Ask Jay: How Can I Stop Trying to Prove Myself to Others?

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If we're arguing, if there's tension, if we can't see eye to eye, we assume something is broken. But I don't think that's what conflict is, and I don't think ending it is the same as resolving it. I've listened to the voice notes you sent me, and I'm ready to walk through this with you. Let's get into it. Hi, Jay. 14 years ago, when my daughter was about four years old, she looked up at me with tears in her eyes, and she begged me, Mommy, please make the arguing stop. You and Daddy argue every day. For 14 years, I chased answers. I read every relationship book I could find, taking courses from transformational, believing that if I could just stop the arguing, say the right thing, love the right way, or ask for less, something would finally change. But on that day, I looked up at my daughter, and I realized that she wasn't asking about why we were fighting, nor was she asking which one of us was right. She was asking for peace. I had become so focused on saving my marriage. My new motto became, if it's worth fighting about, it's worth fixing. And the fixing started with me. My question is, why do we spend so much time trying to end conflict instead of becoming curious about what's underneath it? Thank you for sharing that story. First of all, knowing that your daughter's words sent you on a 14-year journey of self-reflection shows how deeply you care as a parent and as a partner. You asked why we spend so much time trying to just end conflict instead of getting curious about what is sitting on the table. I think the answer comes down to two human realities. The first is that fighting is visible. It's loud, creates tension, and it was the exact thing making your four-year-old daughter cry. When a house is filling with noise and conflict, your immediate instinct as a mother is to make the sound stop. But the actual problem, the emotional disconnect between you and your husband, doesn't make any noise. So we mistake the arguments for the wound, believing that if we can just create silence, we've created peace. But remember, silence doesn't equal peace. It just may look and feel like it, or sound like it. Second, curiosity is a two-way street. But ending a fight is a solo job. Getting curious about the root cause of a marriage problem requires your partner to sit down, open up, and look at their own stuff with you. If they won't do that, trying to get curious alone just leads to more frustration and more fighting. So out of sheer self-preservation, you stop trying to dig deeper with someone who won't meet you there. Instead, you shift all your energy into the only thing you have 100% control over. Managing yourself. Reading the books, shrinking your needs, and keeping the peace. You didn't avoid getting curious because you were ignorant. You focused on ending the conflict because it was the only way that didn't require his cooperation. If we don't think we can solve a problem with someone else, we try to save it all on our own. There's a teaching from a Greek philosopher named Heraclitus that your situation reminded me of. He said that the hidden attunement is better than the open. What he meant is that the harmony you can't hear matters more than the one you can. The example is that the harmony you can't hear matters more than the one you can. The only thing that's really used is a bow and a lyre. A bow only works because the string pulls one way and the wood pulls the other. That opposition is not a flaw. It is the entire point. If you cut the string to end the tension, you do not get a more peaceful bow. You just get a stick. But tension on its own does not make music. It just makes noise. And when nobody has learned how to play the instrument, that sound is terrible. There was a psychologist at Notre Dame named Mark Cummings who spent decades studying what parental conflict does to children. What he found is that it is not whether parents argue that shapes a kid. It is whether the kid sees it repaired. Children who watch their parents fight and then watch them work it out come out feeling safer because they learn that when things break in their house, they get mended. That is why your shift in perspective is so powerful. You realize that your daughter was not asking for silence. She was asking for repair. When John and Julie Gottman came on my podcast, we talked about their research showing that 69% of relationship problems never get solved. Julie mentioned that couples will come back 20 years later having the exact same argument. Underneath those recurring arguments, she said, there is usually some underlying dream or deep emotional history that has never been brought in. She shared the exact questions they use to unlock those conversations. What values or guidelines are part of your position on this? What is the history behind it for you? Why is this so important to you? What is your ideal dream here? Look at those questions. Not one of them is about winning the argument. They are entirely about understanding the human being across from you. And I know asking you to bring these kinds of questions to him might feel like a lot of work. It might feel like asking you to go first one more time. But there is a huge difference here. Every other time you went first, you were giving something up or keeping the peace. This time you're stepping forward to open a door. So before you sit down with him, think about the questions you wish he would ask you. What's the thing you have wanted him to be curious about all these years? Because he may not even know this kind of curiosity is possible yet. And the clearest way to do that is to ask him, the clearest way to show someone how to meet you there is to lead the way. We spend so much time trying to end conflict rather than become aware of what's underneath it. Because a lot of us have played that role in our families. If you think about your daughter, she's starting to practice it right now. And maybe if you look back on your childhood, you did the same thing. Maybe you were the mediator, the negotiator, the peacemaker in your family. A lot of children take this role on their own. They take it on early where they see their parents arguing. And they constantly think the best thing to do is create a sense of peace. Often when I'm coaching new couples, they'll say, we don't even fight. We never fight. We never argue. That's not a sign of a healthy relationship. That could be a sign of avoidance. It could be a sign of peacemaking or peacekeeping or even people pleasing at the cost of actually getting to the root of the issue. The reason we do this is that it feels better. It's protective. Our nervous system feels calmer. We overall feel better about our day. And we think to ourselves, how nice is this? We don't have to argue. We solve the problem. Not realizing that resentment, pain, stress, pressure could all be being built underneath it. Your partner could be having all of these negative feelings. But because we make it better in the moment, you never get a chance to understand them. Understanding a problem or an issue is a big part of our life. Understanding a problem or an issue is far better than pretending to move on from it. Imagine a crack in a wall in your home. When you first start, see the crack, you think, oh, it's okay. Two years later, the crack gets bigger. You go, it's all right. Three years later, the crack gets bigger. Now you start to get a little bit of leaks. You may get some water. You may get some mold developing. All of a sudden, it's a serious issue. But it all could have been solved if you repaired the crack in the first place. Ignoring and avoiding a crack doesn't make it go away. Ignoring and avoiding issues in your relationship does not make them go away. Just because something feels far off in your mind does not mean it's not front of mind for the other person. It's about time that we realize just because we don't want to fight every day doesn't mean a relationship without any conflict is a healthy relationship. It's always about finding that middle path and the balance. Where conflict is a chance to become more conscious and a chance to become more connected. Healthy conflict makes you more connected. Unhealthy conflict makes you more critical. Healthy conflict makes you more conscious and aware of how you can change. Unhealthy conflict makes you just blame the other person and want them to change. Know the difference. All of these little festive traditions bring me so much joy, so why not start early? And Amazon gets it, which is why you'll find low prices right now. Get a head start on holiday gifting with Amazon's low prices. Shop now at amazon.com forward slash holiday. Hi, Jay. In high school, I was one of the popular kids that always had it together, always upbeat and everyone's friend, never struggled. Then I got pregnant and had a baby at 17 years old. This was the late 80s, so the stigma and rhetoric attached to teen pregnancy was, you're a stupid teenager, your life is ruined now, you'll just be a drain on taxpayers and society in general. While I had the love and support of my parents, thank heavens, I was ostracized from everything I had been and everyone I knew. Since then, I've turned myself inside out to overachieve and fight that stigma. While working and being a teen mom, I never accepted a dime of state aid. I maintained a 4.0 while double majoring in college and being a single mom. I married an incredible man and raised two incredible children who have become amazing men. They've created beautiful families, become successful contributing members of society, but somehow, even now in my mid-50s, I'm still exhausting myself trying to prove I'm not that stupid teenager that got knocked up and ruined her life. I'm not that stupid teenager that got knocked up and ruined her life. My question is, how do I let this go? How do I start living for me instead of for beating the stigma? Thank you for sharing your story with me and for your thoughtful question. I want you to know you're already further along than you think because you can see the conflict you're having with yourself. Not everyone can do that, so you should give yourself some credit for that. But let me go back because I know I don't know you, but from what you've shared, I wonder if there's a way for you to be a better person. I wonder if there's a way for you to be a better person. I wonder if there are a few things you may be telling yourself that aren't giving you the full picture. First of all, you're not a drain on anyone. You never took a dime. You got a 4.0 while double majoring and raising a child alone. You raised two sons, who I'm so happy to hear became good men with families of their own. By every measure your judgmental peers set for you, you didn't just clear the bar, you absolutely buried it. Now, your question is how to start living for you. By every measure your judgmental peers set for you, you totally buried it. But listen to how you describe your life. Incredible children. Amazing men. Beautiful families. That is not the vocabulary of a woman who missed her own life. That's somebody describing a life she loves. Now, look at who told you otherwise. Teenagers and a bunch of decades old, late 80s rhetoric that would probably get people cancelled today. That's the jury. 17 year olds who are famously the least generous people on earth and an outdated culture. When Gabor Mate came on my podcast, he said something that has stayed with me ever since. Kids get the message that you can be yourself or you can be accepted, but not both at the same time. And that for sheer survival, you go with whatever gets you accepted. You got that message in the most brutal way possible. You were yourself. Your life took a turn. And everyone you knew disappeared. So somewhere in there, you learned that being you was the dangerous option. This also points directly to imposter syndrome. That deep internal belief that you are secretly a fake, no matter how much evidence or accomplishment proves otherwise. We usually talk about this in the context of work, but it fits with your situation completely. In 1978, psychologist Pauline Rose Clance studied high performing women and identified the imposter phenomenon. She discovered that this belief gets planted early, whether at home or by a society that limits what women are allowed to achieve. Once that belief takes root, success does not erase it. Even women with incredible track records felt like frauds. If you earned another degree tomorrow, you'd probably still be waiting for the other shoe to drop, wondering when people will catch on. But they're the ones who are wrong, not you. You asked me two questions. The second was about beating the stigma and living for yourself. To that, I'd say that it sounds like you've already made meaningful progress. And everyone's different. So I can't tell you exactly how to resolve your first question, which is how to let it go. But you said you're exhausting yourself. So what I'd do if I were you, is rest. Take a break, go to the beach, read a book, draw a picture, go for a walk, go on vacation. Do something with no result attached. Your whole life has been spent trying to prove things to people by getting incredible results. Do something where you're proving nothing to anyone and you have no result. And in the quiet of that, look at what you built. Because I think if you slow down enough to really see it, you'll find you already are everything you've been trying to be perceived as. And even more than that. And maybe you don't need to be perceived at all to know that. People waste their life trying to do two things. Prove that we're right, or prove that others are wrong. But this is quite natural. We want to belong. We want to be seen. We want to be understood. All fair and valid things. But what's really important is that the people you love feel that way about you. Not everyone in the world. If your children, your partner, the people who've stayed by your side, your parents that you gave credit to. If those people know that you turned your life around. That you did really well. That you did something phenomenal from a difficult position. That's what you're really looking for. And to get it from those people. To gain that validation, that approval, that love, that connection from them. And valuing that. Because they're the people in your life rather than people that are around your life. You can let go of the need of other people's approval when you realize that you're the only one who has to live with the consequences of your choices. If you spend your life trying to win someone over, you lose. Because they're not even thinking about you. They're spending so much more time thinking about their life. We spend more time thinking about what others think of us than they actually spend time thinking about us. And it's in that thinking that we move away from ourselves. We don't value what we've achieved. We don't give ourselves credit for the incredible progress we've made. So what I'd like you to do is take a moment to acknowledge that you did do this for yourself. I'm sure you raised good men because you wanted to raise good men. I'm sure you got good grades because you believed it was important for you. Start to own these achievements for you. Start to recognize that you would have done that for you anyway because you believe in them. And start to recognize that no matter what you do, you will never win everyone over. And so why waste time doing that? Hi, my 20 years old Uruguayan girl who has been volunteering at the school where I studied my whole life. Volunteering has become a really important part of my life. I have always been available to help whenever they need someone. I was there and I always felt valued. But this year something happened that really hurt me because there was an opportunity that meant I had to give up. And I truly believed that it was finally my turn. But instead they choose someone else who had only recently came back. What hurt was realizing that when it came to making an important decision, I wasn't the person they choose. I had really built like the trust that I thought I had. Since then, I have been struggling with staying motivated. My question, how do you keep serving with all your heart when you feel unrecognized without becoming bitter or discouraged, especially when it feels like people value skills or visibility more than quiet dedication and consistent effort? Thank you for sending this. First of all, I want to recognize something about your question before I answer it. You're 20 years old. You're 20 years old. You're 20 years old. You're 20 years and you're asking, this episode is brought to you by Wayfair. I love the holiday season because that means I'm constantly bringing friends and family together. Wayfair makes spending quality time with the people I love incredibly easy. I can order extra dining chairs for a last minute get together that fit perfectly into the space. So I never have to worry about my guests being comfortable or feeling at home. I can find beautiful pieces to decorate my table that bring warmth to the space and make everyone feel welcome. 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So buy your car today on Carvana. Delivery fees may apply. See our seven-day return policy at carvana.com. How not to become bitter. The fact that you can feel it coming and you're actively trying to get ahead of it tells me so much about your character. But I'm intrigued by something you said. That you believed it was finally your turn. A turn reminds me of a line at an amusement park. You wait and when you eventually get to the front, if you're tall enough, you can ride. And we apply that thinking to lots of things. If I wait my turn, I'm going to be in the front. I'm going to be in the the opportunity will come. You're clearly ambitious, you work hard, you're dedicated, you show up when you say you will, and you believe those things should count for something. So when the people around you make a decision that seems to run on a completely different set of rules, it does not just disappoint you, it shakes your foundation. Because if consistency and effort do not matter, you start asking yourself what the point is. In psychology, there's a concept called the just world hypothesis, originally identified by researcher Melvin Lerner. He shows that most of us carry a deep fundamental belief that the world is inherently fair, and that good effort leads to good outcomes. And I really think that believing the world is fair is a good philosophy. But that doesn't always translate to a practical reality, especially in the workplace. There's fascinating research on this by psychologist Tom Tyler. He says, He spent decades studying why people accept outcomes that don't go their way. What he discovered is that the actual result barely matters. What matters is the process. People can accept a loss if they feel they were treated with respect, given clear transparency, and given a real voice to be heard. You called your approach quiet dedication. And there's real honor in that. But there's also nothing wrong with being vocal about your value. I encourage you to run with that louder voice, and do something simple but powerful. Ask for a conversation. Not to argue or reverse a decision, because that choice has already been made. But to understand how it was made, and ask what would make you the obvious choice next time. That conversation will go one of two ways, and both outcomes benefit you. Either you receive an honest explanation that makes sense, or you receive an honest explanation that makes sense, and you hear their reasoning and realize you don't respect how they make choices. That's a valuable answer too. This was one single opportunity. With the work ethic you have, it is not a question of if your moment comes. It's a question of when. That is what you hold on to when your motivation dips. Conflict and disappointment are going to follow you. You will see it at work, in school, and in relationships. It's going to be frustrating. But feeling bitter in the moment is not a failure. It is a completely normal human response to being overlooked. There's a huge difference between feeling bitter and becoming bitter. Becoming bitter only happens when we don't take action on the feeling. So go ask your questions and get your answers. Find out whether you just need to keep growing where you are, or if it is already your turn somewhere else. I think one of the reasons why it hurts so much when we get overlooked is because we don't know what to do next. We don't know what to do next. It's because we believe there's a part of us that says it's better not to shout about my success. It's better to be humble. It's better to be quietly dedicated. And then people will see that and give me the opportunity. Have you ever felt that? That sharing your worth or actually stating your needs feels a bit uncomfortable to you? Makes you feel a bit icky. And that's the part we're being asked to actually contend against. Stating your needs. Sharing your value. Vocalizing where you want to be and who you want to be are all healthy ways of protecting yourself. You're not demanding anything. You're not forcing anything. When someone wants a promotion, when someone wants their next role, it's really important that you sit down with your leader, your manager, your boss, and you say to them, this is what I want to achieve here. These are my goals. What do I need to do in order to show you that I'm capable of doing this? So that this is guaranteed. I remember learning this when I was back at university. I went to my college professor and I said to them, I wanted to get a first-class degree. And I said, I'm willing to do what it takes, but I need to know what I need to read. I need to know what level of work you're expecting. And I'm ready to take that feedback. And I realized now that they knew what standard I was willing to hold myself to, they could show me the way. When we're asking people to read between the lines, notice our quiet work, recognize our dedication. We're asking them to do a lot and we're expecting a lot from them. I don't doubt that you've already done the work. I don't doubt that you have that positive attitude, but the decision makers need to know that and need to be aware of that. And it needs to be a collaborative approach. I want to validate the fact that you doing volunteer work and it being an important part of your life shows the quality of your character and your wonderful service attitude. In organizations like that, you often get overlooked. People don't get validated and it can be taken for granted. And that feels terrible. And yes, there's a part of us that should do what we love if we believe in it, regardless of validation. At the same time, we all want to honor ourselves and protect our worth. And for that, we have to vocalize it. I hope that helps. Thank you so much for sharing your question with me. And I hope that's helped everyone listening as well. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. As the main character of your life, you know how important it is to make the right choices for you and how rewarding it is to feel good about your life. And I hope that helps you. And I hope that helps your decisions. With the State Farm personal price plan, you have options to help create an affordable price for you so you can continue living your best life. Talk to a State Farm agent today to learn how you can choose to bundle and save with the personal price plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability, amount of discounts and savings and eligibility vary by state. For the past five years, only two people have made me feel deeply cared for. They showed me love and I gave them everything I could. But in the end, neither of them truly chose me. After that, I decided to focus on my career and build a life where I didn't depend on a relationship to be happy. Then two months ago, I met someone new. He made me feel cared for in a way I hadn't felt in a long time. And made me believe that maybe this time would be different. But I become confused. One moment he makes me feel like I'm special and the next moment I don't know where I stand. Recently, he sent me this message. Protect your heart above everything else. You deserve someone who can give you everything you are looking for in life. I will always pray that life is kind to you and that you reach the highest level of success. I didn't know whether he was loving me or saying goodbye. I'm emotionally exhausted. More than anything, I just want peace. I don't want to spend every day wondering where I stand in someone's life. My question is, how do I choose peace without giving up on love altogether? I don't know whether he was loving me or saying goodbye. And honestly, he might not even fully know himself, but I'm guessing you have read those words a hundred times looking for the line that settles it. Let's stop that spiral right now. Whatever his intentions were, you were left without clear answers. And I want you to know that you deserve clear answers. Let that be step one in finding your peace. Trying to read between the lines of a vague text will never give you security. I know that kind of uncertainty can feel strangely exciting at first. Is this a new beginning or another heartbreak? But healthy excitement will never put your sense of peace at risk. When relationship expert Logan Urie came on my podcast, we talked about the spark, those butterflies people look for in a new relationship. She pointed out that a lot of the time, those butterflies aren't romantic magic at all. They can actually sometimes be our body's anxiety alarms. The way I see it, there's a key difference between healthy excitement and anxiety. When excitement is healthy, what you are uncertain about is the future. Who is this person? Where could this go? What might we build together? When it's anxiety disguised as a spark, you aren't uncertain about the future. You are uncertain about right now. What is happening between us? Do they even like me? Are you professing your love or breaking up with me? You asked how to choose peace without giving up on love. But you don't have to choose between the two. There's a monk named Thomas Kempis who wrote that you have to keep peace with yourself first and only then can you bring peace to anybody else. You want to feel wanted. I get that. It's totally relatable. But your boundaries get built out of that inner peace. That's why it has to come first. When that happens, I seriously doubt you will feel like you gave up on love. I think you will find you just stopped taking maybe for an answer and that your love and your peace are both intact. The right person will give you the right answer. The wrong person will make you confused. It's so addictive to be with someone where there's mystery, confusion, and a lack of clarity. We say we want someone who says what they want, but we chase the person who speaks in riddles. Why do we do that? We do it because there's an excitement. There's a discovery. There's a mystery that we're addicted to and obsessed with. Partly it's because of the fact that we don't know what's going on. We don't know what's going on. We don't know how we were loved in our earlier years. Maybe you always had to chase love. Maybe you always had to earn it. Maybe you always had to prove to someone that you were worthy of that love. And so we repeat that in our adult relationships. Now let's talk about making life more fulfilling. A segment presented to you by Chase Sapphire Reserve. Growth rarely happens inside our comfort zones. Sometimes we have to accept that invitation that makes us nervous. Walk into a room where we don't know anyone or finally book the trip we've been putting off. The Chase Sapphire Reserve card is an invitation to experience more, discover more, and make life more fulfilling. I think one of the reasons stepping outside of our comfort zone can feel so difficult is because we start to build an identity around what we already know about ourselves. We say, I'm not someone who travels alone. I'm not good at meeting new people. I wouldn't enjoy that. That's just not me. And sometimes we make those decisions before we've actually given ourselves the opportunity to do so. And that's why we're the opportunity to even find out. I think about how many experiences in my own life started with some level of discomfort. Walking into a room where I didn't know anyone. Traveling somewhere unfamiliar. Having a conversation I wasn't sure I was ready for. Trying something I had no idea whether I'd be good at. And what I've learned is that the value of those experiences isn't just what happens while you're there. It's about what you discover about yourself because you went. Maybe you realize you're more adventurous than you thought. Maybe you discover that you're capable of connecting with people who are completely different from you. Maybe you find something you love that you would have otherwise never tried. That's why I think fulfillment isn't just about adding more things to our lives. Sometimes it comes from expanding our idea of who we are. So the next time you find yourself saying, that's not me, get curious about it. Ask yourself, do I know that because I've experienced it or have I just never given myself the chance? Because sometimes stepping outside your comfort zone doesn't just give you a new experience. It's about what you're capable of. And that's why I think fulfillment isn't just a new experience. It can introduce you to a new part of yourself. 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If someone wants to tell you how they feel about you, they will. And they won't confuse you if they're clear and aligned. So if you're not feeling peaceful, if you're feeling exhausted, if you're feeling stressed, what you have to ask yourself is, is this how you want to feel in the relationship? Is this how you want to feel next month, next year, and a year later? Accept what you're receiving. There's a beautiful quote by Maya Angelou where she said, when people show you who they are, believe them the first time. And there's another quote that I love from Steve Maraboli where he said, when people show you their true colors, don't try to repaint them. Often what we do is we spend a lot of time trying to repaint someone. Or instead of repainting them, we have a painting that we have of them in our mind that we keep keeping. Convincing ourselves that they can live up to in reality. We have a projection of what we want from them and we ignore reality that we're experiencing right now. The more you can let go of your projection and the more you can experience reality the way it is, it becomes really clear to see what gives you peace and what creates more drama. You don't have to lose faith in love. You simply have to check with your nervous system when you feel at peace. And then you will have found it. Thank you so much for your question. I'm wishing you all the best. And I really hope this helped. Thank you for sending those messages and trusting me with your stories today. Conflict is heavy, but you don't have to carry the weight of fixing everything by yourself. And even if you didn't ask any of these questions, I really hope that the answers helped you in your life, wherever you are in the world. Keep those voice members coming. I'll be right here.