Feeling Important: A Guide to Your Emotions

PUBLISHED Mar 18th, 2021 & UPDATED ON Jan 24th, 2023

When we talk about emotions, feeling “important” isn’t usually the first thing that pops up in our heads. It’s not the first emotion that comes to mind and it’s not used to describe our mood that often when someone asks how we are.

How are you feeling today?

I’m feeling important, thanks for asking!

It just doesn’t come to us as naturally as it should! Which is a real shame because who WOULDN’T want to feel important? When we feel important, we feel seen, valued, and loved! It feels amaaaziiingggg to feel like we matter to others, but most importantly to ourselves.

Now, don’t worry. Feeling important isn’t about stroking your own ego or making yourself feel like you’re above everyone else. It’s about valuing yourself and recognizing your own self worth and strengths! It’s a really positive way to feel and we wish more people felt like it. You clearly do because you’re here at this article and we are SO happy to talk to you about why feeling important is the BEST!

A Deeper Look at Feeling Important

If you’ve taken a psych class at any point in your life, you’ve probably heard about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. If you haven’t, don’t worry! We’ll break it down.

So, back in the day, there was this guy named Maslow (duh), and he created a diagram of a 5 layered pyramid that details a human’s needs. Have a look:

Let’s talk about the top tier: self-actualization. This phrase might feel intimidating and it can seem like a lofty goal, but we promise that it’s not as bad as it sounds! You don’t have to go on a whole spiritual journey and Eat, Pray, Love your way to get to this place. This top tier can simply be interpreted as recognizing this feeling of importance when you find your purpose. Now, while self-actualization might be at the top of the pyramid, people don’t have to move through allllll the five different levels in order to get to this point. We can fluctuate between the levels in different ways at different times in our lives, so don’t get down on yourself if you think you need to need to reside at one particular level at one time. It’s not supposed to be a static model of existing. You’re only human, after all!

Humans aren’t really able to feel the emotion of importance in a vacuum – all alone. We feel important because we get feedback from others around us. When we find our purpose or feel appreciated for who we are and what we’ve done, we feel fulfilled! This is because we can get that kind of positive feedback and reinforcement from others and feel like we’re making a difference for ourselves and those around us. What a warm and fuzzy feeling!

How Feeling Important Shows Up Mentally

When we feel important, there are a lot of other awesome and lovely feelings that come along with it. You feel energized and like you’re a brand new person – ready to take on the world! Your mind is in a healthy space, you feel confident and ready to make your life the one you’ve always dreamed of. Ok, that’s a bit cheesy, but you know what we mean, right?

– Gives sense of purpose

– Confidence

– Happiness

– Self-love

– Self-worth

– Lifts your mood

Isn’t it super sweet how our mind gives us little extra feel-goods? Like, how nice is that? We feel important AND feel good about ourselves! If there was ever a deal on a bundle we wanted to take part in, we want this one!

How Feeling Important Shows Up Physically

You might not think that feeling important can show up in a physical way, but think again, friend! Because feeling important comes along with so many other beautiful emotions, these other emotions can benefit you just as much. Thankfully, feeling important isn’t an emotion that travels alone so you get allll the benefits of positive vibes in one little emotional gift basket.

– Making good decisions for your body

– Improve job performance

– Improve relationships and friendships

– Increased motivation

– Improved self care

– Increased resilience

Because you feel important, your body and mind get to reap the benefits of this awesome and validating feeling. We want to feel this way all the time! We bet you do too. Thank goodness you’re feeling like this right now. We might be getting a little bit jealous. Just kidding! But not really…

5 Ways to Embrace Feeling Important

So, how do we keep the good times rolling? We’ve got some tips and tricks to help you cultivate this feeling so that you can feel it alllll the time!

1. Practice Meditation

Meditation helps us focus on the emotion and work through it so we can process it, and then access it whenever we want. If you’re not a master meditator just yet, don’t worry! There are tons of free guided meditations that you can try. Search for meditations on confidence, self-love and self-respect, and away you go!

2. Journal

Write down how this feels. What happened that made you feel important? What other emotions are you feeling right now? This’ll help you live in the moment, and learn to access this lovely feeling whenever you need to.

3. Practice Gratitude

Foster this emotion. Think of practicing gratitude as water sprinkling over the seeds of self-love! It will help this feeling grow into a wonderful garden of warm and fuzzy feelings.

4. Engage in Compassionate Self Talk

Ok, if you REALLY want to go the extra mile and help this emotion of importance grow, be kind to yourself. You should do this anyway because you deserve kind and compassionate self-talk, but practicing this will really bring awareness to the feeling.

5. Practice Deep Breathing

Sometimes taking some nice deep breaths can help us center ourselves and understand our emotions — good or bad! It’s nice to just take a few deeeeeep breaths and really tune in to our emotions.

Alright! There you have it! We hope that this brought all the good vibes your way and intensified the ones you already had. You ARE important and you are so loved and appreciated by many people. But you obviously already knew that. We just wanted to tell you again!