Desire of Feeling Important…
“The desire of being loved or appreciated by others is the only true motive of every individual”
You must have heard of Abraham Lincoln , he has been a great example in setting the desire of feeling important. Being a poor and uneducated grocery clerk , he studied some law books found in the bottom of a barrel of the household plumber that he had bought for fifty cents .
This desire is something which makes you to be in the best company, wear the latest trends, ride the best cars, make the best softwares, build houses far too large for its requirements and many more.
And it is the same desire that lures many people into getting along with criminal activities. This makes you go very deep in the dungeons of ferocious activities , that even being held after arrest, the first request a criminal makes is to provide those melodramatic newspaper which make them sound a hero. The sense of ego they contain within themselves is so different, that people on the other side would never understand. But those people too would be having that desire of self importance in some different aspect.
Criticising and rebukes invariably end in futility and tend to destroy the inner self-esteem of a person rather than demanding them to work harder. We as people, should always indulge ourselves in the praise of other people. But its almost the opposite what we do. Usually nowadays, people tend to group together when someone makes a mistake and are scattered as soon as the same person performs well with the job given. A belief is always present that the job being performed by the other person is easy due to which our inner self never believes in providing any bit of appreciation.
The greatest asset one can possess in today’s world is to get the best out of a person which involves greater appreciation and encouragement . The level of insanity people tend to overgrow for the sense of importance is increasing day by day , imagine what a miracle can be performed just by giving some positive vibes and appreciation. A janitor is the same person as you are, just performing a different job. Howsoever the impact you can create by making him realise his importance would benefit everyone around. A single appreciation from his boss would mean him his world and he would love to do his job with every content of his heart.
We are a kind of generation who can survive happily without food for a day, but absence of feeling important can turn one lose all his self-esteem. Negligence of providing some valuable appreciation in the start often leads in having the same behaviour throughout. People even tend to neglect appreciation for their family, leading to many fallouts .
A study says most of the runaway wives or husbands are just after results of “lack of appreciation”. We tend to spend most of our lives in a house without even giving a glimpse of thought of appraising our better halves or our parents on minute things, making a strange borderline within the behaviours on each side. It affects the relationships so bad that a simple communication tends to become burdensome.
The desire of feeling important is just an average of respect or appreciation being given by the people around you. Every relationship acts as a direct proportional measure of the admiration you show or receive. It can just matter within a second of your time to appreciate the effort of other person, even if he fails. That is the moment which actually shows your own hard moments and how you learnt from them.
When I completed my graduation, I got placed in a reputed organisation. Being appreciated by my parents, relatives and friends, somewhere I always thought that my desire of self importance was met. I started admiring all of my connections and made a great social life which actually brought in me the kind of positive attitude I always required. But then it was time to move into a different phase where actually you start knowing the real obligations of life. Just within a span of couple months, I was just the opposite of what I have been. The organisation and the environment it had, made me question everyday about by self esteem. Everyday was just another day to be criticised by the work I did. It was just a matter of time and I lost all the feeling of importance I had in me.
Criticism is dangerous, because it wounds a person’s precious pride, hurts their sense of importance, and arouses resentment.
This was the time when I learnt the actual difference between appreciation and flattery . And there is just one simple difference — One is sincere and one is not. One is unselfish and the other is selfish. These wise words from General Obregon’s philosophy: “Don’t be afraid of enemies who attack you. Be afraid of the friends who flatter you.” are very true. The ambience around made a set impact in my mind of the job culture and I could see my future going down in vain.
But within 3–4 months, I found some amazing people around me who had gone through similar experiences. Talking about the need of appreciation and how it impacted an individual’s performance was a major turnaround. Day by day , I started redeeming myself of the horrific thoughts I had and learnt about the benefits of dealing with people. The feeling of importance should always be kept limited around the people you want to be with. Self importance can act as the greatest enemy as it requires that we spend most of our lives offended by someone.
Then I took a step and within a year, I joined a company known as MindTickle. And this has been one of the best decisions I took. From the past experiences , I had already become very choosy with the people I talk and mostly made myself inattentive to any kind of criticisms and rebukes. But this place was different… just Different.
Even the first talk with the CTO of the company — Deepak Diwakar made me feel important. He believed in me from the very start and has been challenging me with different aspects upto date. The boost in the confidence is an exceptional change in your state of mind and it gets reflected in the work you do. Getting an amazing group of people with all the right attributes makes you feel at home. My team always being supportive and appreciating me for my day to day job has finally made me realise the worth of admiring other people.
It has been 2 years now and the growth I have felt here not only professionally, but also personally has brought a major impact in my behaviour towards other people. I am still choosy, but that is some other topic to talk on.
Finally I would say that instead of condemning people, lets try to understand them. Try to figure out a way to understand why they do what they do. That could be a lot more effective than criticism and finally it breeds tolerance and kindness. Once you are treated well and are around some good set of people, you can work wonders and educate people who actually are in need of it. :)
