When your best friend or a family member makes a decision that you really don't think is wise, validation is a way of supporting them and strengthening the relationship while maintaining a different opinion. Validation is a way of communicating that the relationship is important and solid even when you disagree on issues.Validation is the recognition and acceptance of another person's thoughts, feelings, sensations, and behaviors as understandable. Self-validation is the recognition and acceptance of your own thoughts, feelings, sensations and behaviors as understandable.The second level of validation is accurate reflection. Accurate reflection means you summarize what you have heard from someone else or summarize your own feelings. This type of validation can be done by others in an awkward, sing-songy, artificial way that is truly irritating or by yourself in a criticizing way. When done in an authentic manner, with the intent of truly understanding the experience and not judging it, accurate reflection is validating. I have found that many people waste much of their life obsessively catering to others, doing things against their better judgment, jeopardizing the welfare of self, friends, family, and much more that they later come to regret. Unfortunately, many of us never really get at the root of why we act in such self-destructive ways.On the job, establishing yourself as a person who has integrity is much better than being known as the one who will do (almost) anything you are asked to do. The latter people are often the ones who take the fall for the connivers and manipulators who use others for their own self-aggrandizing motives. Better to choose wisely what you are willing to do for others, even if you hazard not getting their approval.