Why Do We Want to Feel Special? Specialness and Our Trapped Self

Why do most people seek validation from others? Let’s give that ourselves.

Photo by Ye Jinghan on Unsplash

Everyone wants that box filled with specialness; that respect, attention, validation, and whatnot. But who do you want it from is the real question that you should ask yourself. From the society? From the people around you? From your friends? From your relatives? Or from yourself?

I know it feels great when another human tells you that you are special and validates you. It feels exciting and rewarding. It feels great for some time, but then it goes back to normal. So, there becomes a strong possibility that you’d want it to happen again and again.

This becomes a dangerous pattern of behaviour in which you rely on other people to gain any smidge of self-worth. When they don’t give it to you, you feel terrible about yourself, doubt yourself at every step and sometimes even hate yourself.

Specialness

Let me say it right here, the word “special” is not even that special. But humans being humans, want that cute little box of specialness just because they exist.

The thought of being special exists because the idea of self exists. And that is what causes problems.

In most cases, the nature of the self is controlled by other people’s opinions and standards. Most people categorise themselves as special or not special by what opinions other people have of them. Maybe some of you are one of them; but don’t worry, after reading this you won’t be ;)

Don’t lie, but you do like to feel special, respected, validated, don’t you? Everyone likes that. There’s nothing wrong with it. But remember to not give others the authority to tell you if you are special or not (you tell it yourself). Because if they have the ability to praise you, they also have the ability to condemn you; and that is the bad part.

“This is how you currently value yourself: you look at the world, you see a definition of cool or competent, and then you compare yourself to it in order to see where you stand. The problem with this method is: the world can fool you. It can create nonsense standards, fake standards, exaggerated standards, toxic and unhealthy standards, unrealistic and dumb standards and then create completely new standards that crap on the last ones you worked so hard to achieve. After that, you sit wondering ‘What a nightmare! Who am I, what am I even running after, and why? Because this crap is endless!”

— (an excerpt from the book “The Rudest Book Ever”)

This is what happens when you give other people or a group of people (the society or greedy corporations) the authority to set standards for you.

Let us talk a bit about who even sets those standards.

1. Those influencers who want nothing but fame and popularity and are filled with narcissism. (not talking about all of them but 90–95% of them are like this. Some influencers really want to help others and I respect them for that).
2. Those big-ass corporations who want nothing but to snatch money from anyone they can get their hands on. So they set fake standards for the public as a marketing campaign to build insecurities into the general public. Let us understand this with an example: A company named x shows fake beauty standards in their ads and manipulates people to think they are not beautiful enough and then they run to achieve the level of beauty those models have which is not even close to what 95% of the human population looks like. The truth is that the models they show in their ads are either exceptionally naturally beautiful or have achieved that beauty using multiple surgeries and taking supplements.

The above example is a very basic one on how fake standards can easily be set in today’s society. These fake standards could be of anything.

The trapped self

This is where most of our ‘self’ lies. Our ‘self’ is trapped. “What do you mean by trapped?” you may ask. Your self is trapped because it is controlled majorly by what others think of you, the frame by which they see you, and the image they see of you.

The image they create is how a person with a trapped self sees himself. For that person, the feeling of being special, validated, and praised becomes satisfying the demands of others.

Ask yourself this question: “Are you doing something because you want to do it? Or do you do it because that is what others would like you to do and it would make them happy?”

As we move closer to death, most of the humans stop caring about other’s validation. It happens because:

1. When we get older, most of the people whose approval and validation mattered to us are already dead.
2. The things you did to get other’s approval turn out to have disappointing endings.

But don’t you wait for death or anything else to free your ‘self’. Free it right here, right now. It may be hard, but it’s necessary.

Today, we’ve mostly mined the problems of getting this box of specialness from others. Let’s talk about the solutions in the next article, which should probably come in a day or two. You can directly get it into your mailbox by subscribing to me from here (self-promotion :P ).

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Thank you for reading till the end.

Tell yourself that you are special and nobody else needs to tell you that.