Your inherent value
Every single human, you included, needs:
To have their experience validated.
People in their life who can reflect back to them a version of themselves that feels true.
This is one of many core human needs we carry.
A challenge arises when you place too much emphasis on the value others assign to who you are and what you contribute.
I’m coaching a woman on a startup’s leadership team right now. She’s consumed by others’ explicit or inferred value assessment of her. And she's in a situation where they are actually assessing her value — she’s being evaluated for her ability to earn a higher title. They’ve been clear about that. It's a painful experience.
Part of my job as her coach is to help her see more than what she can see in any moment. When she lets others’ assessments of her be the whole story, she misses out on a much larger picture.
You derive value from:
The value you place on your contribution.
The evaluation of that value by people in your world.
Your value as a human being.
My client has tunnel vision into the middle part: how the people in her world value her work. Many women we work with suffer from this same pain.
The downside of emphasizing others’ value assessments is that you enter a game of contorting yourself with the goal of someone assigning you value.
You let others own the entire narrative on what’s valuable about you.
The value in your own contribution
When we bring groups together to talk about letting your work speak for itself, we remind them of that first bucket: the value you place on what you do. When you can’t see your value, no one can.
Leaders are responsible for their world. Part of this responsibility is identifying what will create the most value or impact. Leaders must develop that internal perspective and invest their resources accordingly. Visionary leaders often have to hold that value long before the world validates it.
The value in your humanity
The last bucket — your value as a human being — is not earned. It’s inherent within you when you enter the world. At times it’ll feel like the world's determined to create doubt about your inherent value. I wish that weren’t true.
Building a practice to see the value of who you are, not just what you do, is liberating. I purposefully use the word practice because recognizing your value isn’t something you can do only once. It's something you must do over and over again. Because the world is noisy.
Call for reflection:
What part of your value is easy for you to see? What part is harder to give your attention to? What will support you in seeing more of your value than you do in this moment?
Shine On,
Alicia