Modern systems: one concept
Importance
Importance is Vadim Zeland’s name, in Step I of Reality Transurfing (Russian 2004, English 2008), for excess significance attached to yourself (inner importance) or to something outside you (outer importance). He makes it the cause of excess potential and tells readers to lower it; no study we found tests that, and the nearest measured effect is choking under pressure (Baumeister 1984).
The system separates inner importance (inflating yourself, or running yourself down) from outer importance (inflating an object, an event or a goal), and makes both the cause of excess potential.
In Russian. важность is the original term; English and Polish editions do not always render it the same way.
Where the idea comes from
Importance comes from chapter IV of Step I of Vadim Zeland’s Reality Transurfing. The chapter, “Равновесие” (balance), takes the forms of excess potential one section at a time and then gives importance a section of its own, “Важность”; Zeland calls it the most general type of excess potential and says the whole chapter has been variations on it. The table keeps apart what the book claims and what can be checked.
| Fact or claim | Status and evidence |
|---|---|
| Which book | Documented. Step I, Пространство вариантов (Ves, St Petersburg, 2004, 206 pages, ISBN 5-9573-0283-X); chapter IV, “Равновесие”, section “Важность”. Excerpts first went out by internet mailing list in August 2003, so the series is also dated to that year. Russian State Library record; contents on LitRes; Zeland’s site, “События и факты” |
| English edition | Documented. Reality Transurfing 1: The Space of Variations, O Books, 2008, 182 pages, ISBN 9781846941221. We could not check how the English editions word the two kinds. Open Library record |
| The two kinds | Claimed in the book; a definition, not a finding. Inner importance (внутренняя, or one’s own) is overrating your own merits or shortcomings; running yourself down is the same potential with the opposite sign. Outer importance (внешняя) is great significance attached to an object or an event. Step I, chapter IV, section “Важность” (publisher’s sample on LitRes, no page numbers) |
| What it is said to do | Claimed, not verified. It is the most general type of excess potential, which balancing forces remove by making problems for whoever created it; every unbalanced feeling, from fear to pride, is a form of it; and the higher the significance of a goal, the lower the chance of reaching it. Same section; chapter IV, summary |
| Evidence that it works | Cannot be checked as stated. The book names no observation that would show balancing forces at work. PubMed had no records for “transurfing” on 3 November 2026. PubMed |
| Nearest measured effects | Documented in psychology; different claims. Choking under pressure (1984, 2001) and backup plans that lowered performance on the main goal (2016); details below. Baumeister 1984; Beilock and Carr 2001; Shin and Milkman 2016 |
Checked on 3 November 2026, each line at its source.
How do inner and outer importance differ?
Inner importance concerns yourself and outer importance the world: in Zeland’s account the first is the sense of being an important person or of doing important work, the second great significance attached to an object or an event. The outer kind is the harder one to curb. His example is a log: walking along it on the ground is nothing, walking along the same log laid between the roofs of two tall buildings is another matter, because now it matters and you cannot talk yourself out of that. For outer importance he gives a single remedy, a safety net: a counterweight or a fallback, so that you never put everything on one side of the scales.
How does Zeland say to reduce importance?
Zeland’s instruction is to stop fighting the obstacle and lower the importance underneath it: find where you are overdoing it, name the importance and give it up. Lowering is not suppressing feelings, which he treats as consequences; what has to change is the attitude. Nor is it indifference: neglect, he writes, is importance with the opposite sign, and so is self-abasement. The rest is practical: act instead of worrying idly, and when you cannot act, turn your attention elsewhere; while acting, move attention off yourself and off the end goal onto the doing; keep a sense of humour, which he calls the one thing that creates no excess potential.
The older idea
The Hermetica have a real counterpart, with a different purpose. In Poimandres the soul, after death, climbs home by handing back a passion at each planetary sphere, ambition among them; in treatise XIII rebirth drives out twelve torments that include greed, lust and recklessness. Both treat inflated wanting as something to shed. Neither treats shedding it as a way to get the outcome: in the Hermetica it is the way to know God. A parallel, not a source. The working mechanism, on our reading: lower stakes can make the next action simpler and earlier; the check below shows whether they do for you.
What you can actually check
Your part is checkable; the balancing forces are not. Before one outcome you are gripping this week is decided, write down what you will do, what would count as a good result and what your fallback is, then compare what you did with what you wrote. How much to stake on one outcome before anyone knows how it ends is a judgement no book can make for you; rules for making it without a forecast, avoiding ruin first among them, are set out under acting under uncertainty.
Has psychology studied anything like importance?
Psychology has measured what happens to performance when an outcome matters more, and none of that research tests Zeland’s balancing forces. Roy Baumeister (1984) defined choking under pressure as doing worse when circumstances raise the importance of doing well; in his six experiments, attention to one’s own performance, competition, a cash incentive and an audience lowered results on skill tasks. Sian Beilock and Thomas Carr (2001) found choking in golf putting, which experienced players run without step-by-step attention, but not in an arithmetic task that does not run automatically, and training under self-consciousness removed it. Zeland’s log describes this kind of situation, but his advice to move attention onto the process of the action may cut against these findings, which tie choking to attention on one’s own execution.
Something close to the book’s safety net has been tested from another side. Jihae Shin and Katherine Milkman (2016) randomly asked some people to think through a backup plan; in three experiments they then did worse on their main goal, and in the third the drop ran partly through a weaker desire to reach it. The authors say the finding applies mainly to goals that depend on effort, and expect no such cost where the result turns only on luck or innate skill.
None of this is evidence for importance as the book defines it. On our reading the studies show that the weight on an outcome cuts both ways: pressure hurt well-practised skills, a weaker desire hurt effortful work.
Sources cited on this page. Zeland: Step I, chapter IV, sections “Важность” and “От борьбы к равновесию” and the chapter summary, in the publisher’s sample (IG Ves) linked in the table, with the edition records. R. F. Baumeister, “Choking under pressure”, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 46 (3), 1984, 610-620, doi:10.1037/
What it does not settle
The book gives no measure of how much importance is too much, and it counts both directions: dread followed by an easy success and carelessness followed by trouble are each read as balancing forces at work. Read afterwards, every outcome fits, so no outcome can count against the idea.
Nearby
Inner and outer intention · Excess potential
The full set, side by side: the ten concepts. Dating and pedigree: the main entry. What to do with any of it: in practice.
Fair questions
What is importance in Reality Transurfing?
Vadim Zeland’s name, in Step I of Reality Transurfing (Russian 2004, English 2008), for excess significance attached to yourself (inner importance) or to something outside you (outer importance). He calls it the most general type of excess potential: in his scheme importance is the cause and excess potential the result, which balancing forces then remove by making problems for whoever created it. As a description of what pressure does to people it overlaps with some measured findings, not all; as a claim about forces in the world it cannot be tested.
What is the difference between inner and outer importance?
Inner importance concerns yourself: overrating your own merits or shortcomings and, with the opposite sign, running yourself down. Outer importance concerns the world: great significance attached to an object or an event. Zeland finds the outer kind harder to curb and gives one remedy for it, a safety net, a fallback so that you never put everything on one side of the scales.
How do you reduce importance in Reality Transurfing?
In Step I: find where you are overdoing it, name the importance and give it up instead of fighting the obstacle; change the attitude rather than suppress the feeling; give anything that hangs on one event a fallback; act instead of worrying, and when you cannot act, turn your attention elsewhere. The part you can check is your own behaviour: write down beforehand what you will do and what your fallback is, then compare it with what you did.
Is lowering importance the same as not caring?
No, and Zeland draws the line himself: neglect is importance with the opposite sign, and so is self-abasement. Of a birth, a death or a wedding he says it is neither important to him nor a matter of indifference, and chapter IV ends on the advice to take care without worrying. Read as permission not to care, the idea becomes a way of avoiding disappointment rather than getting anywhere.
How is importance related to excess potential?
Importance is the cause in Zeland’s scheme and excess potential the result: too much importance placed on something creates the potential, which balancing forces then remove. Step I also calls importance the most general type of excess potential, and says that pendulums hook onto feelings such as fear, love, duty and guilt, which Zeland calls consequences of importance.
Sources & further reading
- The description is ours. We do not reproduce text, instructions or exercises from Vadim Zeland's books, which are in copyright.
- Dating, pedigree and the unnamed-source question: Reality Transurfing, read with care.
- How the system sits beside the law of attraction, Stoicism and a therapy with trials: compared.
- This page makes no therapeutic claim and is not advice for treating anxiety or any other condition.