
Validation
How the Skill Set That Revolutionized Psychology Will Transform Your Relationships, Increase Your Influence, and Change Your Life
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Narrated by:
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Caroline Fleck PhD
About this listen
"Warning: this book will make you a better parent, partner, colleague, and friend." —Adam Grant, New York Times bestselling author of Hidden Potential
Unlock the secret to true and lasting change.
We all spend a lot of energy trying to get people to listen to us, and despite our best efforts, we often fail. But what if the secret to influencing others was to demonstrate acceptance?
Enter validation—communication where one accepts and sees the validity in another person’s experience. Research on validation shows that it has profound effects, from improving relationships and de-escalating conflicts to increasing one’s influence and self-compassion. In this groundbreaking book, clinical psychologist Caroline Fleck explores how validation’s unique ability to demonstrate acceptance while fostering change makes it one of psychotherapy’s best-kept secrets. More importantly, she takes us step-by-step through eight skills we can use to communicate validation and experience its power firsthand.
Full of captivating stories, laugh-out-loud moments, and actionable takeaways, Validation reveals how the science of seeing and being seen is the key to inner and interpersonal transformation.
* This audiobook edition includes a downloadable PDF featuring visuals from the book.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2025 Caroline Fleck (P)2025 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
“As an engineer, I appreciate when complex human dynamics can be broken down into practical, actionable steps. Dr. Fleck has done exactly that with validation—a skill that, when mastered, becomes nothing short of a superpower. It’s like gaining access to a cheat code for human interaction—one that actually works. Whether you’ve got more of an engineering mindset that appreciates clear frameworks or are simply looking to improve your relationships, Validation delivers results while keeping you thoroughly entertained along the way.”—Mark Rober, founder of CrunchLabs
“Dr. Caroline Fleck reminds us that being present, listening, suspending judgment, and really hearing someone is the greatest gift we can give or receive. There is such magic in validation, and Dr. Fleck shines a light on something that can enliven our sense of possibility and self.”—Dr. Ramani Durvasula, New York Times bestselling author of It’s Not You
“Profound, important, compassionate, Validation took my breath away. I can’t remember the last time I read a book as beautifully crafted and immediately useful. Author Caroline Fleck shares research-backed wisdom that can help you transform the most important relationships in your life—at work and at home.”—Amy C. Edmondson, Novartis Professor of Leadership, Harvard Business School, and author of Right Kind of Wrong
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Overall
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In 1979, Loretta Ross was a single mother who’d had to drop out of Howard University. She was working at Washington, DC’s Rape Crisis Center when she got a letter from a man in prison saying he wanted to learn how to not be a rapist anymore. At first, she was furious. As a survivor of sexual violence, she wanted to write back pouring out her rage. But instead, she made a different choice, a choice to reject the response her trauma was pushing her towards, a choice that set her on the path towards developing a philosophy that would come to guide her whole career.
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Helpful and aspirational
- By Amazon Customer on 05-27-25
By: Loretta J. Ross
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Tiny Experiments
- How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World
- By: Anne-Laure Le Cunff
- Narrated by: Anne-Laure Le Cunff
- Length: 6 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Life isn’t linear, and yet we try to mold it around linear goals: four-year college degrees, ten-year career plans, thirty-year mortgages. What if instead we approached life as a giant playground for experimentation? Based on ancestral philosophy and the latest scientific research, Tiny Experiments provides a desperately needed reframing: Uncertainty can be a state of expanded possibility and a space for metamorphosis. Neuroscientist and entrepreneur Anne-Laure Le Cunff reveals that all you need is an experimental mindset to turn challenges into self-discovery and doubt into opportunity.
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A Refreshing Take on Growth and Creativity!
- By Naya on 03-05-25
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Reset
- How to Change What's Not Working
- By: Dan Heath
- Narrated by: Dan Heath
- Length: 6 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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In Reset, Heath explores a framework for getting unstuck and making the changes that matter. The secret is to find “leverage points”: places where a little bit of effort can yield a disproportionate return. Then, we can thoughtfully rearrange our resources to push on those points.
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Accompanying PDF has chapter summaries
- By JOHN B SHRADER on 02-07-25
By: Dan Heath
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The Social Paradox
- Autonomy, Connection, and Why We Need Both to Find Happiness
- By: William von Hippel
- Narrated by: Josh Bloomberg
- Length: 8 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Why do people who have so much—leading comfortable lives filled with unprecedented freedom, choice, and abundance—often feel so unhappy and unfulfilled? This phenomenon is a defining paradox of our time and one we endlessly seek to solve. In The Social Paradox, psychologist William von Hippel argues that we need to think about this problem in a new way. By changing our perspective, we might finally see the solution, bringing us greater happiness and more satisfying relationships. The key is to understand the interplay between our two most basic psychological needs—for connection and autonomy.
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Excellent perspective
- By jewelia on 04-09-25
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How to Validate People
- Listen and Hear Better to Form Deep Connections Fast (Master Your Communication and Social Skills)
- By: Ian Tuhovsky
- Narrated by: Randy Streu
- Length: 2 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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If you want relations that bring joy, fulfilment, and peace into your life. Then you’re looking at the right book. Most people have a hard time nurturing long-term, meaningful relationships. You’re exposed to new people daily at work, at the gym, or even at the supermarket. Despite this, less than one in ten interactions end up flourishing into a friendship.
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Very little how to. Misleading title
- By Amazon Customer on 01-10-24
By: Ian Tuhovsky
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Outraged
- Why We Fight About Morality and Politics and How to Find Common Ground
- By: Kurt Gray
- Narrated by: David Marantz
- Length: 13 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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It’s easy to assume that liberals and conservatives have radically different moral foundations. In Outraged, Kurt Gray showcases the latest science to demonstrate that we all have the same moral mind—that everyone’s moral judgments stem from feeling threatened or vulnerable to harm, and provides a captivating new explanation for our moral outrage, and unpacks how to best bridge divides. If you want to understand the morals of the “other side,” ask yourself a simple question—what harms do they see?
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Great book. Horrible narrator.
- By Sara Stall-Ryan on 02-22-25
By: Kurt Gray
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Chatter
- The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It
- By: Ethan Kross
- Narrated by: Ethan Kross
- Length: 5 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Tell a stranger that you talk to yourself, and you’re likely to get written off as eccentric. But the truth is that we all have a voice in our head. When we talk to ourselves, we often hope to tap into our inner coach but find our inner critic instead. When we’re facing a tough task, our inner coach can buoy us up: Focus - you can do this. But, just as often, our inner critic sinks us entirely: I’m going to fail. They’ll all laugh at me. What’s the use?
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Chatter is Great
- By Mark on 02-13-21
By: Ethan Kross
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Make Work Fair
- Data-Driven Design for Real Results
- By: Iris Bohnet, Siri Chilazi
- Narrated by: Laurel Lefkow
- Length: 12 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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To make organizations more fair, many well-meaning individuals and companies invest their time and resources in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. But because inequity is built into the structures, processes, and environments of our workplaces, adding these programs has been ineffective and often becomes a burden passed off to the individuals they are meant to help. In Make Work Fair, behavioral scientist and author of What Works Iris Bohnet and gender expert Siri Chilazi offer data-backed, actionable solutions that build fairness into the very fabric of the workplace.
By: Iris Bohnet, and others
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The Narrowing
- A Journey Through Anxiety and the Body
- By: Alexandra Shaker PhD
- Narrated by: Alexandra Shaker PhD
- Length: 7 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Most of us are intimately familiar with anxiety, and with its increasing hold on our minds, our hopes and plans, and our bodies. But how well do we really understand it, and what can we do to transform it into something new—into resilience, or courage, or creativity? In this extraordinary book, Dr. Alexandra Shaker, a clinical psychologist, takes us on a journey through the body—from brain to blood to heart to guts—to examine the connections between our emotional, psychological, and physical lives.
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A must read for anyone interested in and/or experiencing anxiety!
- By George S. on 05-02-25
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The Power of Empathy and Emotional Validation
- From Conflict to Connection: Your Path to Meaningful Relationships
- By: Daniel Brooks
- Narrated by: Virtual Voice
- Length: 3 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Do you ever feel like your relationships are missing something, and you're not sure what that something is? Do you crave deeper connections but don't know how to get there? You're not alone. Discover the transformative power of empathy and emotional validation in this comprehensive guide by Daniel Brooks, an experienced counselor and communication expert. This practical toolkit provides hands-on solutions to common relationship challenges like: Endless miscommunications and arguments Feeling unheard and misunderstood Emotional distance and lack of intimacy Digitally distracted partners ...
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Nothing New
- By Darrell on 10-09-24
By: Daniel Brooks
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The Empathy Effect
- Seven Neuroscience-Based Keys for Transforming the Way We Live, Love, Work, and Connect Across Differences
- By: Helen Riess MD, Liz Neporent, Alan Alda - foreword
- Narrated by: Alan Alda, Emily Durante
- Length: 8 hrs
- Unabridged
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Empathy is undergoing a new evolution. In a global and interconnected culture, we can no longer afford to identify only with people who seem to be a part of our “tribe.” As Dr. Helen Riess has learned, our capacity for empathy is not just an innate trait - it is also a skill that we can learn and expand. With The Empathy Effect, Dr. Riess presents a definitive resource on empathy: the science behind how it works, new research on how empathy develops from birth to adulthood, and tools for building your capacity to create authentic emotional connection with others.
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Good except for random politicizing
- By Lauren C Taraba on 04-12-20
By: Helen Riess MD, and others
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Mindmasters (Anna Caputo version)
- The Data-Driven Science of Predicting and Changing Human Behavior
- By: Sandra Matz
- Narrated by: Anna Caputo
- Length: 6 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Columbia Business School professor Sandra Matz reveals in fascinating detail how big data offers insights into the most intimate aspects of our psyches and how these insights empower an external influence over the choices we make. This can be creepy, manipulative, and downright harmful, with scandals like that of British consulting firm Cambridge Analytica being merely the tip of the iceberg.
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An Important book!! Very well written!! Empowering!
- By onili on 02-03-25
By: Sandra Matz
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Ordinary Magic
- The Science of How We Can Achieve Big Change with Small Acts
- By: Gregory M. Walton PhD
- Narrated by: Gregory M. Walton PhD, Hattie Tate
- Length: 14 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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The emotional questions we face can define our lives. If you’re expecting an interaction to go wrong, that expectation can make it so. That’s spiraling down. But as esteemed Stanford psychologist Greg Walton shows, when we see these questions clearly, we can answer them well. Known to social psychologists as wise interventions, these shifts in perspective can help us chart new trajectories for our lives. They help us spiral up. This is ordinary magic: The ordinary experiences that help us set aside the ordinary worries of life to unleash extraordinary change.
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So simple and so profound
- By S. Ma on 05-17-25
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Talk
- The Science of Conversation and the Art of Being Ourselves
- By: Alison Wood Brooks
- Narrated by: Alison Wood Brooks
- Length: 10 hrs
- Unabridged
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In Talk, Brooks shows why conversing a little more effectively can make a big difference in the quality of our close personal relationships as well as our professional success. Drawing on the new science of conversation, Brooks distills lessons that show how we can better understand, learn from, and delight each other.
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Good applicable insights
- By jessy on 05-06-25
Validation for this book
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Great book. So informational and interesting.
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Authentic - relatable
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Clarity
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Unfortunately, my excellent problem solving skills seemed to be making communication and relationship issues worse.
This book gave a concrete foundation on how validation and how it is the missing ingredient that we all need to feel accepted.
It was amazing to see the tension release from a partner when I switched from problem solving a predicament to validating her experience.
The solution for this thwarted problem-solver
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For almost 50 years, I always ask my patients in any encounter - “How can I help you?” and after reading this book; I will follow up by asking myself if the ask is— are my patients asking for validation or problem solving. The text is both useful and heartfelt.
A work of LOVE
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Funny and relevant
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A Must read
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The lack of Validation in our lives is one of the most modern problems we humans face, and Dr. Fleck approaches it with keen perception, exhaustive research, humor, vulnerability, and most importantly for we non-PhDs…relatability. This is a book for everyone, or anyone who is willing to explore how by embracing Validation skills you can improve every relationship in your life, increase your influence with others, and experience even the steepest challenges as opportunities for growth.
Filled with entertaining and sometimes heart-breaking anecdotes, Dr. Fleck illustrates how her methodologies, which anyone can engage, can give us tools to approach the conflicts and frustrations that can define our lives and make us feel alone, and instead improve both our perspectives and actions as well as those we’re closest to. Whether these conflicts happen at work, at study, with family, or in our intimate relationships, she provides logical and emotionally grounded approaches and practice exercises to make Validation part of your life and philosophy.
I’ve already recommended this book to others, and will certainly read it again. You’ll want to read more from this author after experiencing with her the complicated road she’s traveled to bring us this wisdom, and you’ll be inspired to take the first step.
A must read for all humans
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