Everyone loves to be noticed and to feel the work they're doing is recognized and appreciated, right? But we need to stop and ask ourselves if that's the main reason we're doing things.

When we continually seek external validation, we are essentially giving ourselves to others. We are doing things to impress them, but if we switch gears to do things for internal validation--to light up our values and purpose--our life feels drastically different.

Praise and compliments are great, but they land better when we're running on all cylinders and we feel we're doing things for the right reasons. In other words, compliments are the icing on the cake, rather than the elusive goal we seek to find.