#External Validation Quotes

“You will find it easier to accept contrary views, knowing that you are not defined by anything or anyone external to yourself.”

“What other people think of me is none of my business. One of the highest places you can get to is being independent of the good opinions of other people.”

“What do warriors do? They are in competition with everyone else. They measure their success and their value on the basis of who they are better than, how much they get, and so on. So, this is the time in your adult life when your primary emphasis is on goal setting, on getting someplace else, and on defeating other people.”

“Don't allow the approval and attention of others to destroy you.”

“I have felt independent of the opinions of others in terms of whether or not I should or shouldn't be doing that. There's something that I allow to consult myself within myself rather than looking outside to see if this is right or not.”

“Perhaps the greatest mistake we can make, which causes loss of self-respect, is making the opinions of others more important than our own opinion of ourselves. You'll find no shortage of opinions directed at you. If you allow them to undermine your self-respect, you're seeking the respect of others over your own, and you're abdicating yourself.”

“In proportion as our inward life fails, we go more constantly and desperately to the post office. You may depend on it, that the poor fellow who walks away with the greatest number of letters, proud of his extensive correspondence, has not heard from himself this long while.”

“If we are addicted to people's approval, we will always experience pain when that approval is withdrawn--as it always is.”

“Stop looking to everyone else to make you happy and start finding ways that you can make other people happy.”

“Your value should not be determined by how somebody else has treated you.”

“In old days men studied for the sake of self-improvement; nowadays men study in order to impress other people.”

“We take greater pains to persuade others that we are happy than in endeavoring to think so ourselves”