Even the most humble of us needs to have a sense of who we are and what we are for. Without it we essentially have no sense of self-worth, or achievement or purpose. We start to feel that we are not doing anything of value and that quickly slumps into the depressive (and unfounded) belief that we are of no value.
We need to feel significant.
Pause for a second and consider that word “feel”. It isn’t about “being significant” it is about believing that we are, feeling that we are, knowing it. We can be hugely significant in the lives of others without recognising that fact.
Getting to a point where we have the knowledge of our impact, begins with understanding what “significance” is and what it is not. We frequently make the mistake of confusing ‘significance’ with scale.
Of course, there is huge significance in changing the world, saving the planet, keeping people alive or comforting them as they pass. There is massive significance in leading companies and endowing philanthropic endeavours. There is (as we are finding out) massive significance in cleaning hospitals and shops, selling groceries, collecting refuse, delivering mail, keeping the lights on and the sewage flowing and the internet connected.
There is also significance in all the other unsung jobs: all the admin work that keeps the rest of it working, the orders placed, the bills & salaries & benefits paid; the air traffic control keeping the few planes that remain in the sky safe; the farmers and the bakers; the scientists hunting for understanding in the work towards a vaccine or a treatment; the fire service and police and other medics dealing with the bits of life that are carrying on regardless, accidents and crime and ordinary sickness have not taken a holiday. All significant. Counsellors and coaches helping people through – also significant. Registrars who used to count on 2 to 1 in their job: the sadness of deaths but the happiness of marriages and births. Births are still providing happy events, but marriages are on hold, and deaths are surging. It must be exhausting. But we’re relying on the recording and the reporting. All significant. Truck drivers delivering essentials to keep us alive and fed and cleaned and medicated, but also delivering the inessentials that keep us sane and human and feeling like it is still a life worth having: think books, flowers, chocolate, coffee, paint, magazines, printer ink, paper, the world would keep turning if we had to do without these for a few weeks, but also…we feel better for having them, and in buying them, having them transported keeps a little of the economy working, a little money flowing, neither of which are little things to the people at the far end of that chain.
But then also…that is just work. I don’t mean to down-play it by any stretch, but behind each of those roles is a person. That person has significance in other ways. As do all the other people who may not feel at this time that they are contributing because they have been furloughed or laid off or simply cannot continue with the work-roles and side-hustles that gave them significance. The builder who taught T’ai Chi in the evenings. The decorator who sang in a choir. The corporate / management trainer whose clients have all shut up shop.
Some of these things can be taken online: a T’ai chi class can be videoed. The choir can Zoom their song. But the more hands-on, need to be in the room stuff is harder. With imagination and creativity who knows what alternatives people will find…but I think one thing we should all remember is that our “significance” is rarely totally dependent upon one thing. We are not our jobs. We are not our products or our titles. Our significance is not only, or indeed necessarily, tied up in the ‘big’ things we do.
We signify also, maybe more so, in the little things.
Significance is an ethereal thing…a fairy-dust thing…a will o’ the wisp thing. It escapes and strays away from us. We signify, we have value, in ways we often pay no attention to: as fathers, mothers, friends, neighbours, colleagues, cyber-buddies, writers, poets, coaches, counsellors, encouragers, smile-makers, game-players, photographers, home-cooks, brothers, sisters, aunts, cousins, uncles, nieces. People.
Significance isn’t about scale. It’s about impact. And that impact is something we often will not see. It might be years down the line that someone remembers something we did or said and it changes how they think or what they do next. A smile can save a life. A word can change a life. A thought can change the world.
And we may never know.
So how then can we feel significant, if we don’t get the feedback?
One way is to look at what we choose to do. Moment to moment we choose what we do. If we align what we do with what we think is important, then the overriding odds are that what we do will be significant. It will be a pebble dropped in the ocean, but ripples grow and spread. If we choose our pebbles carefully, intentionally, and keep on choosing them and keep on dropping them we will create effects, we will signify, we will have value and be valued.
If we are lucky, we will be told and if we listen, we will know. In the absence of that we can choose to trust that it is so.
Look at what you do, consider how it has significance. Every time someone thanks you. You have made a difference. Every time someone returns a smile or a greeting (across the requisite social distance) you have made a difference. Every time you share an idea and someone picks it up and runs with it (thanks Mike!) you have made a difference.
Part of finding our significance, feeling to be of value, involves being open to accepting that what we do matters. That might sound like an odd thing to say, but we are often too quick to brush away the compliment, down-play the part we play.
I am big on gratitude. It is a core value and I have so much to be grateful for, and yet it is only very recently that I have started to think about being someone for whom or to whom others are grateful. Woah! That was curve ball. I have spent much of my life brushing off the thanks it was nothing, it was easy, it was… No. Don’t do it. How easy or difficult we find something to do or to deliver is completely unrelated to how much value or significance it has.
Every time someone thanks you, be grateful. Because what they are doing is pointing out one of the ways in which you are significant. And that is something we all need to be and to feel.
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I came into writing on these topics via Mike Blissett asking in one of his videos* what we were doing during this period in which life has been turned upside-down, inside-out and stretched and constrained every which way but loose, in order to meet the 6 human needs identified by Anthony Robbins. So, how am I meeting my own need for significance?
I am continuing to do as much as possible of the things that fed that need pre-Covid-19, but the one thing I started to do as we headed into lock-down was to start sending a frequent email to those people on my contact list who I thought would “get it”. I stole the 3 – 2 – 1 idea from James Clear and converted it into 3 things I’m grateful for, 2 things I achieved, 1 plan for tomorrow. It was (is) a simple little way of sharing the good stuff. When people come back with their own 3-2-1s, I share some of those around (suitably anonymously).
I know that this helps. I know that things that make me smile, make others smile. I know that we don’t always realise that hey, yeah, me too…I am also grateful for that. I know that we live in different places and sharing the beauty we have access to and others don’t right now is also welcomed.
The underlying principle of this exercise (other than helping me feel like I’m doing something) is that it is often the very small things that we are grateful for. We attach significance to the details of our lives: the post arriving, the sun rising, the meal, the phone-call, hair-dye, a play, a plant, a cup of coffee…as well as the big things. That being so: maybe it is also the small things we do – make the coffee or the call, send a message, be silly, share that sky, let a weed grow to feed a bee – maybe it is in those things that we can find our own significance.
When we are feeling insignificant, maybe we’re not finding our personal value (which we all have) because we’re looking for it in the wrong place.
