The Migration Principle | Day 4 of 100

When External Validation Fails

One note before we start. I don't claim to know anything for certain. I'm writing about meaning for 100 days because I want to test my ideas in public and see what resonates. Your feedback and input is most welcome!

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A Quick Review of Day Three

On day three of one hundred, we talked about The Validation Trap. Here are the ideas we played with:

We grew up in clearly defined containers—school, sports, clubs—that taught us to seek external approval for safety. Follow the rules, get good grades, fit in, and others would tell us we were on the right track.

As my friend Chris McAlister puts it, we built our lives around answering two questions: "Am I doing a good job?” and “Do they like me?"

But as those containers became bigger and less defined (a.k.a. adulthood), we kept playing by the same rules—looking externally for approval, status, belonging, etc.—thinking this would amount to good, even meaningful life.

Here's the trap: We confused validation for meaning. We thought the safety that comes from approval was the same thing as the significance that comes from making meaning.

The result? We feel disillusioned and confused, wondering: "Is this it?" and "Why doesn't this work anymore?"

We're not broken, we're not behind, we don't need to blow up our lives. But we do need to stop navigating our lives like we used to.

Which brings us to today's question: If external validation doesn't point us toward meaning, how do we find it?

Instincts vs. Instructions

It's 5:30am and I have a flight to board at 6:15am.

Here's the problem - I'm not at the airport.

Here's the bigger problem - I don't even know where the airport is.

It's 2009 and I'm somewhere outside the city limits of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, panicking.

At the time, I lived in Mission, South Dakota which was a three and half hour drive from Sioux Falls. I'd been up since about 1:30 in the morning to begin the process of catching this flight, but the way things are looking, I might be lost forever.

For Christmas that year, I received one of those Garmin GPS devices you can plug into your cigarette lighter and stick to your windshield with a suction cup. It was going to change my life. Before that, we just had maps. No joke—either a print-out of turn by turn directions or an old fashioned laminated Rand McNally from the gas station.

So the Garmin was a big step up. That said, in that day these devices were based on static maps that needed to be updated. Well, I guess I didn't do the software update and a traffic pattern changed or something, and the Garmin directs me to some entrance where military vehicles are entering and exiting. I’m not allowed in this entrance. So I punch in something else and, 10 minute later, find myself further away from civilization.

In a fearful state, I pull over on the side of the road and yank the GPS off its suction cup. Hands sweating, despite the freezing temperature outside, I try to get that blasted device to tell me where I’m supposed to go in the darkness of pre-dawn on the Great Plains of America.

After much button pushing and very little way-finding, I’m startled by a passing truck and I look up, realizing how dark it is. This gives me an idea. I turn off the Garmin, turn off my headlights and step out of the car. The snow crunches under my shoes. There is a flicker of dawn eastward just where a blanket of clouds meets the horizon.

And reflected up against that blanket of clouds is the sherbet glow of those orange-ish street lamps that reliably represent civilization. Blinking around the perimeter of the orange light I see red obstruction lights signaling to me in morse code, it seems.

That’s the airport.

I then focus my eyes on the foreground to see the roof mounted lights of semi-trucks barreling down what could only be Interstate 90 at that speed. If I can make it to the interstate, I can make it to the airport. I whisper to myself.

The good news is twofold:

1. I did make it to the airport—not with a device and its outdated navigation system—but with my wits.
   

2. Thankfully Sioux Falls Regional Airport's parking situation resembles a small grocery store’s parking lot more than an airport, and their security measures are about as serious a public library—so I made my flight.

Does that work? (I'm literally asking you, the reader, does that work? Let me know in the comments!)

• I'm trying to communicate that we’ve become reliant on maps/systems that are out of date (old containers/validation)

• Which work for a time—until it doesn’t

• Then we have a choice: Continue using the old system/tools or…

• …realize maybe we never needed the external tools (validation), we had what we needed internally all along.

Does the anecdote hold water? Be honest…

Ok, today’s a day of experimentation—here's another stab...

Meaning and Migration

Once you get to be about 40, you start to develop old-person tendencies.

Bad back, greying hair, nose hair, less tolerance for noise, dairy issues, you motion for cars to slow down in your neighborhood, and...

You become interested in birds.

We've got cardinals nesting in the jasmine in our backyard and if I didn't have a newborn daughter, that's about all I'd think about all day long.

Been thinking about birds a lot lately—so let me tell you some more about birds.

Every fall, billions of birds do something that should be impossible. They fly thousands of miles to places they've never been, using navigation systems we're only beginning to understand.

And I've watched lots of YouTube videos about this.

Professor Henrik Mouritsen has spent decades studying this mystery at the University of Oldenburg in Germany. When I read his research, I picture him in his lab, trying to explain to a visitor what he's discovered.

I imagine him pulling up images of bird retinas, pointing to microscopic structures. "See these proteins called cryptochromes?" his voice likely picking up with excitement. "When light hits them, they create these quantum effects—radical pairs of electrons that can actually sense magnetic fields."

I can see him shaking his head in wonder. "They're seeing invisible information that helps them navigate.”

Related to our work here on meaning and navigating our lives, one fact sticks out that made me think this migratory bird framing could be a helpful way to talk about our necessary shift from external validation to internal direction:

Young birds still learn their first routes by following older birds. They memorize landmarks—mountain ranges, river bends, distinctive coastlines. It's external navigation, passed down through generations.

But when those same birds fly over vast oceans or through storms that obscure every landmark, they don't panic. They don't turn around. They switch to this internal quantum compass that was there all along.

They read polarized light patterns invisible to our eyes. They navigate by star positions and atmospheric pressure changes. They play a whole new game.

Now, the external landmarks they once depended on weren't wrong; they just became insufficient for the journey ahead.

And here's the kicker: the birds don't learn how to navigate internally from other birds.

They uncover it.

It was always there.

Inside of them.

(I kinda like this - does it work? Let me know in the comments!)

The Identity (Nav System) We Thought We Needed

"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."

- Oscar Wilde

We constructed ourselves around what others expected: the good student, the ambitious employee, the responsible parent, the successful business owner. We became experts at reading the external landmarks—what impressed people, what got us promoted, what made us look like we had it together.

But eventually the familiar landmarks disappear. The old containers that gave us clear feedback about our worth and decided our direction either don't exist anymore or have become so large and undefined that they provide no guidance.

And we're discovering that the identity we thought we needed—the one built entirely on external validation—was never designed for the journey we're actually on.

We must learn how to navigate from an internally directed sense of self.

This means asking different questions:

• Instead of "What should I do?" we ask "What feels aligned?"

• Instead of "Will people approve?" we ask "Can I live with this choice?"

• Instead of "Am I doing this right?" we ask "Does this create meaning for me?"

But here's what it doesn't mean: It doesn't mean you ignore all external input. It doesn't mean you become some kind of lone wolf who doesn't need anyone else, who goes deaf to the world around them.

Even migrating birds use landmarks when they're available. They just don't depend on them exclusively. The containers and their norms still have a place in our lives. They helped us get here—but they won’t show us who we are.

What We're Actually Looking For

We confused validation for meaning for so long that when the validation system broke down, we thought meaning had disappeared too.

But meaning was never hiding in the approval of others or the accumulation of achievements. Meaning emerges when we stop using our energy to chase validation and instead spend it participating in our lives in a way that creates a deeper sense of connection with others and pushes us toward substantive growth, all the while making us come alive.

Novelist Patrick Rothfuss penned:

"It's like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story."

So the question is, What story are you telling? One where the main character seeks validation, or creates their own meaning?

When you switch from external to internal navigation, you're not just changing how you make decisions. You're changing the entire purpose and storyline of your life.

Instead of collecting evidence that you're worthy, you start creating evidence that you're alive.

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Today’s ideas raise more questions: If we are not supposed to chase external validation, then how does one create meaning? What is meaning in the first place? I sketched out a rough definition of meaning on day two, but in the next post, we'll try to build out what the actual ingredients of a meaningful life might be.