- Whatever you do, please,
just please like this video.
Just like it, it takes two seconds.
And what the like does is a couple of different things.
One, when I was growing up,
I felt validated
only when I received validation
from the outside.
I had to constantly tune myself to somebody else.
And based on that person's temperament
and how that person felt by me,
that meant survival.
So I'm already used to doing something where I do something
to gain the validation of other people.
And the validation of other people,
is very, very important to me.
There are times that I feel like I need people's validation
and I'm looking to the outside of other people to gauge,
whether I can feel good about myself or not.
So, one of the biggest benefits of you liking this video,
is you helped me feel good about myself,
because I haven't been validating myself.
That's the thing that happens a lot of times
when we really want validation from other people.
The key is that we are giving ourselves internal validation
and therefore, we feel needy
based on other people's ability to give us that validation.
Now, of course, this video,
I'm gonna be sharing with you,
the shadow of being liked or the shadow of validation,
of understanding how this leaks
into almost every area of our life.
And I'm going to be sharing with you the cure,
the cure to this process.
Because for most of my life,
I looked to other people for validation,
even on YouTube.
For a long time on YouTube,
the thing that I really wanted to create my life
is I wanted that YouTubers subscriber, plaque button.
If I could just get that,
then I would finally feel whole complete enough.
It was a symbol to me of the ultimate being liked
that where then what happened,
is after like the first like year of making videos,
it was purely based on passion.
And the challenge is that after I started gaining pressure
for making these videos,
people always assume that the video
is always gotta be better.
They gotta be fresh.
They gotta be new.
They gotta be different.
The challenge is how many times can I say
the damn same thing?
(Aaron chuckles)
I'm sure many of you have seen some of my videos.
You're like, yeah, that seems
like something he's talked about before.
Well, I've made 1500 YouTube videos
and a lot of them are like in a way saying
some of the same things in different ways.
And there was a time,
when I felt very self-conscious of that.
Anytime I'd read a comment,
it's funny when you're reading YouTube comments from my end,
because some of them, they don't affect me at all.
But the ones that affect me are the ones
that I have my own little insecurity about,
where it could be true,
or it's like, oh, Aaron's older videos
are better than the newer ones.
So I'd feel like, oh, maybe I'm not as good as I used to be.
Maybe I'm not as pure as I used to be.
And it was this like pressure.
Anytime I'd create this pressure around anything,
it would create this resistance.
And here's the interesting thing,
any time I'm doing something for certain end result,
it normally creates pressure and it doesn't do as well.
For example, when I used to sell women's shoes,
if I went into work everyday, thinking,
I want to sell $5,000 a day,
that'd be a great goal
because we got paid like 10% commission.
That means I made 500 bucks, that's good.
So I'm like, okay, I'm going to sell this much a day.
And when I went in with that goal,
I wouldn't necessarily get the greatest results
because I was looking for something,
I was doing things and helping customers
to get an end result.
When I then started making YouTube videos,
I would be making videos just to add value to other people
because I enjoyed it.
Like when I was working nine to five job,
when I would just go to help people
and I wanted to like connect with people and have fun,
I would do way better than when I had a certain goal.
Well, same thing worked on YouTube.
If I needed people's validation
and I needed views to feel good about myself,
you'd feel the resistance in the video
and it wouldn't do as well.
It's very interesting the way the energy dynamic works,
but the key is how much am I needing something from you
in order to feel a certain way about myself.
Now, the real shadow of validation
is understanding when you were a kid,
did your parents validate you?
Did they encourage you?
Did you feel safe in your own sense of self.
Your own sense of self as you being in your body
and you feeling the boundary between you and other people,
knowing that it's okay.
And what I found is that because growing up,
I had to tune myself to my ex stepmom that was emotionally,
mentally, physically abusive.
Seven to 15 years old,
I had no freedom in my life whatsoever.
My brother and I would come home from school,
and we just constantly like gauge ourselves
to our ex stepmom's like emotion
to know whether we are safe or not.
And many times we get in trouble for the dumbest things.
You know, we weren't allowed to watch TV.
We weren't allowed to have friends.
We had to earn going to school activities.
Most of the time we were locked outside doing yard work
and we'd have to sneak inside to get enough food to eat,
because we were given a bowl of cereal in the morning
and TV dinner at night.
So it was like, there's this zero control
and we'd tune ourselves in order to survive.
So what happened is after my ex stepmom left my life,
when I was 15 years old, and all this freedom,
it was amazing.
It was a whole new world,
but at the same time,
I was used to tuning to other people
to see if I'm safe, to see if I validated
because I didn't feel validated growing up.
So one thing that I had to eventually learn to do
is to switch the script.
This is the cure to the validation of the drug
that needing people's approval.
It's understanding your own values.
Values, that's really what this is about.
When you're a people pleaser or a nice guy
or somebody that is wanting validation from somebody else,
you value their validation,
what they think more than what you think,
or how you feel about yourself.
And most likely you will also value
what they think about you over authenticity.
So what I did is when I became aware of the shadow,
first off, awareness was key,
because I'm like wait, this is so unauthentic.
It's just inauthentic for me to be carrying so much
what other people think.
And what would happen is I would then keep myself
in a little box and I would be afraid
of sharing different aspects of my life.
And what if someone thinks this,
or when someone thinks that.
But eventually I said, you know what?
I value, a value is kind of like a set of beliefs.
It's like a value you live by.
It's normally tied to your identity as well.
I started valuing in authenticity over everything.
I started valuing being vulnerable over everything.
And there are many of you that watch my videos that may say,
well, even though I talk about some esoteric things
and I use my hands a lot, I talk in a certain way.
You know, most likely that my intentions are pure.
I really want to help people,
or I really want to at least
like put good content out there in the world.
I have good intentions.
However, there is a part of me that wonders.
Do I have good intentions?
And am I trying to put a lot of value out in the world?
Because I want in your validation.
Or is it because it's a universal principle
that when you put out value is what you get back.
What you put out is what you get back.
It's interesting how that works,
but there's, it makes me really think,
even just recently on Instagram,
I have these like impersonator people
that are impersonating me pretending to be me.
And what they're doing is they're like conning people
into like a psychic reading.
By the way, I've never given psychic readings.
I don't do that.
But what's interesting is I was actually here in Austin
and I'm standing at this cool Airbnb.
And the guy that owns the Airbnb, he's a cool guy.
He had somebody come in to help bring the boxes
to the backyard.
And she's like, oh my God, I recognize you from your videos.
And she was like, oh,
we were talking on Instagram the other day.
And I'm thinking to myself, I don't remember talking,
but I didn't want to be rude necessarily.
Maybe wanting their validation, who knows?
Didn't want to be too polarizing.
But I was like, oh, and then eventually she says,
yeah, we were going back and forth about a psychic reading.
I said, Nope, that wasn't me.
(Aaron chuckles)
And then I got like, really not worked up,
but kind of like there's people on Instagram
that are getting like con and paying $60 and $90.
And it's not even me.
What this person does is they like buy followers
and I don't know at some interesting thing.
And now the accounts get taken down quickly,
I got a process for that, which is nice.
But I was wondering, am I,
you know, now that I'm meeting people in public,
that literally there are triggered
because people are pushing them to do readings
and they think it's me pushing them,
being pushy for them to do a psychic reading.
Is it mainly that I don't want people
to get like their money taken away and all this stuff.
That's definitely a big part of it,
but there's another part of it.
That's like, I don't want people to think
that that's me, my identity.
That I don't want them to think that I'm pushing them
to do something that I'm not even doing.
So there's these different motivations
that become interesting,
but the egos in this self-preservation mechanism.
But there's some times like this loss of self
that I found to be something that is very interesting.
And the key to this I found,
is going in and looking at my own values.
What do I value?
And what I value over people's validation
is authenticity and vulnerability.
And as I've started living by those virtues,
my whole entire life transformed.
I just say yes, sometimes I say things
that may trigger people.
I may be more polarizing,
I share different aspects of my life
that I used to really care about.
But at the same time,
I feel more centered within myself.
When you live by your own word and your own integrity,
you feel more in a line, in a line the
(Aaron chuckles)
You feel more in a line, basically.
So these are things that I've recognized
about the shadow of being liked is,
unless you really like yourself, you will never be enough.
There's something called the locus of control.
The locus of control is how you gauge
a sense of control within yourself.
And most people have their locus of control
based on external things.
So they have to control the outside
to feel a certain way on the inside,
instead of generating that emotion from within.
So knowing that you can generate validation from within,
by validating yourself and to stop abandoning yourself.
A lot of times, people that feel emotionally
or physically abandoned as kids,
change their center of gravity, to please other people,
to make other people like them.
And the thing is, is not everyone's going to like you.
As many of, you know, you may look down
and you might see a whole bunch of positive comments.
There'll be people that don't like what I'm doing,
or don't like me, or don't like the way I look or whatever.
And it's just a part of this, you know,
I've had to learn to really accept that.
And just to like myself, you know,
and even my flaws, you know.
That's why I like to be vulnerable
and share different aspects of my life
that maybe some people normally don't share.
It's just, I think that that's,
'cause I value authenticity
over just carrying like this perfect perception
of what people think of me.
It's also probably,
I think it's a way I connect with people too,
is I'd like to share the things I've been through.
Because then it helps people like put down their guard,
so that they could be open to like,
opening and like transforming and seeing what's possible
for themselves as well.
So it's a very interesting contrast.
However, also just in general
for really loving yourself
and really feeling that self love,
there is a meditation on raising
your dominant vibration permanently.
This helps you to release and shed those old patterns
of the character that people think, and really being stuck.
You know, the key to raising your vibe is letting go,
as you let go, you raise your vibe naturally.
One of the most popular and powerful meditations
on this channel,
is a raise your vibration permanently meditation.
I'll go ahead and link that below.
Listen to that for 21 days, watch what happens.
Other than that, can you please like this video?
It really helps me feel good about myself.
(Aaron chuckles)
But you like this video if you liked it.
The other reason is that it helps the YouTube algorithm,
so that more people see this video
and more people see the channel as well.
So it helps get the message out there.
Now, is that my motivation
or is my motivation more my own sense of validation?
Because when you like the video, more people see it.
And the more I get fed haha,
it's like a drug, you'll never know.
I mean, it's probably a little bit of both,
to be honest with you.
Anyways, hope you guys enjoyed this video.
And I hope, I really hope
because I really want your validation.
And as always peace, much love and namaste.