The Feeling of Importance

Paraphrasing Freud, underneath all things in humanity is the desire to be great.

Harking back to the days as a budding software developer, there was no greater feeling in connecting an API successfully, getting the business logic problem I was working on to run, or seeing the green of passing unit tests. With this came praise (i.e. the feeling of importance). This feeling was fleeting, as hits of dopamine go, and soon enough you're seeking the next.

If you consider humanity's greatest triumphs-- the pyramids, landing on the moon, etc., humanity's importance is derived from pursuing a goal bigger than ourselves. The goal is what makes the news, but the completion of the journey itself holds the greatest satisfaction. True satisfaction never comes from praise, although admittedly there were likely thousands of encouraging words that propelled such a gargantuan task such as landing on the moon to success.

NOTE: Is this a pivot? Leadership wasn't brought up previously. Leaders must understand two things:

1. To lead others, one must convince others in their own desire to want to accomplish a task.
2. Be quick to encourage and hesitant to condemn.

Being a leader is finding importance and evangelizing the greater goal at hand. Praise will never be remembered, but the broader journey will be.