How Is Your Self Worth?

I recently got a very good lesson in my own self worth.  It all started with my needing a bag so that I could take my laptop, notebook, etc from place to place, to meetings and just generally when I was out and about.  I had been looking for one for some months but had been unable to settle on one.

So Sian (my wife) bought me a bag in the sales for my birthday.  On the day, she told me that both Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise had one of these bags and that the pre-sale price was £250, this was before I had even opened it.

My first thought was to return the bag, this was not the bag for me; it was far too pretentious, it was the wrong size, it was the wrong shape, the wrong material.  In other words I had decided I wasn’t going to like the bag before I had seen it out of the wrapping.  Where is the sense or logic in this?  Sian was really upset, and rightly so, I had practically said that her choice of present was no good.

While I went about my mornings business I reflected on my reaction to Sian’s gift, why had I reacted like that?  It wasn’t that I was worried that we didn’t have the money and I would have quite happily have spent double the pre-sale amount on a bag for Sian.

Slowly it dawned on me that the problem was more basic than that.  Somewhere in my past, my self-esteem had hit rock bottom, and my reaction to the bag was just a defense mechanism as I came up with reasons to justify why the bag was not right for me.

Really what I was covering up was that I didn’t consider myself worth it.  A bod with a £250 quid bag, would after all, have to behave like he was worth that amount of baggage.

How or when this had come about I could not say, nor was it important for me to figure it out.  What was important was that I had identified the problem and was now able to take the necessary steps to redress the issue and get back on to a level mental playing field.

A useful lesson in understanding yourself and your worth, and ensuring that you do not sell yourself short.  Once I managed to get my head around this and get things into perspective I started to appreciate the gift and have been using it almost daily since.  You see it was the perfect bag for the job – it is canvas and waterproof; big enough for my laptop and a notebook; it doesn’t need prissy handling; it’s easy to carry over my shoulder and it’s more than presentable if I have a business meeting – and I’m not a brief case sort of bloke.

This lesson can be applied to yourself in business as well as your personal life and you may spot that this post is in the Running A Business category.  That’s because when you value yourself, and subsequently your time accordingly, you will confidently charge and be paid what you are truly worth. Look at it from a third person perspective, ask the question what is 1 hour of (your name) worth?

Image provided by Jeffwilcox