One could say that I have the perfect college life — good grades, a booming social circle, work-life balance (or as close as I can get to one), a supportive boyfriend and seven hours of sleep each night — but this is far from the reality. I spend more time than necessary wondering how others perceive my life and curating this picture-perfect reality for them, even though I bet no one else spends even a minute thinking about my life. Why, you ask? Because I have this incessant need for external validation. 

This need for any sort of external validation — from friends, grades or professors — stems from a desire to constantly please everyone and not being completely satisfied with myself. This naturally puts a high amount of pressure on me and my relationships. For example, if a friend doesn’t laugh at a joke I made or reply to my text, I tend to spiral: Maybe I am not funny or interesting enough, and they no longer value me as a friend, so they are going to cut me out of their life. I live in the constant fear that I have done something to piss someone off, even though a part of me knows that I have done absolutely nothing. 

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I have high expectations of myself — that I should do nothing wrong to mess up my relationships — and high expectations of my friends too — that they must always like me. When I inadvertently fail to meet every single one of these expectations, I have a hard time dealing with it. 

And yes, I know I am being irrational, but my brain and heart aren’t on the same page. You can try explaining how I am jumping to extremes as I stay up all night fraught with worry that my friend would be offended by the one off-handed comment I made, but it would be of no use. At that moment, I can only think about these irrational, extreme thoughts and am gripped by this fear of losing all my friends. 

Though this fear disappears the moment I am reassured by my friends that everything is okay — whether they explicitly state this or implicitly communicate it through a smile — I wonder if they even notice that I thought something was wrong in the first place. I don’t blame them because it takes an insane amount of time, effort and paranoia to spend hours analyzing every minute, detail or action. This process is so draining that I find myself questioning if these few moments of peace are worth all the anxiety and stress I put myself through right before. How long can I rely on others to feel good about myself? A month, a year, a decade? 

Eventually, the only sustainable method is for the validation and happiness with who I am to come from within, which is my New Year’s resolution for 2024. This will not only positively impact me and my mental health (and my mom’s sleep because I will stop calling her in the middle of the night while freaking out), but also my relationships. I can finally prioritize whose opinions matter and distinguish them from all the background chatter. Soon, I won’t be chasing every odd person for their approval, but rather rely on my judgment of myself. 

But these lofty statements won’t do me any good. Instead, my resolution provides specific steps for me to achieve this goal, such as maintaining a journal, listing two things I am grateful for each day and reminding myself I am enough. I’m scared that on the worst of the worst days, I won’t have the motivation to follow through. I won’t feel like picking myself up and will want to retreat into the familiarity of using others to feel good about myself. It’s in these moments of weakness that I hope I somehow find the strength to continue and remind myself of how far I have come and how far I have to go. 

This resolution is my way of dealing with the need for external validation — it’s not a blanket solution that will work for everyone. But, I encourage you to find what works for you and take steps toward making yourself feel special. Hopefully, one day, you and I won’t need anyone else to tell us how awesome we are, we will already know it.