Feeling ‘I can’ – meeting your need for recognition

If you or your young people feel low in mood and have no motivation or feel as though nobody listens, why don’t you try meeting your need for recognition to help you to feel as though you are achieving?

Achievement

It is important to feel we are achieving things, stretching, learning and growing as a person. Achievements can be everyday tasks like helping to get the dishes washed after dinner or bigger milestones like completing something you have been working on.

Three things you can do now to help with wellbeing:

1. Write yourself a list of things you would like to do, and see if you can tick them off as you go along.
2. Do something for yourself that somebody normally does for you. This can help you to feel like you have achieved something by yourself.
3. Think of things you are good at and set yourself small, achievable goals.

Status

We all need to feel valued and that our efforts and contributions are appreciated by other people. Feeling appreciated and recognised is important for our self-esteem and is connected to our sense of meaning and purpose.

Three things to do now to help bring you back to wellbeing:

1. Recognise other people’s efforts when working in groups. When you give other people recognition for things that they have done, they will be more likely to do the same for you.
2. Think about what people say you are good at, or a time they have recognised your efforts.
3. Speak to grownups in your life about things that make you feel valued, and things that you do that are helpful. Can you do more of these things?

 Meaning and Purpose

We all need to take time out for ourselves, to step away from screens and have time to reflect and process our thoughts, learn from our experiences and make sense of the world around us.

Three things to do now to help bring you back into wellbeing:

Meaning and purpose is all about having motivation or a driving force behind the things that you do. Finding meaning and purpose gives us the bigger picture of why something is important, which helps to motivate us and gives us the ability to overcome challenging things.

Three things to do now to help bring you back into wellbeing:

1. Feeling stretched and challenged by new things helps to give us meaning and purpose.
2. Being connected to a wider community with a common goal helps us to see that we are part of something bigger, such as helping to look after the environment.
3. Feeling that we are needed by others gives us lots of meaning and purpose, such as helping to feed pets or look after wildlife.

To find out more about how Suffolk Mind can help you and your young person, visit our EARLY Minds page.