The 6 Human Needs - Part 3/6
Part 3 - The third of the 6 human needs – the need for Significance.
Deep down we all need to feel important, unique, and special. We want our life and our work to have meaning, importance, and significance.
Our impact on the world and the people that live in it is reflected back to us through our actions and interactions, and these reflections help us measure our significance. We all want to be of consequence somehow, and we’ll go to great pains to make ourselves feel significant.
There are two ways to feel significant: productive means and destructive means.
When we use productive means to meet this need, it calls us to stand up for what we believe in, what we accomplish and for the value that we bring to the world we live in. We all want to count for something, whether that’s within our family, in the work we do, or in society at large.
Feeling significant through productive means entails trying to stand out for your accomplishments, such as being recognised at work for doing an incredible job or feeling special in the eyes of your partner for your valuable contributions to the relationship.
Significance can be attained by becoming a high achiever or by having many people report to us as it makes us feel important, special, and wanted.
We all seek to satisfy feeling effective and our relationships (both at home and at work) suffer when we fail to meet this need. Mostly, this need is for each of us to individually satisfy, and the problem arises when we ask others to satisfy it for us.
When we KNOW, we are working to our greatest potential, contributing everything we can in a way that makes us feel joyful, then we feel secure in our value. When we are uncertain or somehow prevented from contributing fully, then we doubt our value and look to others to reaffirm it for us. This is where some of the less positive ways of asserting our significance come in.
Resourceful behaviours: Leader of self and others, volunteer work, speaking up (assertiveness), achieving goals, mastery in their field of endeavour.
This may also show up as being overly competitive and performance driven.
If you’re unsure of how to feel significant, you might go about it in destructive ways. You resort to self-sabotaging methods that present themselves in the form of reckless behaviour because you know it will get you attention, and you’re unsure how to receive praise for doing something positive.
When we fail to assert and measure our significance / value / importance in healthy ways that allow us to fully contribute and be appreciated for that contribution, we find fewer positive ways to fulfil this need. We may create noise, discomfort, or disorganisation for others in our plea to be acknowledged.
We may stand our ground in the middle of a business day over the simplest of steps in a process – defending our right to do it a certain way or emphasising the time and energy needed for us to contribute what is required of us. We may withhold information that stops someone else being able to do their job – all in an attempt to satisfy our unmet and unrecognised need for significance.
If you lean toward destructive means as you seek significance, it’s time to examine what you’re doing. Many people find ways to be significant by creating significant problems.
The unmet need for significance is where the bullies hang out – whether in the playground, on the sports field, or in our adult versions of life. We have a subconscious need to fit into the tribe, and if we can’t lead it, then we’ll undermine it. At its extremes, the subconscious need for significance can result in self-harm, or emotional or physical harm to others.
In less extreme measures, this need accounts for the majority of tattoos, unconventional dress codes and off-the-wall character traits. Sometimes, we feel significant just by creating significant problems.
Unresourceful behaviours: Putting others down, promiscuity, gossip, victimhood, martyrdom, lying in a way that gets them caught, rebellion.
We are all significant, evidenced only by the fact that we’re here. My beliefs tell me that we’re all uniquely wonderful – powerful even – and that we’re built for a unique purpose. We are significant to the greater plan. So is that person who irritates the hell out of you. It’s exquisitely easy to make someone feel significant – sometimes all it takes is a smile.
If you want to learn to express your need for significance in ways that serve you and others, reach out, we can help.
We’re now halfway through our series on the 6 Core Human Needs and I hope you’ve been able to use information to examine your own needs, as well as looking at how these needs show up in other people. Meeting these 6 Core Needs is at the heart of every decision we make, and the undesirable behaviour we see in ourselves, and others is a result of these needs being unmet. So far, we’ve addressed the first three:
Certainty
Uncertainty/Variety
Significance
The fourth need is the need for Love & Connection…coming SOON