Significance

The following
is based on an essay by Denny Howe at the University of Pennsylvania.

Our core values
give us personal focus, strength, resilience, and meaning when the outside
world doesn’t always give us what we think we need or want. One of the
challenges in maintaining behavior consistent with our core values is the perception
of significance. How significant something becomes is directly proportional to
the amount of emotional energy we give it.

When you feel
balanced and secure, more aligned with your core values, you naturally respond
in a more balanced and appropriate way. But, when you are operating at a mental
or emotional deficit, your actions and reactions to people and events can
easily become magnified, distorted and misguided.

This can cause
you to continue to replay events, second guess your decisions, and work
yourself into greater emotional turmoil. This is emotionally exhausting and
it’s unproductive. All because of the extra significance you’ve given it, not
necessarily founded on the reality of the event or situation.

The issue at
hand may indeed be important, but stop and sincerely ask yourself is the
emotional energy investment worth the drain? From a balanced, heart-driven
perspective we can choose more easily how much/little of our own energy to give
to each daily event.

Consider two
things:

  • If you over-invest in something or make a big
    deal out of it, you expend costly amounts of your precious energy and
    leave yourself drained and victimized by your own emotion. It is no
    coincidence that people who do well long-term, and can handle pressure
    effectively, are often more even keeled, and are efficient in assigning
    significance to a thing, person, or event. They don’t make everything
    momentous. We can all learn to take the significance out of things that
    don’t need it so we save our emotional energy for the things that really
    do require it. Taking significance out of situations is a major force for
    building sustainable energy reserves.

  • There is a fine line between an attitude of
    irresponsibility or simply brushing things off as opposed to intelligently
    constraining the significance of life’s tricky events. This kind of
    discrimination is intuitive intelligence in action; to know how much of
    your emotional energy to give or not to give to something.

    • As
    you go forward, especially in situations where you feel your energies being
    drained or challenged, take the time to apply the tools of emotional intelligence
    and ask your heart for a balanced look and evaluate how significant the
    situation/event really is. When you can keep unnecessary importance to a
    minimum, you don’t get drained and you have the energy reserves to adapt, flex,
    and innovate.

    Business Accelerator, KERRI SALLS, President of Breakthrough Enterprise, LLC, works with solo-professional achievers: entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, consultants and solo professionals, providing proven systems and strategies to grow and thrive in any economy. Check out http://www.solopreneur-blueprint.com to receive 3 free reports every solopreneur needs. The Solopreneur Blueprint is a 90 day program of step-by-step assignments to start, setup, and launch your own solo business/practice.