#105: A Mindset to Know that You Matter
This is episode number 105, A mindset to know that you matter. This is the mindset for life podcast. This is Bethanie, your coach from Dr. B coach.com. Coaching with power, purpose and practical tools, to help you show up with confidence.
Welcome to the Mindset for Life podcast, I’m very excited to share with you today the topic, which is about how much you matter. This is about a mindset for knowing that you matter. And how can you do this? That’s pretty crazy, right? Because don’t other people help us to know that we matter or make an impact or make a difference in the world?
I’m going to challenge that notion today. In fact, I think it’s our job to decide that we matter and to know that we matter. It’s not other people’s job to tell us or to convince us of how much we matter. And when we decide that we matter as much as other people, we can show up more authentically and better than we ever could before.
So today we’re going to talk about how you matter and how to develop a mindset to know that you matter. We’re just going to jump right in.
We all want to be seen, known, and loved.
I was talking with someone earlier today who wanted to be seen just wanted to be noticed, acknowledged and appreciated at work. And when I was talking to this man, it was pretty obvious that he did not feel like his work made much of a difference. In fact, he wanted to know that he mattered. He started looking for other jobs a few months back and toyed with the idea of leaving his position to go to a new role. And he also kind of had his fingers in way too many situations happening in his life, because he wanted to feel like he mattered.
After we discussed it a few times, that’s what came out in the conversation. I could not have known that unless we explored it. And he didn’t realize it until he hit on an either. Really all those things he was doing were just ways to try to get some feedback, try to get some knowledge about himself.
Don’t we all do that? Sometimes, we just look for ways to know that we exist. That we belong, that we make a difference. That somebody sees us, that they care about us. It’s the greatest feeling in the whole world to be truly seen, known and loved for who you really are. And in the roles that we play, there are so many opportunities to get this kind of feedback. The question is, how can we develop it for ourselves so we’re not just people pleasing all the time, looking for affirmation and feedback?
Notice where you influence, and take note.
The first thing I’d like to suggest today is to look at all of the ways that you influence. There are so many things that you do in your daily life that influence situations, people. If you have a pet, even. You can think about the family dog. We have one.
He’s about what a year and a half old. Before that we had a dog that was 13 years old, when he finally finally passed away. They overlapped a little bit. So we still had our older dog when we got the younger dog, and with any of those animals, they cared. They wanted to follow us around the house. Sure, they thought we were going to give them treats and play with them. Yes, that’s true. But they also really just wanted to love us.
The older dog that I’m talking about was our Golden Retriever named Buddy. He was the sweetest dog ever. And he would just go under my desk when I was working and put his head on my shoe. And just love me while I was just doing my work ignoring him. He was so full of love, and he never really seemed to ask for anything. And if you’re not familiar with this, I just want to say that golden retrievers have this shape to their mouth. That sort of looks like a perpetual smile. It’s so delightful. When you look at a golden retriever you think they’re just smiling at you, even though that’s just the way their face looks. It’s the shape of their mouth. So that’s just how it is.
But if you want to know that you matter. All you have to do is look at your pet. If you have one, look at the animal that just wants to be by your side or be near you. And you can know. Now our dog that we have now that year and a half. He’s a different breed, very different type of animal.
The other evening he went out in the backyard, ran around a little bit. He likes to run really fast from one end of the yard to the other and just run, run, run. And all of a sudden, he was just standing in the middle of this semi-dark backyard, just the porch light is on. And it’s really dark outside otherwise. And he’s just looking at me from the middle of the lawn, with one of his back legs kind of hunched up in the air, and just whimpering a little bit as he’s standing there.
And he wants me to come out and check on him, I can tell because he looks like he’s a little bit injured. I think what happened was he was leaping over things in his speed and the way he likes to do, and the sprinkler box in the ground was open, I think he tripped over it, or might have slipped and got a leg stuck in there or something. Because he was fine the next day, but it was like he twisted his leg or something happened.
And he just wanted to be with me, he wanted to feel the mama love right there. And in that moment, I thought, I definitely matter to this dog at least right? I feel like I matter. But there are so many other situations. There are so many other conversations with people, business transactions, interactions, even with complete strangers, where I can look.
And I can think about how I made a difference or how I had an impact, or how I matter.
And one of the ways to capture that is to simply make a note, write it down, pay attention. By the end of the day, it’s possible that you’ve either reflected on a past situation, or thought about a current moment where you mattered. And you can capture that.
It’s our job, it’s really our job to have self confidence to feel good about ourselves to have self worth. And to know that we matter. So to do our job properly, we’ve got to pay attention and start making note. So this is one of the ideas.
Get feedback.
Another idea is to get actual feedback. You can ask those people closest to you in your life how you’ve been helpful to them, how you’ve been involved in their activities, what you’ve done that made a difference. And those people who are close to you will give you good feedback.
They will be able to say, Well, I really appreciated it when you did [whatever]. I like the way you do [whatever], you know, whatever example is going to come to their mind. My family members are awesome at giving feedback when I ask for it sometimes, it’s how I matter. But sometimes it’s also like, What you should stop doing mom, that would be awesome, too.
So so be careful. When you ask for feedback, you will get both kinds of feedback. And that is just another way of finding out how much you matter. Someone who gives you some kind of critical feedback, also is sharing the fact that you matter to them in that feedback. Because if they are noticing something that they really wish was different, it’s it’s out of love, it’s because they care. If they did not care, there would be zero feedback, it would be apathy, that’s kind of the opposite, right? So feedback is good. Slightly negative feedback might be hurtful. So we wish we didn’t get it.
But it could be also a sign of how much you matter, how you’re making an impact somewhere in some way. Feedback is the second way.
Seek spiritual guidance.
A third way to know that you matter can happen in those still quiet moments. And I’m a spiritual person, I’m a faith going person, I pursue any kind of spiritual insight I might get from my higher power. I want to know if I am pleasing him with my actions. And I want to be the kind of person that I can become. And I want to continue to develop my strengths, my abilities. And I want to whittle and hone my weaknesses and work with what I’ve got.
And I’ve got to have some kind of spiritual input to guide me for that. So this is another way to have know that I matter. It’s also a great way to know that you matter.
You can, you can pursue that through stillness and reflection, through pondering and thinking about your experiences, what you have read what you’ve thought about. And you can also pursue it through prayer, meditation, a lot of conversation with people that can talk positively and really thoughtfully about things with you in that spiritual side of things.
There are many, many ways to get spiritual insight about yourself. And I want to encourage you to pursue that your sense of who you are in includes a whole spiritual dimension, even if you’re not a religious person or a spiritual person, this idea of contributing to things that are greater than just what we can do ourselves, or mattering to the larger scheme of human beings. Those are what we call transcendent ideas, bigger ideas, and those all fall into the spiritual domain of your life.
Also purpose and direction that fits into the spiritual domain. So it’s definitely worth taking all these kinds of input and insights about yourself. And to notice, all the ways that you matter.
What gets in the way….
What we run into trouble with is when we start to think we don’t matter as much as other people, or that we matter way more than other people. If we, if we think we don’t matter as much as others, then we might go around in a perpetual state of feeling not good enough, we might actually not contribute and make a difference, we might hold back so significantly, because we think we don’t matter. Or we’re not good enough, we might even kind of fake it thinking, Well, I’m going to fake it till I become better, when really faking it is this superficial way of sort of looking good enough, but not really being who we could be or who we are.
And that is called, “need to be seen as.” So when we’re feeling like less than other people. And we want to look as good as other people, we might do things that are just not really aligned with who we are. And in those ways, the reason we don’t feel like we matter is because we’re putting ourselves in this space of being sort of fake. And that’s never a good feeling. It might pass on the short term. But long term life satisfaction is going to really dissolve from that space.
And then, of course, on the flip side, as I mentioned, we could think that we matter a whole lot more than everybody else, like maybe they’re just not smart enough to measure up. Or maybe I do so much for these people, because I matter so much more than them. I deserve things from them, they should treat me a certain way. Both of those types of mindsets are definitely going to bring you a sense of knowing you matter, and you are valuable, and yet at the expense of other people, which also takes it into this realm of fantasy or superficiality, and it’s not really real. When we’re living in this place where we put ourselves above other people, we can’t really feel that deep sense of true alignment within that gives us our self worth. It becomes little thin. And we start wondering, What do I need to do to feel like I matter?
It’s our job to know that we matter.
So the main point of today, and this episode of the podcast is to talk around these ideas of how you can have a mindset to know you matter. And the most important thing to remember from this is that it is up to you to know that you matter to observe where you make a difference, to be responsible for your impact in relationships in life. And everywhere you go.
And just start noticing and collecting that and just having that be part of what you understand about yourself. The more you do it, the more you’re going to feel confident and comfortable in any situation and engaging with other people.
And the other thing, the bonus is that when you know that you matter, you have a whole lot more to give to other people. And you can really enjoy your relationships because you’re not sitting there trying to prove yourself or measure up or get people to do stuff for you. You can just be in those relationships.
And that’s when you matter the most and have the biggest impact. Thanks for being with me today on the Mindset for Life podcast.
And of course, tomorrow’s a new day, right? And like every new day, we can start fresh. And we can right be right in the middle where we matter as much as other people in our life and we can show up and be authentic and love them and be loved as well.
Have a great week. And here’s to being the best version of you.
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New Day, performed by Danny Gokey, (P) 2021 Danny Gokey, under exclusive license to Capitol Christian Music Group, Inc., was written by Ethan Hulse, Coby Wedgeworth, and Danny Gokey. Copyright © 2019 Better Than I Found It (BMI) (adm. at CapitolCMGPublishing.com) All rights reserved. Used by permission; and EGH Music Publishing (BMI) / Be Essential Songs (BMI) / Colby Wedgeworth Music (ASCAP) / Fair Trade Music Publishing (ASCAP) / (admin at EssentialMusicPublishing.com). All rights reserved. Used by permission.
