Fostering a Community of Validation

Creating an atmosphere of encouragement and acceptance in our communities will help us to have a more positive impact on the world and those around us.

Recently I spoke to a group of high school students about fostering an atmosphere of validation and acceptance in their school community.

This needs to be extended into our communities in general. We start doing this by focusing on the way we treat people who come into our lives. I left the high school students with two challenges, and I would like to extend these challenges to Edge readers. Keep reading to find out what they are.

Our self-esteem, confidence and the way we relate to others is impacted greatly by the messages we receive from people we come into contact with. Some of the messages are positive and some negative. All have an influence on how much we like ourselves, or how well we treat others. When young people receive negative messages, it impacts the decisions they make in their life.

A young girl I do counselling with is 17 years old and harms herself. She tells me that her “faking-it-to-make-it” behaviour is the reason she hurts herself. She hates going to school, as she puts on a happy face and fears that if she were herself, she doesn’t think anyone would like her. We can be sure that the messages this young girl has received in her life have not had a positive impact.

When I was working as chaplain, I had a Year 8 boy come for counselling. He told me stories of how he was made to eat dog food and how he was left in the swimming pool in the middle of winter for punishment. These stories were verified as being true. What messages about his worth do you think this young guy received?

These young people were given messages by important people in their lives. All messages had a profound impact, affecting their self-esteem. These stories show the direct impact of how the relationships we have with each other will affect our entire life.

My goal in sharing these stories is to show how the people in our lives influence how we view and feel about ourselves. I wanted to challenge you to examine how you interact with others—do you uplift them up or put them down?

Now for the challenges.
To help foster a spirit of validation and positive self-esteem in your com- munity, take three stones and give one to three people who have positively affected your life.

Ask them to go to their own three people and pass the positive affirmation on. Then ask the three who you approached to tell you the stories about the effect their actions had on others.

The other challenge is personal. Get up tomorrow morning, look in the mirror and tell yourself this: “I am a great person. I am capable of achieving anything. I will treat others with respect and expect this in return. I am going to have a great day today.”

Not only should we foster a spirit of validation and positive self-esteem with others, we need to make sure we start with ourselves. When you go through each day, think about how you can make a positive impact on someone’s life.