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What people really want, and it’s not what you might think
Money? Power? Fame? Love?
All good guesses, but that’s not what the studies say.
What people really want is to feel like they matter.
That’s what’s behind the craving for power, money, fame and love; wanting to feel important.
Unfortunately, most of us don’t realize the kind of importance that would really satisfy us. We get closer to grasping it when we hear of famous rich people who are depressed, addicted or suicidal and explain it by saying that they had no real relationships or nothing deep to live for.
It seems like we have to feel important under the right conditions.
We need to be recognized, yes, but if we’re recognized for a role we play or a front we present to the world, it will feel somewhat empty. We need to be “Seen” with a capital S, meaning we need to feel that people like the real us.
Makes sense, otherwise it’s not really us who’s being recognized, but a character we’ve created.
And by the way, since humans are such social beings, nothing makes us feel as safe as feeling accepted, liked, and recognized as valuable.
There’s another condition to feeling the right kind of “importance”: we need to believe that we have made a contribution to something that we care about. Otherwise any external recognition that we get will feel like a fraud.
We may say that people are valuable for the kind of person they are and not for what they do, but we humans are problem solving achieving beings. Even a contemplative monk who spends all his time meditating is making a contribution through the direction of his thoughts while appearing to be doing nothing.
So what we all want is to feel like we matter both for what we do and who we are. Contribution and recognition.
I’ll end this post with a quote from “The Secret Code of Success” by Noah St. John, one of the most lucid, practical books I’ve read in a long time (and I’m only half-way through it): “…everyone of us is wearing an invisible sign that says, “Please make me feel important.”"
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Hi Helene,
Really good article. Everyone wants to feel important and recognized for their contribution. I agree with your assessment of Noah St. John’s book. It’s new stuff and makes it easier to attain our goals than affirmations do.
Thanks for your help,
Kathryn Merrow