SIX LEVELS OF VALIDATION

1. Being Present: giving your complete attention to the person struggling in a non-judgmental way

2. Accurate Reflection: Summarize what the person has said, try to really understand and not judge the person’s experience

3. Reading someone’s behavior and guessing what they may be thinking or feeling: pay attention to the person’s emotional state and label their emotion or infer how they may be feeling. Be sure to check in with the person to make sure your guess is accurate!

4. Understanding someone’s behavior in terms of their history and biology: think about how someone’s past experiences may be affecting how they are feeling now, in this moment or situation.

5. Normalizing or recognizing emotional reactions that anyone would have: recognize that many people may feel the way that you or the other person is feeling in a given situation and let them know that it’s okay to feel this way as many people do.

6. Radical genuineness: this happens when you are able to understand how someone is feeling on a deeper, personal level. Perhaps, you have had a similar experience. Sharing that with the other person can help to validate their feelings and reactions.

In order to be free, you simply have to be so, without asking permission of anybody. You have to have your own hypothesis about what you are called to do, and follow it, not giving in to circumstances and complying with them. But that sort of freedom demands powerful inner resources, a high degree of self-awareness, a consciousness of your responsibility to yourself and therefore to other people. Alas, the tragedy is that we do not know how to be free — we demand freedom for ourselves at the expense of others and don’t want to waive anything of our own for the sake of someone else: that would be an encroachment upon our personal rights and liberties. All of us are infected today with an extraordinary egoism. And that is not freedom; freedom means learning to demand only of oneself, not of life or of others, and knowing how to give: sacrifice in the name of love.

∆ Andrei Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time

In recently history, we’ve created terms like “Instagrammable” as a response to something that we’d previously consider to be “beautiful”

But at best, Instagrammable is limited to “understandable”

In the short term, we’re rewarded for staying limited—For wearing a trendy outfit, showing that we have a lot of friends, or making it clear that we’re traveling in another country. People respond well to these kind of things because it takes a fraction of a second to view and understand what’s going on.

When we only make time for things we already understand, we leave little room for new challenges, growth, and progress.

It’s both a challenge and reward to contribute and consume in a way that forces us to stop and think for more than a fraction of a second.

10 Steps to Letting Go of Resentment
Approach resentment as the addictive state of mind it is.
Realize that you are using resentment to replicate old dramas and acknowledge that you cannot change the past.
Examine how your resentment may come from mentally confusing people in your present life with people from your past.
Acknowledge that you cannot control those who have rejected you.
Recognize that your resentment gives you only illusions of strength. Instead, highlight and validate your real strength and power.
Learn to identify signals that provoke resentment. Apply the acronym HALT, widely used in 12-step programs: Hungry, Angry, Lonely, and Tired.
Practice cognitive behavioral techniques to stop indulging in resentment. Put a thought between your feelings of resentment and indulging in ruminating about them.
Acknowledge your part in allowing the abuse to occur, forgive yourself for that, and make a decision to not let it occur again.
Declare an amnesty with the person you resent and with yourself.
Forgive when you can, and practice willful and deliberate forgetfulness when you cannot, keeping in mind that these acts are gifts to yourself rather than capitulation to the people you resent.

"The moment you start to resent a person, you become his slave. He controls your dreams, absorbs your digestion, robs you of your peace of mind and goodwill, and takes away the pleasure of your work. He ruins your religion and nullifies your prayers. You cannot take a vacation without his going along. He destroys your freedom of mind and hounds you wherever you go. There is no way to escape the person you resent. He is with you when you are awake. He invades your privacy when you sleep. He is close beside you when you drive your car and when you are on the job. You can never have efficiency or happiness. He influences even the tone of your voice. He requires you to take medicine for indigestion, headaches, and loss of energy. He even steals your last moment of consciousness before you go to sleep. So, if you want to be a slave, harbor your resentments!"