Be your own Man

Once, as a kid, I was asking for my grandfather’s advice about a girl. As much as I liked her, she made it pretty clear that she didn’t like me. He looked at me rather seriously and asked me a simple question.

Do you like yourself?

At that moment my answer was “No.” I wasn’t that confident with whom I was. I was expecting some sort of pep talk about how great of a kid I was, some sort of validation to make me feel better. He looked at me and smiled.

If you don’t like yourself, how do you expect her to like you? Work on yourself till YOU like yourself. Then, if she still doesn’t like you, we’ll figure it out what’s wrong with her.

So I worked on me. 

Most of the time we complain that someone doesn’t like us, the only thing we are looking for is a validation. It’s not about liking someone or about being liked. It’s all about feeling validated, recognized. The problem with this attitude is, the other person holds power over your confidence.

The truth is, the only validation you need is yourself. Are you happy with yourself? Can you do better with yourself? Then do so. When you no longer need someone else’s validation, only then can you be in an honest relationship, where recognition is received and not “bought.”