This is a blog post I want to get out before it slips from my mind, something important to write down before it's forgotten. And, maybe, some of you guys can learn something from it too. Possibly even feel a little different about yourself or some of the choices you make in life.

So what is external validation? Well, it's something almost all of us RELY ON as human beings, something that drives us to do any task or create any piece of creative work. When you do a piece of homework, or draw a picture, what is one of the main things you do after finishing it? You show it to someone else. Whether that be a teacher, or your group of friends, you will show what you have to done to someone else, and more often than not you ask something along the lines of "What do you think?"

THAT is external validation. It's that inner need we have for what we do to be VALIDATED by someone else. If you don't show someone else what you've done, how can you know for sure if it's good or not? How do you know if you have produced a decent piece of work? It's these questions that drive us to need EXTERNAL VALIDATION. It's like an addiction for some people, where everything you do, every part of your life, you feel the need to tell somebody about it, just to see a reaction, just to hear what they think about it all.

And one thing I found is you never really think about it until a post like this confronts you with that ugly truth. You don't really think about it when you go on Youtube everyday, checking to see how many views one of your videos has gotten. You don't really think about it when you submit a piece of art to a competition, to see what others think of it and how well it can do. Even something as simple as releasing a post like this online, is still all to do with that NEED for validation. The basic human need to know that what you do MATTERS to people, to feel CONTENT.

But is all this healthy? Can it sometimes go too far?

As the internet has grown in power, we can clearly see examples of this going too far beyond what is healthy. When someone puts a particularly lewd video or photo on facebook, in the hopes of it gaining more views/likes/friends. When someone creates a clickbait title/thumbnail for a youtube video, to attract more people to watch it. It's at this point, that the need for external validation has gone too far. Where you are now incapable of living a CONTENT life without all of these other people around you, commenting and looking at what you do all the time.

As I've said before in this post, external validation is nothing to shun or hide from; it's good to share your work with others, it's how society's gears turn and creative minds spin. But it doesn't mean you can't be CONTENT with what you do without it. You don't HAVE to show everyone that picture, why can't you draw it just for yourself? Just be happy in knowing you were the one who drew it, and in your opinion, you drew a pretty damn nice picture. It doesn't always matter what other people think.

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Phew that was lengthy! Well um, thank you whoever read through all of this really it's just a ton of thoughts that have been swimming around in my head for a while now, and I wanted to just finally write them down.