There’s a common piece of advice, repeated like a mantra in self-help books and motivational speeches: “Don’t seek external validation.” It’s a noble ideal, a state of being where your internal compass is so true that the applause or silence of the world means nothing. But for most of us, it’s not a starting point. It’s a destination. And the journey to that place has a secret, rarely acknowledged timetable: if you are going to seek that validation, to chase that popularity, do it while you’re young.
Youth is the season when the machinery of social approval is, for better or worse, most visible and most active. It’s a loud, crowded training ground. The desire to fit in, to be liked, to be seen as cool or attractive or successful, isn’t a character flaw in your teens and twenties; it’s a kind of social fuel. It pushes you out the door. It makes you try on different identities like jackets, seeing which one gets a reaction. That yearning for the spotlight or the inner circle teaches you about group dynamics, about presentation, about what resonates and what falls flat. These are raw, unrefined skills, but they are data points. You learn what the external world actually values, not in theory, but in the visceral reality of Friday nights and first jobs.
More crucially, the stakes, while they feel astronomically high, are often surprisingly low. The social misstep at twenty-two, the failed attempt at popularity, the embarrassing pursuit of a trend—these are wounds that heal quickly, leaving behind the faint scars we later call “experience.” They become funny stories, lessons learned, the foundational clay of your character. A young person can pivot from one social circle to another, from one style to the next, with a flexibility that time quietly steals. This period of experimentation, funded by the currency of wanting to be liked, is how you discover what parts of the performance are genuinely you, and which ones are simply a costume.
Because the true cost of seeking validation isn’t the seeking itself; it’s the compounding interest of delay. To carry that unchecked need for popularity into your thirties, forties, and beyond is to build a life on a foundation of shifting sand. The social machinery changes. The rules become unspoken, the cliques more entrenched, and the penalty for not “fitting in” shifts from temporary teenage exile to a profound, career-limiting isolation. The middle-aged pursuit of external approval often manifests in more damaging ways: the soul-crushing job held only for status, the unsustainable spending, the reluctance to have an authentic opinion for fear of offending. The flexibility is gone, replaced by a brittle desperation.
Doing it young allows you to get it out of your system. You can satiate the hunger, or more often, discover its emptiness for yourself. You learn that the roar of the crowd is fickle and that popularity is a currency that hyper-inflates over time, becoming nearly worthless when you need to trade it for things like integrity, peace, or deep, quiet love. The young person who actively grapples with these forces—who feels the burn of rejection and the headiness of acceptance—builds an immunity. They emerge, often around the threshold of their thirties, with a hard-earned wisdom: that external validation is a poor master, but it can be a useful, temporary teacher.
So, if you feel that pull, that desire to be celebrated, admired, or simply included, don’t berate yourself for failing some enlightened ideal. Lean into it, but do it now. Use your youth as the dedicated arena for this contest. Get messy with it. Learn the rules so thoroughly that you ultimately see why you must break them. Let the need for popularity burn bright and fast, so it can burn itself out, leaving behind the steady, warm glow of self-knowledge. That is the only validation that ages well, and it is the priceless trophy you can only claim once the crowd has gone home.
