, and they will make you question everything.

If you focus on joy and gratitude and move through those things with positive energy, it will become your reality.

When you are focused on hating your ex, you will get more hate. When you are focused on missing him, you will receive more loneliness. When you are focused on not being good enough, you will feel more self-doubt. When you are focused on not understanding why, you will have more confusion in your life and increase your post-divorce trauma. 

When you are focused on courage, you will be more courageous. The cycle reinforces itself.

#7 Desensitize and Reprocess

When you go to therapy to face your feelings, you unpack your journey and desensitize and reprocess your pain. The concept of coming to therapy sometimes confuses people. The conversations often go: “On the one hand, you’re telling me I need to focus on being a badass, and on the other hand, you’re telling me I need to get my butt to therapy to focus on the pain? How do you know when to use which strategy?”

Great question.

Sometimes no matter how many tools we use to switch our focus, the painful thoughts, the negative spiral, and the falling into the rabbit hole of disbelief keep coming back and brings us women further away from building confidence.

When you’ve used every tool you know to use (journaling, EFT tapping, meditation, phoning a friend, walking outside) but it’s still not working to shake ‘the thing,’ you must give the brain what it needs to let the traumatizing event go back into a place where it’s not begging for your attention so much.

#8 Practice EMDR, EFT Tapping & Homeopathy

I am a huge advocate for EMDR therapy, EFT tapping, and journaling as opposed to talk therapy because talk therapy activates all the pain, and then it leaves you sitting with it, and then you’re attracting more negativity. You need to schedule an EMDR session to desensitize and reprocess negative beliefs.

There are also homeopathic remedies to help you shift energetically. There are so many tools out there. I did a guided magic mushroom trip with a shaman that helped me get deeper into spirituality and feel more grounded in my sense of worth and worthiness. It helped me shake a lot of the energetic, emotional pain that was present for me. Homeopathy is misunderstood, but it’s one of the most valuable tools and fastest-acting healing approaches I have ever experienced.

#9 Be Your Positive Energy

Seeking validation from someone else is like weed-whacking. It’s not digging out from the root, it’s a top-down approach. I can whack these weeds down, and they will be shorter, and it will work for some time, but they will grow back. Seeking validation from others is weed-whacking.

You want to be employing a ‘dig it out at the root strategy’ where we keep it from coming back.

You can achieve this by getting in touch with your energetic self, which is pure positive energy. I see you as pure positive energy. Your bestie sees you as pure positive energy. So get on board. Give your brain the tools it needs to get the traumas out of its way.

#10 Know Your Worth

You have associated people rejecting you with your sense of self-worth. This is a faulty belief and a faulty pattern. We, women, have to disrupt that cycle by tapping into something that feels deeper and grounding.

Use healing activities like EFT tapping or EMDR to break the stimulus. Open yourself up to motivational messages from anyone you admire and get back to the truth of who you are. Know your worth.

Eventually, you will reach a tipping point where you feel more benefit from doing the rooting out strategy than you do from the weed-whacking strategy. And if you haven’t reached that tipping point yet, it doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong. It’s coming. I know it. I love you. Keep going.