Which one will you choose? You cannot choose both simultaneously. Love is of highest value to your Big Voice or authentic self and significance to your Little Voice or ego. If you seek one you will automatically let go of the other. It is possible to make a different choice in different areas of our life though. For example, with your kids it may be all love but at work it might be all significance. Before you make either choice you need to gain a deeper awareness about how each of these make you feel and what they look like. You may not even know your need for significance has been stealing your joy and making you create your own self-suffering.

What is Love?

Love is a deep feeling of joy and fulfillment that you get from how you see yourself and the relationships you have with others. It is surrendering to all that we cannot control and seeing what is really important. Love is about giving not receiving. It is about being intentional and kind and managing our triggers so we don’t hurt others. Love is being vulnerable and openhearted. Love is about accepting and honoring ourselves no matter where we are on the journey. Love is about putting our fears aside and jumping headfirst into the unknown all while being present in each moment. Love is being compassionate to our differences and serving others that need us. It is humble and passionate. It is peace and fulfillment without attachment.

What is Significance?

Significance is the opposite. It is about receiving not giving. It is about maintaining your own human desires not God’s. It’s about feeding your ego or Little Voice’s need for attention. Significance is about accumulating things like money, awards, or material things so we feel good about ourselves. Significance says I am better than or “more important than” other people who are different than me. Significance is an endless pit of human desire that lacks inner peace or contentment. It is attached to outcomes or certainty and will destroy others trying to gain what it wants. Significance believes it matters how others see you rather than how you make others feel. Significance says look at me and all I do. It craves affirmations and recognition. It also can manipulate you into believing that tomorrow you will be able to put love first, but that day never comes.

The Importance of Choosing

Prior to an “Unleash the Power” event with Tony Robbins, I had known I was attention seeking but believed that I was putting love first. I was deep into personal growth at this point and was working hard to grow through my old programming. As he spoke about our core needs, I realized that I was actually seeking significance through personal growth and had sacrificed my authenticity. It took me awhile to process that I had to fully let go of how others saw me. I wanted to put such a distance between who I was and who I was becoming that I was trying too hard.

I had been tricked by significance. To anyone on the outside I looked like an emotionally intelligent, grateful, and kind woman. On the inside I was obsessed with changing everything about myself I identified as wrong. Quite literally I was striving to be perfect even after I thought I had beat perfectionism. Although I pulled myself off the radar at work and quieted my social activities, deep down I came alive when people recognized how much I had grown.

After I came home from UPW, I faced the most difficult time in my life. My mom was at the end of her life and I needed to care for her in that transition. As I sat by her for days in stillness it finally sunk in that nothing except love matters at the end of our lives. No one cared about anything she had done but only how she made them feel. I realized how much time we waste in our lives focusing on the wrong things.

She could only say my name and love in the same sentence for the last three months of her life. I believe she was a human sacrifice to finally let me go of significance. Since then I see significance so clearly. My Little Voice never fails to create cravings but my Big Voice is in control. I no longer beat myself up when the thoughts of significance arise. I do have to stop and ask myself often, why am I doing this? Is it really love or has the enemy become that much sneakier?

My job and purpose create situations where I do get a lot of attention and recognition. My intention is to always remain humbly confident and I always give God the glory. I firmly believe he created us to be all love so anytime something falls outside of that, internally I know I need to be armed to fight it.

You can start choosing love today by watching what love and significance say or think and then giving yourself time to respond rather than react. Your level of joy will grow when you realize how powerful you are to change your life. I am so grateful to my mom for showing me the way. You can overcome any significance cravings you have by reminding yourself what really matters which is love.