Feeling Appreciated: A Guide to Your Emotions

PUBLISHED Dec 23rd, 2020 & UPDATED ON Jan 26th, 2023

Feeling appreciated feels amazingggg, right? You feel seen, like all your hard work hasn’t gone unnoticed, people love you, you love them, and you genuinely feel good about what you’ve just done. IT’S JUST A LOVE FEST! Maybe you made an awesome meal for your partner! Maybe your boss or manager said that you’re doing a fucking awesome job at work! Whatever the case is, you probably feel soooooo good right now, and we love that for you.

This positive feedback from people impacts how we view ourselves and starts impacting our sense of self at a very young age. As we get older, we start to crave and thrive off of positive feedback from the people in our lives. When we have positive feedback, our sense of self-worth skyrockets!

So, right now, you’re probably riding high on life and loving yourself. You deserve to feel this absolute loveliness!

A Deeper Look at Feeling Appreciated

It’s kind of rare for us to feel appreciated. We spend so much of our time searching for approval, so when we are given that feeling we’re searching for, UGH IT FEELS SO GOOD. But why do we even want to feel appreciated anyway?

Basically, it gives us a sense of meaning, and we all search for meaning in our lives. Not to get existential, but being appreciated makes us feel like we have a purpose in our lives. Whatever that might be for you, feeling appreciated reinforces the idea that how we’re spending our time is making a difference to other people and ourselves.

When we feel appreciated by others, we feel a deeper sense of connection with them. Positive vibes foster positive feelings and positive connection. That was just a hippie-dippy trippy way to say that we want to connect more with people who make us feel good.

And honestly, we like being liked. Think about the kind of people that you genuinely like. They might be kind, helpful, honest, caring, or respectful. When we are appreciated, it feels like we are alllll of these wonderful adjectives to someone else too. Who wouldn’t want to be seen as a wonderful human being?

We also feel more motivated when we are appreciated. If you clean your bathroom and your roommate says “Wow! It looks great! Thanks for doing that,” you’ll want to do it again. But if you clean your bathroom and your roommate goes in afterwards, messes it up, and doesn’t say anything about how clean it was or apologize for their mess, you’ll feel less motivated to clean it again in the future. We want our actions to be seen and we want to be praised and thanked for our hard work.

Show Yourself Some Appreciation Too

But it’s important that you feel appreciation towards yourself too! Love yourself a little! Maybe you live alone and the only other living being you interact with is your cat, and they can’t say “Great job on the dishes!” So, it’s important to thank yourself for all your hard work. Take a look around and appreciate what amazing things you’ve done for yourself too and what you’ve accomplished.

How Feeling Appreciated Shows Up Mentally

When you feel appreciated, there can be a bunch of other wonderful emotions that pop up in your head. It’s like your best friend brought along your other best friends to surprise you at brunch or something! They might seem like simple feelings, but they’re powerful! It feels like lovely champagne bubbles in your heart and you feel like you’re on cloud fuckin’ 9:

Happy
Loved
Seen
Valued

Who wouldn’t want to feel this way, honestly? You’ve hit the jackpot of emotions with this group of feelings right here. We think that you’re pretty lucky, to be honest, and we kind of super envy you!

How Feeling Appreciated Shows Up Physically

You might not think that being appreciated can show up in physical ways, but it can! Surpriseeee! It actually has some wonderful benefits for your body. Bet you didn’t think you’d be hearing that sentence today! But it’s totally true. Are you calling us a liar!? Just kidding, but we’ll still prove it to you. Here’s how it shows up in your body:

You feel gentle
Your body feels at ease
You feel relaxed

Okay, it may be a short list, but you can’t tell us that we’re wrong! When you feel relaxed, your body feels great. Your heart rate slows down, and you feel at ease. It’s like you’re getting a massage… kind of. But it’s even better because when you feel appreciated, you feel good about yourself too!

5 Ways to Keep Feeling Appreciated

It feels so, so good to be appreciated, doesn’t it? Well, we have some strategies for you that will also feel ahhh-mazing! Try ‘em out for yourself and keep those positive vibes rolling. It’s what you deserve, friend!

1. Journal

Write down why you feel so awesome in this particular moment. Savour it! Enjoy it! You can come back to this feeling and this time on days when you might be feeling a bit low. You can also start a gratitude journal to help you feel all the good feelings at this moment.

2. Visualize your happy place

What does your happy place look like? Is it a bookshop in a small European town? Is it a coffee shop in New York? What do you see, smell, and hear in this space? Now, add in the feeling of happiness and appreciation that you’re feeling and just enjoy it.

3. Practice gratitude

Be grateful for yourself and what you’ve done for you. You have offered so much time, energy, love, and care in your life and you should take the time to celebrate that by being grateful for what you’ve done.

4. Connect with a friend

Sometimes it’s nice to just brag to a friend who will be happy for you and want to celebrate this feeling with you! It can help reinforce that amazing feeling of loveliness that you’re experiencing.

5. Meditate

It can also be nice to sit with this feeling on your own. If you decide to mediate with it, it can be a really wonderful experience to feel that much love and pride within yourself.

How are you feeling? Still riding high on life? Amazing! We know that feeling appreciated can sometimes feel like an elusive emotion, so we are so proud of you and happy that you feel this way today. We also hope that you feel just as amazing tomorrow and every day after that!