I Feel Important

I had an experience recently in which someone gave me something that made me change my mind about myself.

This person, in a longer than usual conversation, did three specific things that, when taken together made me reconsider my opinion of myself.

At the end of it all, my big revelation was that I felt important.  Yes.  That's it.  I felt important.  This feeling of importance was anchored not in role I play or a position I hold or anything I said or did. Rather it is a feeling of inherent important.

At the bottom of what happened to me was that at some point, I came to understand that my underlying "big assumption" about myself was that I considered myself to be inherently unimportant. I also realized that this assumption was inherently bullsh!t.

This sudden self-awareness of my own inherent importance didn't come to me from a third party.  It came from me. There was a third party that acted as a catalyst, but "I felt important" is very, very different from "so-and-so made me feel important". I am also pretty sure there was no conscious intention on the part of the third party to act in this role.

I can see how saying something like "I felt important" can sound narcissistic, especially in this age of rampant individualism. How about if I were to phrase it this way: "I realized I wasn't unimportant." Does that calm the bristle of self-praise enough? I think actually that "not unimportant" might actually be closer to what I actually felt.

The colors and smells and flavors of my time are different now.

I wish the same for you.