Do you validate? People Need to Connect
March 12th, 2009 by Queen of RomanceDo you validate? I’ve always said that the most powerful weapons in the arsenal of life are smiles and sincerity. People want…no, need to connect. On a visceral level, they need to know that the choices they’ve made are good choices. It never ceases to amaze me how far a little sincerity can go to lift spirits.And the most amazing thing is that lifted spirits are contagious. Unfortunately, so is depression.
Credit: Naixn (Flickr)
Ever notice how one person can control the mood of an entire office? It’s often the boss who sets the tone, but not always. People radiate their emotions, like emotional death stars, shooting out tenseness, anger, aggression, or intensity. Enter the orbit of a death star and you walk away feeling it too. Suddenly the negativity in your life seems all consuming, and you are in danger of becoming a death star as well, affecting all those who enter your orbit. Other people are balls of sunshine, radiating lightness, cheer and warmth. They greet everyone with a sincere smile and treat them as equals. That’s another thing I’ve noticed, that death rays are self-important. They treat people as inferior, or simply have no interest in other people. It is all about them..their misery, their problems, their duties, their ego, their need to control. Death stars aren’t always important in their jobs – anyone can be a death star – but they are completely self-involved. You can only be part of their circle if you can accept that you don’t matter.
You’re probably asking yourself how this relates to dating. I’m encouraging introspection. Take a hard look at yourself and if you’re a death star, make some changes. Get help if you’re depressed, and stop being so self-centered. Even if you are the big boss, recognizing that other people might be important is vital to your inner satisfaction, and directly related to your happiness. You can’t just act sincere. You have to BE sincere. Relationships are complex. In a relationship where a death star is paired with a ball of sunshine, it’s a soul-sucking experience for the ball of sunshine, while the death star feeds off the radiation from the sunshine and winds up feeling even more self-important.
There’s a natural gravitational pull there…there’s something tragic about a death star that the ball of sunshine needs to heal…but it’s toxic. Balls of sunshine eventually burn out without a source of energy to rejuvenate them. Someone emailed me this little film this morning and I knew it had to be my blog subject for today. It delivers a message I’ve been trying to get across forever. The power of validation.
I’m one of the lucky people, my family is full of balls of sunshine. If I need validation, I need only make a call. Consider your support system. Are you surrounded by death stars; bathing in toxic radiation? Are you one of them? How do you know? The easiest clue is simple to identify. Do you know anything about your co-workers, classmates or neighbors? Did you engage them in conversation to get this information, or did they drone on, wasting your time about personal issues you could care less about? Think about it and get back to me. At your leisure, of course. I know how busy you are 
Tags: couples, Dating Tips, Relationships
