#7: Everyone is valuable, make sure you feel that way too.

#7: Everyone is valuable, make sure you feel that way too.

From Guest Executive Coach Lori Lennox, Corporate Edge

In a time when people’s work is categorized as essential or...not, it may be easy to feel less valuable. One of the most fundamental of all human motives is the need for relational value, defined as the extent to which one feels valued by others. When we are feeling valued, it contributes to a state of high psychological well-being. Social psychologist Mark Leary argues that it is the root of self-esteem. As humans, we are social creatures, and in this time when we are social distancing, a dependency on reflection from others, as a measure of our well-being, is confronted, and in some ways, starved. What do we do about it?

First, we see it for what it is (a highly engrained need from others as an assessment of our value). We apply compassion and grace to ourselves and the whole disruptive experience within and without. We give ourselves a break for our challenging emotions and the tricky dance when left alone with only our humanness as company. Then, we rise to the opportunity for evolvement—the invitation to fortify parts of ourselves that have been waiting for attention. We go within. When we are hungry, we feed ourselves. This is a time to feed the parts of us once fed by others. A time to deeply value ourselves, to be the special guest at our own tables. A time to connect with our intrinsic self-worth, to become intimate with it in deep appreciation, to become our own nurturers, and steadfast attendants of the reservoirs of our well-being. A practice with enduring benefits that will dissolve aspects of our egos that once deferred to others for determination of our value. Self-worth ultimately comes from within, and people with high-self value necessarily value others. Imagine the ripple effect, then, on the other side. To fill our own holes, to come out on the other side, more whole, then how we entered in. And from that denominator of wholeness, our value to others is multiplied.