You Don’t Have to Prove Your Self-Worth to Anyone but Yourself
Don’t let other people’s expectations put you in a corner
There’s a lot of pressure put on people these days. It’s not a new phenomenon. Expectations have always come from society and family. They just shift over time.
Some examples of pressures in times past were things like men enduring extreme physical suffering as a coming of age test, or women being expected to marry into a well-off family since they weren’t allowed to earn their own money, and both sexes were pressured to marry into their own economic class and “society.”
Today’s pressures and expectations are just as numerous as ever, though somewhat mutated, except for “ When am I going to get some grandkids?” That one transcends time and culture.
There are pressures put on us at work, meeting deadlines, closing deals, meeting productivity, and the list goes on. We are surrounded by critique and evaluation.
Now, challenges and expectations can be good things. We grow when we hold ourselves accountable and work toward goals.
The problem comes when we blur the line between performance and self-worth.
Performance, productivity, and all material things are tied to things that you do and what you possess externally. Your worth as a person is rooted in your being. You have intrinsic value as a human being. How you behave will affect other people’s opinion of you, but even without any other factors, you have value.
The fundamental value of a person is the foundation of all human rights.
But we tend to measure our worth by how successful we perceive ourselves to be in our day-to-day lives and how we think others see us.
We take the approval of others as permission to think well of ourselves, and if we don’t meet their expectations, our view of our worth falls.
Prove yourself to yourself, not others — Unknown
Nothing else can increase your intrinsic value, not a job, not an expensive car, not a relationship, and nothing that you do.
If you want to work to get a corner office do it, but do it because you want it. If you’re only doing it because it’s expected of you, you’ll feel unfulfilled every day that you go in to work.
Don’t let someone limit your worth to a location or a promotion. You’re so much more than that. You just need to prove it to yourself.
If you would like to read all of my content on Medium, you can sign up through my referral page below. If you join through my link, I receive a percentage of the cost of the subscription. Thanks for reading!
