How to Go from Neediness to Fulfillment: Let Go of External Validation

Reflecting on my journey through the 12 steps of recovery, I can see that I previously expected the world and the people in it to meet my needs. I mean for things like validation, love, and acceptance. That seems pretty normal. But what I’ve learned is that if I give those things to myself first, I don’t go to the world to get those things in a clawing, needy way. I want your validation, love, and acceptance, but I don’t need them like I used to. Because I give them to myself

I also wanted the world to adapt to my ideas of how it should run. I thought people should be kind, thoughtful, trustworthy, dependable, and follow through on what they say. It’s fine for me to have those expectations for myself. But I’m going to be continually disappointed if I expect that from everyone, especially people who have shown me they are not those things.

Very early in my recovery, someone said to me, “Barb, the world was not created to meet your needs.” I couldn’t even wrap my mind around that! I had no idea what that meant. I wrote it on a sticky note and left it on my coffee table for about a year so I could contemplate it from time to time to try to make sense of it.

Now I understand it. Deeply. I was going out into the world to meet my needs and because it wasn’t created to meet MY…