As long as I can remember, I’ve had a sense of being at odds with a world that seems to define success as dominating as much space, making as big of a splash, and putting yourself “out there” as doggedly as possible. “We all have something to contribute,” cheer today’s motivational messengers. “To withhold your own contribution is a disservice to the world!” they say. “The world needs you. The world needs you to share your stories, your services, your expertise!”

To which I say, “No. It doesn’t.”

I don’t buy the foregone conclusion that “the world” needs me, nor do I have a need to conquer any part of the world with the sheer force of my own ambition. Some of this perspective is driven by a part of me that is content with simple pleasures and truly has no interest whatsoever in world domination.

But some of the credit also goes to a part of me called “Special,” a part that paradoxically does wants to celebrate and reinforce what makes me uniquely me, or you uniquely you. Through my own work with Inner Team Dialogue, the same parts-based approach I sometimes use with my clients, I’ve become aware of just how formative this part has been in my life.

I can’t really remember a time before Special was there—not because I was told I was “special,” but because I felt the impossibility of trying to be like everyone else. When I was a child, my Special part helped protect me from the hurt of not really fitting in by helping me see the qualities that made me different as qualities that made me “special.” In my teenage and college years, its pep talks assured me (however naively) that I didn’t have to be afraid of being seen as either “just another” or “the only” Chinese-American face, which somehow often felt like the only two options. In my adulthood, it continued to help me reframe the persistent feeling of being more an outsider than an insider, while also buffering me from the exhaustion of experiencing a world that often seems too full of noise, carelessness, and harm.

But in its defiant rejection of everything that is like anything else, Special comes with a price. It would have me believe that if I am not making something completely unique to me, I am only adding to the proliferation of noise and confusion. If I am not coming up with or doing utterly extraordinary things, I am only piling on to the pointless mundanity of so many human endeavors—including that of being a “coach,” which, honestly, Special feels is kind of a cliché at this point, given how many thousands of coaches are born on LinkedIn every day. (Special does have a pretty strong confirmation bias.)

Special would have me spin only gold, or else throw the entire spindle away and never bother with it again. It’s a little relentless that way, and not surprisingly, Inner Critic is its stout (and biting) sidekick. But Special is really just trying its best to free me from that pesky need to seek or acquire external validation. It knows that honest validation can be hard to recognize and hard to come by. Instead, it asks rhetorically, If you know in your own heart that you are or have done something special, who cares whether anyone else knows or sees or understands it?

To which I say, isn’t it beautiful and ironic that Special is only doing its best to paper over the vulnerable, beating heart that has the most ordinary and universal of wants: to be known, seen, and understood?

However Special shows up for you, I bet it’s trying its darnedest to do the same.

If so, I would ask you the same thing I ask myself: What would I be more free to do or feel, if I didn’t have to be so special?