Our Own Significance
Every day, I see dozens upon dozens of articles, blogs and thoughts designed to help you feel significant.
We all desire significance.
My question for you today is this: how do you feel right now? Do you feel:
- that you’re not significant;
- that you could be more significant; or
- that you already are significant.
My guess is that many of you fall into category 2.
It looks like this:
I do my part, but I feel like I’ve got more to offer.
I can understand that. It’s how I feel many days too, and it regularly confronts me with its truth — that I’m not yet operating at capacity. I’ve got something inside me that hasn’t yet come to fruition.
In short: I’m not doing enough.
This feeling is both dangerous and compelling.
It’s dangerous because it provides an opportunity for self-esteem problems. It beats us down, tells us we’re not good enough, and taken to extremes it tells us that we’ll never be good enough.
It’s compelling because it can motivate us to greater action. To learn more, do more, help more, earn more, strive more, and be more.
It’s Not What it Is — It’s How you React
If we accept that most of us believe we’re somewhat significant, but think we could be more so, the question becomes: what next?
How do you react to the feeling that you could do more?
Do you feel tired?
Stressed?
Motivated?
Angered?
What does that feeling provoke you to do? Snuggle up in bed? Get to work? Help someone in need? Donate money?
Whatever your emotional reaction, you need to channel it into something useful. Not futile nonsense — but something useful.
Otherwise it just floats around, causing you grief and making you feel inadequate.
What’s Significance, Anyway?
The lawyer in me desperately wants to define significance for you.
But I’m not going to.
When I asked you the question at the start of this post, what did you think about? What were the images and thoughts that immediately sprang to mind?
Charity? Family? Clients? Business? Money?
These are the things that are significant to you.
And while I would love to tell you what you ought to care about, that’s not how I roll.
Whatever it is, your job for today is to own your reaction to the question — and then take the reaction and put it into action.
Let me know in the comments — how are you going to be “significant” today?
Originally published at chris hargreaves.
