Flipping the Important Coin

Flipping the Important Coin

How do you know that you matter? Are there people in your life you tell you? Do you see it on the news? Do you work hard to be important? Do you work extra hard at your job, at home, volunteering?

Or is it that you know you are useless. Why bother? Do you know that you don’t make a difference? That no one would notice if you dropped off the face of the earth?

Perhaps you feel somewhere in between the two.

They are both just feelings. And those feelings motivate us to do different things. How strange is that; the thoughts in our heads, the feelings in our bodies, motivate us to do stuff. Sometimes they motivate us to do amazing and wonderful things, and sometimes they motivate us to do stuff that hurts us, or even hurts others. Dang. That’s some powerful thinking!

When we are trying to prove that we are important, interesting things happen. One of them is that we get so focused on being important, or on trying to feel like we matter, that we lose track of our own well being. Or we get ourselves so busy that we just fly from one activity to the next, no down time, no time for self reflection, no time for relaxing, no sense of gratitude. Or we end up stomping on people without even knowing we are doing it; ordering people to do stuff, discounting their efforts, or taking credit for their work.

When we are trying to prove that we are useless, interesting things happen. We get so focused on being useless, on proving that we don’t count, that we lose track of our own well being. We don’t notice that we are often taking advantage of others, we hardly ever feel grateful or appreciate what others do for us, we discount favors they do for us, we don’t repay kindnesses, we don’t offer assistance. We end up stomping on people without even knowing we are doing it.

Well, what the heck; did you notice what happened there? When we try to feel like we matter by working hard to be important, when we deny that we matter and choose to feel useless, both thinkings give us similar results. And a resolution is build into those results, namely, slowing down enough to smell the roses. Or whatever smell you like. Taking time to feel gratitude and appreciation will help us get back to our natural life, where we are naturally important.

How do I know that I matter? Why do I appreciate help? How do I feel appreciated?

When we remember that our feelings motivate our actions, and that our feelings come from our thoughts, and we think as we choose, we can make amazing changes in our lives.

When I was trying to prove that I mattered because I felt worthless, I worked hard to make myself indispensable. I encouraged people to take advantage, then felt angry at them. I did favors, not from the joy of helping, but to ingratiate, and then felt annoyed that I wasn’t appreciated. Heh. What a setup.

By relaxing into my natural life, I know I matter because I am an expression of the divine, or universal oneness, or whatever you wanna call it. To paraphrase Descartes, “I matter because I am.”

How have I changed from trying to prove myself, to living my best life?