is your need for significance causing chaos?

'Look at me! Watch this! See what I can do!'

The need to feel important, special and needed - to matter, to stand for something and be noticed – is not the sole territory of three-year-olds.  

Everyone wants to feel worthy. 

If you have low-ish self-esteem and confidence you may seek out elaborate ways to feel unique and valued, and to overcome the fear that you’re not good enough.

Here are some common ways that people strive to meet the need for significance:

• Chasing material wealth

• Being ‘busier’ than everyone else

• Being 'louder' - displaying 'bravado' or false confidence

• Enjoying the attention received due to a physical or mental illness

• Taking on positions of responsibility for the 'status' this affords

• ‘Rescuing’ other people

• Standing apart by being a smoker, alcoholic or drug addict

• Having a striking or 'different' appearance (lots of tattoos, piercings, vibrant hair colour etc.)

• Striving to be ‘indispensible’ at work

• Wallowing in, or exacerbating, a major problem (relationship, personal, financial) to gain attention

• Tearing others down through gossip, bullying or manipulation

• Being rebellious or violent (flouting the rules can mean anything from parking in the disabled car park without a disability through to vandalism or major crime)

• Having an eating disorder

• Being self-deprecating with the intent of ‘fishing for compliments’

• Being overly competitive (wanting either to be ‘better’ than others, or wanting to be ‘worse’ or ‘longer-suffering’ - it doesn't matter which, as long as you stand out)

This can play out in interesting ways, for example:

• Hoarding tasks at work and at home so that you’re more busy than anyone else and others can't contribute or shine.  You love the idea that your workplace or family (or both) would fall in a heap without you and you thrive on feeling ‘indispensible’.  You like to think nobody does things as well as you do and 'dine out' on the 'incompetence' of those around you.

• Dominating meetings or conversations with your comments and questions (the person with the biggest unmet need for significance tends to sit front-row and centre and have their hand up most of the time, to demonstrate their 'knowledge').

• Not asking questions - bluffing to avoid looking ignorant 

• Flaunting new, preferably 'brand name' possessions

• Generating extra tasks at great personal cost – actively seeking to overload yourself so that you appear more important than others by having more on your plate.  You’ll moan (but really you're boasting) about the number of unread emails in your inbox, the length of your ‘to do’ list, how flat out you are, your commitments, social engagements, work and family responsibilities and yet you’ll take more on because ‘I don’t know how you do it’ is music to your ears!

• Volunteering on committees in order to feel important, needed and capable (rather than out of a genuine sense of quiet contribution)

• Creating a bigger problem than you already have (becoming the Drama Queen) in order to get more attention (‘battling on’ when you’re sick, manufacturing drama in a relationship, creating chaos by taking on extra roles).

• Consistently choosing partners with problems that need to be solved by you – playing the nurse-maid, rescuer or ‘knight in shining armour’ at the cost of having your own needs met.

• Difficulty saying ‘no’ - you'd hate to miss an opportunity to stand out and be noticed, even if inwardly you're 'drowning'!

None of these means of meeting the need for significance are constructive, the attention received by these methods is not necessarily positive or affirming and the result is that you're still unhappy and insecure - made worse by the complexity you've created in your life!   

People can go on for years like this!  It's relentless, futile and unsatisfying while - all around you - others seem happier in their much less 'crazy' lives.

What’s the secret to breaking this cycle?

The most productive, life-affirming and satisfying avenues to significance are through growth, contribution and connection. 

Be the person who turns the spotlight on someone else

Become a ‘giver’ of significance, rather than a ‘getter’, and you'll feel that sense of personal reward that you've been chasing.  Here are some simple ways to get started:

• Delegate a high-profile task that you could do with your eyes shut and assist someone around you to develop and ‘shine’

• Have a conversation in which the focus is entirely on the other person.  Notice how this makes them feel, and how they respond to you.

• Pay someone who you might have been 'competing with' a genuine compliment

• Acknowledge someone for something they have done, or what they mean to you

• Learn a new skill with the purpose of pure enjoyment or ‘using it for good’ rather than having another certificate on your wall

• Volunteer, donate or contribute something anonymously and don't tell anyone

• Ask, 'what is the purpose?' of taking something on. If it's to feel/look good - don't!

What are the rewards? 

• Liberation from the exhausting 'look at moi' cycle. 

• A life that is much less complicated, deeper and much more rewarding.

• Boundaries, and the ability to say no, as your worth is not measured by how much you do

• Life balance

• ‘Me time’

• A deeper connection with other people

• Feeling settled and content