“Some people go through life with [an] unerring sense of direction. . . . When we meet people like this, we say they are grounded. They know who they are and where they’re going. We feel secure around them. . . . What all of these role models have in common is an exquisite sense of who they are, which translates into perfect pitch about how they come across to others.” (Goldsmith, 2007, p. 3)
One of the best ways to recognize your worth is to have a clear understanding of how your behaviors come across to other people; your employees, colleagues, clients or friends and family. – I am just off the phone with a friend of mine. She consults with individuals and companies to help them understand who they are, what they do, and how to take this understanding into their personal and professional lives. I consistently find that when I am speaking with her, I clearly recognize myself as she formulates and expresses how she perceives me and my work. She becomes a mirror and steadies our connection so that I can see myself in her understanding of me. I recognize the value, not so much because I see and accept myself, but because of how she expresses her experience of how she perceives me.
This relationally activated recognition of self and worth, refreshes and supports my experience to such a degree that I literally recover a deeper – felt sense of who I am and of how I am being perceived. It is as though my “worth” is market driven; it is based on how value is determined by those who are invested in having a relationship with me.
Recognition of self and worth becomes the currency with which we learn to more deeply value who we are. And it has value to the degree that we value our relationships with one another. Take a look at one of your relationships today and greet with curiosity that person you are as perceived by that person you are with.
Ref: Goldsmith, Marshall. 2007. What got you here won’t get you there. New York: Hyperion
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Isn’t accepting someone else’s perception of you a dangerous place to derive one’s self worth? I smell the faint odor of people pleasing as well as a hint of narcissism- filling an empty shell with someone else’s energy? If worth is market driven we are all in trouble. Shouldn’t worth come from that piece of us that simply knows we come from something great – therefore we are worthy? And, connecting with that “higher self” through prayer and meditation. If it comes from someone else’s mirror, then it is just an opinion and that opinion can change. Your philosophy of finding my worth in the eyes of others is exactly what I have been focusing on eliminating from my life. Finding my worth through ego never will fill me.
Hi Rebecca,
I think you have a really good point. I do come back to a relational exchange in which what we know to be true is revealed. Whether this is our self, the other, or that third thing, a subtle body, that exists because of how consciously we connect. – Tim