Being Present as a Leader
May 17, 2021
Why Gratitude Is So Important To Success
May 31, 2021
I always have this idea of success – I’ve got this picture of myself being kind of a Tony Robbins type dude being really well known and I think we all have this picture of ourselves being more successful, a perfect version of ourselves.
What about you? What’s the image of your being significant in your mind?
I think if we carry that around without having a realistic understanding of what significance is and how it drives us, it can make us unhappy. But If we have a realistic version it can help with motivation. All we want is to improve motivation, direction and hunger. What we don’t want is to compare ourselves to others which can undermine our happiness .
6 Human Needs
- Significance
- Feeling important
- Seek recognition
- Positive / Negative expression
- Certainty
- Being Loved/Connection
- Uncertainty
- Growth
- Contribution
Tony Robbins talks about six core human needs and what is important to you.
He also says that everyone has elements of all of these, so if we think about significance, the idea of feeling important, seeking recognition. The interesting thing he says is that it can have a positive and negative expression for many people.
On the positive side it can help us be the best version of ourselves and drive us, on the negative side we can stand out and we, can seek significance through destructive behaviours. Like “ I’m the biggest drinker in the room”. “I take the most drugs”. “I’m in a terrible relationship”, so we stand out because of those destructive behaviours.
So the first thing to recognise is that with significance we want it to encourage growth and development and the best version of ourselves.
It’s also important to recognise that significance is best individually defined.
So I think about the significant moments in my life. Not all of them have been the big moments, the moments where I’m up in front of the crowd or I’m with a group of people, some have but not all. They’re mostly the small things that have happened where I’ve made an impact. The moments with my children, the moment with my wife, the moment with my friends, the moment in the community where I’m able to do something that made a difference. And I think if you think about it that way, significance isn’t actually always about what you do, but how you do it.
It doesn’t matter what you do – being a cleaner, whether you’re in customer service. You don’t have to have a big job to make a difference to be significant. It’s about how you do the job and often you can make a real impact doing small things. We need to remember that I think our idea of significance is the Rockstar idea but also understand that what significance is not always rock stars, it’s defined by you.
What We’ve Learned about Significance So Far…
- It’s one of the basic human needs. It’s about feeling important and feeling recognised, but we want to make sure that we express that in the positive way not a destructive way
- it is defined by you, and it can be the small moments.
- Third idea is about perfectionism.
Perfectionism and Comparison – The shadow of Significance
Comparison – The gap between my perception of my own significance and others.
This has been accelerated by social media up until 6 to 8 years ago, every single day we don’t have any idea what other people did and what they are doing. Now we have pictures of them – who they really are and what they are doing, and I think there’s a lot of data to compare ourselves to others. I’m guilty of this, I’m wondering if you’re guilty about it.
If we keep thinking about this gap and what we don’t have, it can make us happy or it can make us seriously unhappy, it’s a rocky slope to depression and anxiety. The antidote to this is gratitude, which I’ll discuss next week.
Significant – How to do it
If you think about the fact that there’s really two questions, the first question is probably around you. You’ve got to first understand who you are and what you’re good at. If you’re not sure about that you just observe – When you make people happy? When do you most make an impact on others?
From that perspective, what are the things that you do where you created that biggest impact? There’s kind of an awareness piece around me and us, and on the other side of that there’s the awareness piece around who we want to serve. There is a premise here that I think significance and happiness comes through contribution, through giving to others as opposed to focusing on yourself.
You may or may not agree, but I think that service and giving and making a contribution to the world is a much better positive expression of significance than selfish and destructive behavior.
Leave me a comment or Get in Touch
Hope that’s been useful for you. If you want to talk about your team. Send me a message or leave me a comment down below.
Talk to you soon.
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