Category: Important

How Do We Show People They Matter?

It is all too easy to think that what you do in life doesn’t really matter. After all, when you are just one person out of 8 billion, that seems pretty insignificant.

Moreover, the picture gets even more narrow if we expand the scope. Reading history, there are only a few people who have shaped the course of human history. Of all the people who have ever lived, we only know the names of a precious few. Those few have led armies, made breakthroughs, or influenced millions.

But the vast majority of people just live their lives. They are content making their small contribution to the greater whole. But do their lives matter?

This raises an important point: what does it mean for a life to matter? In order for a life to have meaning, what needs to happen?

Meaning doesn’t just come from changing the world. You don’t need to be an Alexander the Great or an Albert Einstein to be important. You just need to have an impact on the people around you — your family, your friends, your coworkers, and so on.

That’s the lesson of the movie It’s a Wonderful Life, that even when you feel that your life doesn’t mean anything in the grand scheme, the world would be a different place if you didn’t exist. You can’t help but matter, because your very existence has changed the world.

So how can we convey that to others? How can we tell people around us that they mean something? Something to us, something to their community? How can we show people they matter?

Related questions: How could you show your appreciation for others more? How does your identity matter? How much power does an individual have? What gives a person value?

How Important Is Family?

Many of our holiday traditions are centered around family. But just how important are the people related to us, and how do they impact our lives?

If pop culture is to be believed, family is all important. Gathering together, exchanging gifts, eating a festive meal — that’s the image we have of the season. There are numerous songs, movies, and TV shows that make this point. Businesses even try and draw that comparison: “When you are here, you are family.”

But is that true? Of course, it is important to be supported and to be loved. That support and love, however, could just as easily come from friends or neighbors as from people who are genetically related.

In fact, who you are related to is somewhat random. Parents know that their kids can be wildly different from one another. One might be athletic, another studious and uncoordinated. One loud and outgoing, another quiet and shy. There is no guarantee that you will share traits or interests with someone who happens to be a sibling, parent, cousin, aunt or uncle.

It is difficult to deny, however, the role that our relatives play in our lives.  Our parents provide guidance and support. Siblings are often drawn close from the shared formative experiences they have.

Is that simply a remnant of our evolutionary development? Humans evolved as hunter gatherers, where a tightly-woven clan probably increased the odds of survival. Of course, what was true for our ancestors may also be true for us.

As you maybe visiting some right now or in the past week or two, ask yourself: How important is family?

Related questions: Why do we feel the need to belong? How have your parents influenced you? What does the holiday mean to you? Is your pet part of your family?

What Do You Do When Your Personal Values Conflict With Societal Values?

Choosing the values that mean something to you is an important part of establishing a personal identity. But what happens if your values conflict with society’s?

Deciding what matters to you and what values you want to live by is something that we all must do at some point. If you value, for example, curiosity and discovery, your life may be very different than if you value financial independence.

Determining your values is not an easy task, and they may very well change over time. As you age, what is important to you might evolve, and your values will also change as a result.

The same is true for a society. What a community thinks is important and what gets collective attention and resources can vary, sometimes quite drastically. This might be influenced by a wide set of variables, including prominent individuals, technological change, international events, pop culture, and so on.

For example, in the early 1950s, space exploration was not a high priority for most. Then the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, kicking off the space race. President Kennedy then challenged our ambition, saying, “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills.”

Values changed, and that dictated where our time, money, and energy was spent.

Given that both individuals and societies can have values and priorities, what happens when those two inevitably come into conflict?

The last ten or fifteen years have seen drastic changes to public values, which in turn has alienated or isolated people who disagreed with those changes. Is there a productive, healthy way to deal with that? How can an individual be true to what they believe in if all around them is the opposite?

Related questions: What are your values? How do you demonstrate your values? What is important? What makes a community?

What Keeps You Motivated?

It is one thing to get motivated to take a risk or to start something new. It is another to maintain that motivation.

It is an all too common story: you are excited to start something new.  That excitement wanes, however, as you get into mundane — but necessary — tasks. It might even ebb so low that you forego the project altogether.

As it turns out, there are two different, yet equally important, steps. One is to work up the motivation necessary to begin. The other is to remain motivated, through all the ups and downs that may follow.

Building the initial excitement is not a trivial task. But let’s assume for a moment that you can work up the necessary enthusiasm. How do you keep motivated, or at the very least, keep working despite fading energy?

Do you continually remind yourself of the end goal you are trying to achieve? Or do you enlist the help of others that you hope will motivate you? Do you try and structure the project so there are a number of accomplishments along the way that you can use as little boosts of momentum? Or perhaps you announce things publicly and hope that outside expectations will provide the necessary motivation?

What keeps you motivated, particularly when that motivation starts to wane?

Related questions: What motivates you? How do other people motivate you? Where do you get your energy? When is it useful to fail?

Bigger Fish Or Bigger Pond?

We give you the classic question: would you rather be a big fish in a little pond, or a little fish in a big pond?

Share why if you wish.

Bigger Fish Or Bigger Pond?
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