Knowing Your Value
You are likely far more valuable than you give yourself credit for. Your worth is not solely based on your physical appearance, your salary, or your past accomplishments. Your worth far exceeds any social worth others have attributed to you. And, let’s just get this out of the way: nobody else has the power to determine your worth, but instead, it’s something that you define. Here are a few tips for ensuring you know your value and you don’t let devaluing yourself stand in your way.
If you don’t believe in yourself, nobody else will. The first step is to put adequate weight in your accomplishments and skills and truly believe you are as valuable as you are. This includes avoiding self-deprecating talking, beefing up your resume to truly represent what you’ve accomplished, and not downplaying everything you have to offer. Before you ask anything of anyone else, you have to know your own value and you have to truly believe in it.
Do your research. Particularly when it comes to money, look it up and get specific. What’s your market value? Utilize resources such as Glassdoor to see how those in similar roles, companies, and regions are being valued and how you compare. Free tools such as Payscale can help you with this, tailoring your research to your experience, skills, and strengths more closely.
Soft skills count, by the way. We often value ourselves as if it’s a checklist of haves or have nots. It’s time to leave that in the dust and remember that value can be actualized and interpreted in many ways. Skills that don’t directly apply to your current professional role, count. All of those little things that aren’t necessarily listed on the job description, but contribute to your performance and success – those all count.
Set goals outside of work. We often default to putting weight into our professional lives and attribute all of our value to that. Consider setting goals for yourself outside of your 9-5 in order to build your value more holistically and to feel more valuable by doing something you’re passionate about.
Look at your accomplishments from someone else’s point of view. We often don’t look at our own successes as clearly as others do. We’re too close to it. We know all of the hoops we had to jump through to get there, the unexpected hurdles that we had to overcome, and the imperfections in the final result, and all of those things tend to outshine the positives when we look back at our own work, while others look at it more objectively and more simply.
When you know your value, you’re better prepared to increase that value. Think about how you can become more valuable. Whether that means learning a new skill, teaming up with someone, further growing a strength you already have, or filling in your own gaps, you always have the opportunity to ramp up your value. Value is fluid and it’s in your control. It’s an ever-changing formula and there is no one answer.
Your value isn’t a number or a dollar amount. It isn’t dependent on others and it isn’t something somebody else assigns to you. Know your value in whatever context you’re considering, and leverage that to move towards your goals, and as always, whatever you do, don’t sell yourself short.