Finding love and worth at work: how to elevate the human experience

Ever since I was a little girl, I struggled to feel worthy of love.?With a crooked pinky finger, near-sighted eyes, and near-deaf ears, physically I was certainly less than whole. ?I hoped that someday I would feel worthy of love if I just worked hard enough. Even as I grew from student to consultant to leader, with a loving husband and three beautiful children, I still felt as if feeling loved and worthy were just out of reach, especially when I showed up at work.

I first heard the phrase Elevating the Human Experience a few years ago. It sounded like an aspiration, worthy of striving toward, but somehow just out of reach. I wondered what these words could possibly mean for me, my colleagues, and the people we serve.?For some of my peers, the words were affirming and inspiring: you know you have elevated the human experience because your heart feels full when you are done.?For others, the words were reminders that our experiences at work made us feel anything but loved and worthy.

?Defining love and worth

I can hear the objection now. “Love is best left squarely in the domain of one’s personal life.”??However, love is not only romantic.?Building on a version of love the Greeks called eudaimonia, I define love as the choice to extend yourself for the purpose of your own or another’s growth. We grow people and we grow things that we care about. The outcome of this love is flourishing.?Who wouldn’t want to flourish at work?

Worth is often used to mean something or someone’s extrinsic value.?It is the sort of worth derived from something else. But it can also mean someone’s intrinsic value, just for being, before they say or do anything. My book is about love that leads to growth and worth that is intrinsic to each of us.?Elevating the Human Experience is about acknowledging intrinsic worth as a human, and nurturing growth through love. Sometimes the person we need to see as most worthy of love is ourselves. Sometimes it is another person.?Sometimes it is a group of people who have been unseen and marginalized. It is our job to deconstruct the systems that see us as unworthy, so all humans can flourish.

The Love and Worth Research

In the summer of 2020, to better understand what it means to elevate the human experience, I led a 6,000-person quantitative study on love and worth. ?Nine out of ten people surveyed agreed or strongly agreed that it matters to feel worthy, and yet five out of ten people indicated that they sometimes, often, or always struggle to feel worthy.??I call this gap between how much it matters to feel worthy and how much we struggle to feel worthy every day when we show up at work the Worthiness Gap.?We also learned that 84% of people said they do their best work when they feel worthy.?Because the experience of being human is a struggle, much more so for some than for others, it is necessary to elevate it.

I began to realize that I was not alone.?I was not the only one feeling like my messy exhausted unworthy self did not measure up at work.??We spend more time now working than any other culture and any other time in history.?I believe we can and should expect something better. ?I invite you to join me on the journey to discovering what better looks like.

Three paths to love and worth

In Elevating the Human Experience: Three Paths to Finding Love and Worth at Work, I share my personal story and the stories of others on the three paths:

• The?first path?explores the path?of the self, an inward path where we learn to love ourselves and see ourselves as worthy regardless of the daily obstacles we face at work.
• The?second path?centers around learning to love and?recognize the worth of another?in our lives. We learn how to become a better ally mirroring back to another their worth.
• The?third path?considers the?community of work. ?It explores how to overcome obstacles to love and worth in our communities, systems, and culture, especially for those who may be systematically marginalized, unseen, or unrepresented.

Whether you’ve struggled to find love and worth at work, or love and lead those who do, please join our community for updates and to learn how we can make work a place where we can all feel loved and worthy.

?This article is the first in a series sharing excerpts from my forthcoming book; please watch this page for more on elevating the human experience and finding love and worth at work.

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