00:00

Hey there, welcome to Intentional Living with Tanya Hale. This is episode number 247, "The Value in Knowing Your Value." Welcome to your place for finding greater happiness through intentional growth, because we don't just fall into the life of our dreams...we choose to create it. This is Tanya Hale and I'm your host for Intentional Living.

00:22

Well, hey there, welcome to the podcast today. So glad to have you join me. I love today's topic. We're going to be talking about the value in knowing your own value. So one thing that I have found that is almost a universal thought process for all people that I know is the questioning of our value or our worth as a person. Often as I coach clients, so many of our struggles eventually boil down to questioning our worth. We may start coaching about something else and within one or two sessions, bam, out it comes. I just don't think I'm worth...I don't think I have worth. I'm not valuable. Right? In fact, you saw just a few weeks ago my own struggle with my worth when I was working through the thought that if I was too needy, not low maintenance enough, or easy enough that I wouldn't be loved. I was questioning my lovability, my value, and this is not uncommon for people. For some reason that I don't understand yet, this is often a default thought underneath so many of our struggles. Right? For me, it's not something that I struggle with very often. So when it comes out, I'm always like, "wow, I'm so perplexed." Like, where did that come from? I feel pretty solid on this and yet sometimes it still comes up. So as I work with people and as we question these thoughts of worthiness, almost always my clients can see how other people's worth is great, but they just don't really believe that theirs is. This is totally normal.

02:00

But let's take a closer look at the value of people in general today and then we're going to narrow it down to us and discuss why accepting our own value is so important. The first concept that is important to talk about is the inherent value of all people. We were all born with great worth and we will all die with great worth. Nothing we do or don't do impacts our worth. And this applies to every single person ever born. No person's worth is greater or less than another person's. So my husband is an OB/GYN and when he's on call he will regularly deliver 8 to 10 babies in a night. So when talking about this concept with him this last week we discussed how absurd it would be to try and line those babies up from the most valuable to the least valuable. You know, if morning time came and they were like, "okay, 8 babies last night ,let's let's determine their value." I mean, ridiculous. Like, we can't do that because each of those lives is precious and their worth is not up for discussion. Every person on the face of the earth, past, present, and future is of great worth. It doesn't matter whether that baby goes home to an extravagant home with an abundance of money or to a home that is small and cramped and struggles to make ends meet. And as that child grows, it doesn't matter whether they are raised by a nanny, by a stay-at home mom, by the next door neighbor who watches them during the day, or by older siblings. Their worth doesn't change. And as they grow and have different experiences with education and different opportunities in life, it still doesn't change their worth as a person.

03:45

I think where we sometimes get confused is that we look at people's contribution to the world. We look at their experiences in the world, and we start to equate their worth with their contribution or their experience. And though societally, this type of comparison seems to be a standard for judging people's value, it's faulty in that it sees that people's worth can be put on a scale of more and less valuable. The contribution that people make in the world is something completely different than their value. Someone's worth as a person, their value, is always equal to every other person's worth and value. What they do, how they live, how much money they make, how they treat others, whether they obey or break the law, none of that matters in a discussion of life value. So we're gonna talk at the end of the podcast more about our contributions and how they fit in with all of this. And I think you'll enjoy that conversation, but hold on a bit, because we're gonna just circle back around to this other piece. Okay, because for now, contributions don't matter a bit when talking about the worth of a soul.

04:58

So, if we can get to the point that we agree that everyone who has ever lived on this earth and whoever will live on this earth has the same value, the same worth, then we can start addressing our own questions about our worth and value. We are one of those billions of people on the earth. Our worth is not in question and never has been in question. And yet our brains, for whatever reason, love to play that card when we're struggling. You know, "well the reason you're struggling so much is because..." right? Our brains love to do that. And this is where we get to do some of that self-coaching that we talked about last week and question the thought that we're not worth it, that we don't deserve it, that we're not valuable. Right? First, we get to ask ourselves, "is that a true thought?" Nope, not a true thought. Second, "is it a helpful thought?" Nope, it's not helpful either. When a thought is neither true nor helpful, we get to redirect our thoughts to ones that will serve us much better. So even just saying, "that's not a true thought or a helpful thought," and then redirecting our thoughts to something that is more productive is a great way to start managing our minds around this and start making our brain go, "oh, maybe there is a different option to think rather than just 'I'm not valuable.'"

06:28

It's always fascinating that so many of my clients can accept that everyone in the world has the same value, but then they think that maybe I don't. They think that they're the exception, that they're the one unicorn in the whole world. Right? We want to hold on so tightly to this thought that we don't have value, this belief that we're less value than others, when there isn't any truth to it at all. This is a place of shame, a place that believes we are less-than, a one-down space. Right? And then sometimes we may believe that we are of more value than others, and there isn't any truth to this either. This is a place of pride, a place that believes we are more-than. It's a one-up space.

07:17

So here's a correlation about this recently I learned from a coaching colleague of mine, whose name is Jodi Moore. She says that, "shame and pride come from the same thought. They are on opposite ends of believing that the value of people can be put on a spectrum, that not all people have the same value. When we are in shame, believing we are not enough, that there is something wrong with us. We are believing the thought that we are not as valuable as others. When we are in pride, believing that we are better than others for some reason, we are believing the thought that we are of more value than others. Pride and shame come from the same place. The belief that some people have more value and others have less." Fascinating insight. Thank you, Jodi, for sharing that. She shared that on her podcast about a month ago.

08:14

So I want you to notice that this also comes from a place of comparison. We are trying to compare things that are exactly the same. And it makes sense because our brains want to see how we compare to others. Comparison is a protective feature of our primitive brains. It's going to happen. It's gonna come naturally. Our brain always wants to see how we stand in relation to other people so that it can make sure that we can run faster than at least one other person when the tiger is chasing us, right? Our brain thinks it's keeping us safe when it compares, but it's not. It's not a true, nor is it a helpful, thought to start comparing value with the value of others.

08:58

So here's how knowing your value can be valuable. It can help you keep from going into shame and pride. Shame and pride inevitably set us up for not showing up the way that we want to. They give us a distorted view of ourselves that inevitably places us in either a one-up or a one-down position. So we talked about the one-up one-down relationship in episode 216. This is the place in our relationships where we put one person above or below the others. And this is a really detrimental place to be in our relationships. And if you have not listened to this episode, take a quick note and check it out. Promise it will be well worth your time. That's episode 216. It's called "One-up One-down Relationships." So learning to see ourselves and others as equals rather than one-up or one-down is an incredibly beautiful place to be. This is a place where we can access greater compassion and empathy. This is a place where we can love more cleanly and deeply. Where we can learn to be more accepting of others even when our differences seem stark. When we can really believe in our hearts that all people have the same value, that no one has greater or less worth than another, it makes it easier to show up kind and loving in the world. And this is another reason why knowing our value and the value of everyone else is so powerful. Because it really empowers us to become the kind of person that I think most of us aspire to become.

10:33

Another reason I feel knowing people's value is so vital is because it allows us to be more confident. Here's how: it steps us out of the comparison trap where we gauge our own value on the perceived idea that some people have more value than others. When we are living our lives from this belief, we will inevitably have less confidence because we will always see someone else as being higher than us on our perceived value scale. And even when we're in the place of pride and are seeing ourselves as higher than others, it will always be shadowed by the thought that there has to be someone out there who is better than us. Because remember, it's on a scale. That means there's always, you know, there's a high and there's a low and everybody fits somewhere on that scale.

11:21

So here's an easy example to look at. How much money you make. So let's say you get your first job out of university and you're feeling pretty darn good about it. Okay. You compare your salary with those who graduated with you and you see that you are making more than all of them and you put yourself in a one-up place, a pride place, a place of higher value and your perceived confidence goes up. And then you get to your job and you meet your coworker who started off in the same company last year making $20,000 more than you. And your comparison brain then realizes that, "oh, I'm actually in a one down place, a place of less value," and your confidence, perceived confidence, goes down. Then you get a raise or you change jobs and you get higher pay, and then you feel confident because now you're making more money than your peers you work with. Until you find out that you're not making as much as your high school friend who has less education and experience, and then you feel less confident. Notice the vacillation here between pride and shame. Here's the thing. As long as our confidence is based on outside influences on our perceived ideas of other people's value and our value, our confidence will always be on shaky ground. And when our weaknesses finally step forward, well, not finally, they're doing it all the time, right? But when our weaknesses step forward, which they always do and always will, we will tend to base our value on how glaring they are, on how often they show up, on how many people notice them when they show up.

12:55

And we will start to put ourselves in the space of shame. And like we talked about earlier, we often confuse people's worth with their contribution. And this is so detrimental. So when I can recognize and accept that my value is set, it neither increases nor decreases based on my performance or on my salary or on where I live or what job I do, I can start to internalize the idea that my value has nothing to do either with my strengths and my weaknesses, my successes or my failures. And when I can move into a space where I can embrace my great value even in the midst of all my weaknesses and failures, that's when I can step into real confidence. Because real confidence, deep confidence, doesn't come from perceiving ourselves as better than others. It doesn't come from not having any faults or any failures. It doesn't come when no one sees or notices our weaknesses. Confidence comes from the inside when we see our faults and failures and weaknesses and we embrace them as being part of us. When we're not afraid of having them or even other people see them because we know they don't have anything to do with our value.

14:18

In fact, when we can acknowledge and accept all of us, our light and our dark, our strengths and our weaknesses, our failures and our successes, then we can truly step into real confidence. It is in this space that we are no longer afraid of this part of us. We no longer feel we have to hide parts of us for fear of rejection and judgment from others and from ourselves. In this space of complete acceptance of who we are, in recognizing that the complete package of me is of great worth, that my value has nothing to do with where I am in life or what I have contributed thus far, then I am able to show up with greater confidence. Confidence in myself, my confidence, has nothing to do with comparing myself to others and their contribution. This is a space where I can acknowledge when I have done something wrong, that I can say "I don't know" and not feel insuperior or less-than for not knowing. This is a place where I can ask a question and not feel insecure because I feel that I'm going to be judged for being stupid. This is a space where I can make a mistake and not make it mean anything about my value, about my worth as a person. When we really connect with our value as a person, a person who holds the same value as every other person on the earth, then we can also step into the confidence necessary to progress, to move forward, to be willing to fail in order to succeed and to step into our possibility. It is in our possibility that we find our ability to contribute in ways that speak to our soul and that also allow our soul to speak what we were born to say. That contribution doesn't make us better or worse than any other person. It just makes us a person who is having a different experience.

16:32

And I truly believe that God has sent us here to earth to learn from our own experience the things he needs us to learn. Our experiences have nothing to do with our worth. What they do have to do with is what God has in store for us to learn and grow from. No experience is more or less valuable than any else's experience. They just create different opportunities for growth, for learning, and for understanding. Whatever experiences we are having in life, they have nothing to do with our value and everything to do with opportunities to learn and grow. So whether you have a lot of education or little, whether you have a lot of money or not so much, whether you have a strong, amazing marriage or whether you've been divorced once or twice or three or more times or whether you've never been married, whether you have children of your own or whether you are the most amazing aunt in the world, these experiences have nothing to do with your worth and everything to do with the experiences God wants us to have so that we can learn what He wants us to learn so we can become the person that we have the possibility of becoming.

17:50

None of this means that we're being rewarded or punished. None of this means that we are better or worse than another person and it absolutely does not say anything about our worthiness. It just means we are having experiences. Sorry, it just means we're having opportunities to learn from our experiences. This is a truth that I feel has become so much more palpable to me in middle age. A truth that our experiences have primed us to understand at a deeper and an even more sacred level. And this is one more reason why I love growing up into middle age. In many ways it feels like the great equalizer, this middle age space. I get to step out of judgment and more into acceptance of both others and myself. I get to love more cleanly and more deeply than I had the capacity to even comprehend before. Middle age is the bomb. I love growing up, don't you?

19:05

My friends, if you would love some personal help from me, you can go to my website, tanyahale.com. You can click on the button that says "free consultation" and you can click on that. We can sit down for half an hour or so and talk about coaching and see if it's going to be a great fit for you. It may be, it may not be. But that's how we find out. That's how we talk about it and just see if this is going to be something that's going to work for you. It absolutely takes an investment in time, in energy, in money. But I promise you the investment to get to a place where you feel more confident, where you recognize your worth, your value, where you can love more cleanly, where you can step out of victim mode and into hero mode, where you can advocate for yourself and learn to speak your voice...it is so worth the investment. I promise you that. It is such a great, great tool, coaching is. And one-on-one coaching has some amazing advantages. So if you feel like this is a space that could really help you step more into experience in the kind of life that you really want to experience, get on my website tanyahale.com and set up a consult and let's chat. Let's talk about it and see how it works. Okay, that is going to do it for me, my friends. Thank you. Thank you for being here. I love getting to prepare this content for you every week. I feel very honored to have you here and I feel very honored to be part of your journey. Thanks. Thanks for showing up and thanks for sharing this content that can be so life-changing. If someone came to your mind today while you were listening to this, hit the "copy link" button and send it to your friend. It's such an easy way to help people to heal and help people to move forward. Okay, have an awesome awesome week and I will see you next time. Bye!

21:12

Thank you so much for joining me today. If you would love to receive some weekend motivation, be sure to sign up for my free "weekend win" Friday email: a short and quick message to help you have a better weekend and position yourself for a more productive week. Go to tanyahale.com to sign up and learn more about life coaching and how it can help you get to your best self ever. See ya!