Fancy clothes, lavish dinners, mansions, luxury goods, executive titles, team headcounts, birthday gifts and wishes — all these things can help us feel special. They stroke the ego and remind us that we matter.
But it’s a shallow and costly way to get a short-term ego boost. A more grounded and lasting approach is to teach ourselves — and others — that no matter who we become, we are still a tiny part of a much bigger picture.
Perhaps it’s wiser to stop spending so much time and energy trying to look good for a moment. Instead, we can learn to uplift others by genuinely seeing and appreciating their real strengths.
