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How Do You Measure Your Value?

Erin: Welcome to Hotter Than Ever, where we uncover the unconscious rules we've been following. We break those rules and we find a new path to being freer, happier, sexier, and more satisfied in the second half of our lives. I'm your host, Erin Keating. Today I want to talk about how we measure our own value. You know, we hear a lot about self love. Loving ourselves first before we can love someone else, about how we need to cultivate a love for ourselves as the foundation for everything in our lives. And that is totally true. It is totally true, and it's really important.


But love is a really complex and very subjective topic. It is very hard to define and quantify what self love, and love in general really is, what it means, how it functions, and it includes all kinds of ideas like caring and self respect and tenderness and boundaries. And really so much about how we manage to talk back to our harsh inner critic. And we have talked about that a lot on Hotter Than Ever. And it's really good stuff and super, super important. But I've been thinking a lot about women. Value and the value we provide in society and the value we ascribe to different things. Value is the regard that something is held to deserve.


Like, it's like the importance, the worth, or the usefulness of something. And then value is also part of our idea of values. Like, what are your principles or standards of behavior? What is your judgment of what is important in life? And I think our value and our values get all kinds of conflated and mixed up. So I gave some thought to what are the different ways we measure our own value? The first thing that comes to mind is material value, right? Like, we value what's in our bank accounts. That may be something that makes us feel good or bad about ourselves. Maybe it makes us feel worthy if we've accrued a bunch of money or we've put a lot in our four hundred one k. I think for a lot of us, this is something that's really important. And obviously life is really expensive, and it's important to take care of yourself financially.


But I think we judge ourselves and our own value on how much we earn and how much we have and what material things we have that reflect that. I think also those of us who have aspired to having big careers, or we have certain work goals, business goals, financial goals, lifestyle goals. I came to value this incredibly highly about myself when I was winning in corporate America, when I wasn't winning, when I was just kind of in the middle and having a career path that was satisfying and creatively fulfilling. And I was, like, making more than average money. I felt good about that. But when I started to really make money, I started to value that even more. I felt like I had beaten the odds. I started to buy things that showed that I had won in the game of life.


You know, I wanted to have all of the cash and prizes that working as hard as I did in corporate America at the level that I was working, you know, that I had earned that. And that was so much a part of my value that I perceived for myself. Maybe you don't earn that money, but you support a household where your partner has or makes a lot of money or is aspiring to do that for the two of you. I don't know how many of those households exist anymore where it's one earner and it's this conventional idea of family and earning and career and all of that stuff, but I know it still does existential. And that sometimes for the non working partner, the value that they have is based in what their partner can provide for them. Like, I have a partner who gives me this, therefore I have value. These things have value. I think what we learn in the culture that we live in is that material value is like the most important thing, the utmost important thing, what money can buy for us, what those symbols project to the wider world about who we are at our essence.


I think we overvalue the wealthy, we overvalue the billionaire class. We're never not talking about them. But how much value do you ascribe to the material parts of your life? Is that your value, what you earn? Are those your values? You know, pursue wealth, pursue prosperity. There may be good things about that. There may be less good things about that. But let's look at ourselves and ask, you know, for me, when I was pursuing that, I let that value stand in as a proxy for a whole lot of other things, and I let that value overtake my well being because I felt like, oh, my God, maybe I'll never have a chance to be worth this much materially again. How much value do you ascribe to that? I struggle with it. You know, I want to live a certain way.


I also want you to see that I live a certain way. It means something to me. I don't like that I value this. These are not my actual values. I don't actually think higher of people who have more than others. And I actually sit in judgment of those who act like this is the most important thing in our society, our media, our social media, and otherwise ascribe so much meaning to material success. Rich is good, poor is bad. But do you really believe that? I think it's something for all of us to interrogate as we head forward into this next chapter of our lives.


As women with careers, we pin our value to our titles, to roles within the companies and organizations that employ us, to our accreditations and accolades, to our degrees, our raises, our promotions. And who gets the plum assignments? If I get the good assignment, I have more value. If I get this, I am worth this. But are you worth more if you get those things? Do you actually think that you have more value? Maybe you believe that the more of those things you have, the more successful you can be, the more value you provide to the community that you are serving or the people that you are serving or the bosses that you are serving. Maybe it gives you lots of self esteem to accomplish things in that way. And that is so good. That's great. I think it's just a question of asking yourself, is this what's important to me? Is this what I value? And if I get my value from this and this goes away, I mean, focus group of one, it's where I'm coming from, right? If this goes away, do I have less value? Am I less valuable to myself? I think for women especially, there's also our physical value.


Oh, it's such a yucky thing to talk about, right? Our beauty, our bodies, our skin, our weight, our ability to attract positive attention from the people we want to be attractive to our mates. The value of being desirable. The value of being desired. This is also a complicated one. You want to look good, you want to feel good. But if this is your main value, you are probably scared that as you age, it will fade and you yourself will become less valuable. Is that true? Are you less valuable if you have a wrinkle or a bulge here and there or something drooping that used to not droop? You know, I think a lot of us experience this feeling of loss when our physical appearance and our quote unquote desirability doesn't meet the cultural standard of youth. It creates a feeling of being devalued.


And I think that's where a lot of this idea of women over 40 becoming invisible comes from. Like, without our physical beauty, we are less valuable according to the cultural rules that we live inside of. And then we all have to determine how to wrestle with this. You know, how hard do you wanna work to maintain the attributes of your younger self? How much value do you put on this inevitably losing game? I'm sure you're thinking about all of this, and you're taking different actions at different times as you get older. But let's start to think about it in the context of a conversation of what we value. And I think we're starting to see changes here, right. People who are exercising for strength because they wanna be more agile and be able to bend and squat when they're 80 instead of because they want to have washboard abs, because that's the societal standard. We're seeing a lot of women embracing their gray hair instead of, you know, fighting the battle of monthly growth.


I am not willing. I ascribe a lot of value for myself in not having gray hair. I should probably interrogate that more. But, you know, part of my journey is that I never believed that I was that beautiful or desirable when I was a younger woman. And now that I feel that way inside, I want my outsides to reflect it. So I do spend a lot of energy on my outward appearance. But it's complicated, right? I think a lot of women are finding beauty in the markers of aging that show that we have lived. You know, women who are embracing their wrinkles, and they're finding an empowerment around dressing a different way and adorning their bodies in a different way.


And maybe they're wearing louder, crazier, more wonderfully expressed clothes than they did before when they were trying to fit into a cultural norm of beauty, style, fashion, being up to the moment. I think we've all internalized a lot of these messages about our value being tied to our appearance and our desirability. I know I have. I've internalized these messages from the culture and my family and the media and the community where I live. Oh, my God, Los Angeles, please. But I see people here who aren't playing the game, and I play the game to the degree that I feel like it serves me. And sometimes I feel like it's too much, and other times I feel like it's just right. And I'm always asking myself, what are my values around this? What is important to me? Here we are constantly sitting in judgment of ourselves.


God, it makes me so emotional. We are constantly measuring ourselves against others, materially, professionally, physically, all of these external indicators of value, these culturally sanctioned and maybe somewhat suspect indicators of value. But there are other more internal indicators of value, too, that we find really easy to put on a scale and assign ourselves grades and points and, you know, decide whether we're winning or losing. We derive value from the roles we play in life. And for women, a lot of those roles are connected to being good. Am I a good daughter? Did I call my parents? Did I visit? Am I paying them back for everything they gave me? Am I engaging with their care in the appropriate ways? Am I doing right by them? Am I a good sister? Am I a good sibling? Am I a good wife or partner? Oh, my God, this is huge. When I was married, I was always working so hard to make sure that I valued myself in that role and that my partner valued me. And the way I was showing up for him as a wife in that relationship, I could never be valuable enough.


I could never win at that game. That is why I am divorced. But I aspire in the future to have a partner who I please and who finds me extremely valuable and will want to stay with me for as long as the relationship is happy. Who will want to care for me and be accountable to me and show up for me in all the ways I feel I deserve? Do you feel that you have to earn that relationship by being of value, by behaving a certain way, by doing certain things that check the boxes on the list of what makes a good wife? How about how you show up as a friend? You know, do you call enough? Do you show up enough? Do you remember birthdays? Do you have a list of rules for yourself about that, too, about what makes you valuable as a friend? How about as an employee, as a worker, as a member of your professional community? You know, are you the one who shows up early every morning and stays late? Does that give you value? Does that make you more valuable? And if you are more valuable, does that make you safer from the vagaries of the marketplace? What about as a mother? How are you judging your value as a mother? This one. Oof. This is where I think we put a ton of value. And it's great to be a good mother. But are you constantly assessing how you parent, how you're raising your kids, how much self control you have when you're upset, how you juggle the responsibilities of parenting with your own needs, how hands off or hands on you are with homework or college admissions or whatever, whether or not you can send them to certain schools or not send them to other schools, how you make a home for them, how you feed them, whether you feed them healthy food, whether you allow them to eat pizza for dinner three nights a week.


You know, we judge ourselves and assess ourselves and ascribe value to the way we are performing and delivering in all of these contexts. What your kids grades are, how they're performing in school, what colleges they get into, whether they're popular or not, whether they're doing well, whether they're struggling with something, whether they're liked and welcomed, or whether they're somewhat on the outside of the social circles. Are you judging the value of your mothering against all of those things as well? We are constantly making meaning and judgments about all of these things that add up to how much we decide we are valuable as moms. If we're dating, we might ascribe value to how many likes we get on dating apps, how hot the guys, guys in my case are who are into us, how our dates go, whether or not we are successful or don't have success in finding the love we're looking for, or the kinds of relationships we're looking for. If we're posting on social media, we might find value in how many people like or comment on our posts. And if we post something that nobody says anything about, do we think that what we have posted is less valuable? I think our judgment of ourselves, our assessments of ourselves, run this deep. Okay. If we're religious people, we might ascribe value to how well we adhere to the teachings of our religion, how much we participate in our religious communities, how much we're passing that religion, that culture, even down to our children, those values.


Whether that's because we believe in it on a spiritual level or because it's our tradition and we don't want to be the ones who break the chain. I have guilt about how much Judaism I have given my children or not given my children, whether or not they'll find a comfort in a sense of belonging to a 5000 year old tradition or whether I've sort of squandered that because I don't really care. I like the cultural part and not the religious practices. I don't know. I ascribe some bit of value to how I'm doing with that. If we're spiritual people, if we think of ourselves as spiritual and I not religious, we may ascribe value to how mindful we're being, how much we do our daily rituals and affirmations, how well we say our mantras, how much we meditate and journal and pray and practice spiritual self care, even people who are managing addictions to food or alcohol or substances or codependency or sex. We may ascribe value to how many meanings we go to, to how many meetings we go to, or how much outreach we do, or how well we are able to stay on the wagons we have climbed onto. But do we have less value if we slip off the straight and narrow path, if we have broken the sobriety vow that we have taken, there are so many places where we can devalue ourselves for being human beings, for being flawed and imperfect, and not winning at every little thing.


We seem to think that our value is quantifiable, and we are always keeping score. We are always keeping an accounting of ourselves. Do I deserve that self love? Do I deserve my own admiration? Have I earned it? Because our own internal evaluation, what we think of ourselves, that's the only evaluation that matters. So all these things that you might have built your life around, are those the things that you value the most? I valued being married over having a happy marriage. I valued being married over being happy. I think it's because I wanted to win at the game of marriage. I didn't want to be a failure. I wanted to get those check marks and get those a's in that area of my life.


But the problem was that I was ignoring my own internal values of how I wanted the inside of the relationship to feel. There are so many places where I have had to reassess what is of value to me. What do you think of the life you've built? What do you think of the relationships in your life, the love that you've surrounded yourself with? Your value is not a commodity decided by market economics. Though a lot of people have a vested interest in you, believing that your value is connected to the degree to which you live your values, it is something you get to decide. You may have a long marriage, but it's not a happy one. You may have a big, shiny career, but it comes at a tremendous cost. You may have all the material trappings that we are told are the ultimate measure of value, but inside you feel empty and unsatisfied. There are so many qualities to you that you may actually value more than all of these things I've been talking about.


Maybe what you really value is your creativity, your panache, your style. The way you put an outfit together, the way you wrap a gift. Oh, my God, I have one friend. Whenever she shows up with a present, it's like the present itself. It doesn't even matter. The wrapping, the way that she does it, the care that she puts into it is so gorgeous and personal and stylish and meaningful. Her creativity shines in that moment. Maybe you value how you create things from whole cloth, how you turn nothing into something, how you write, how you sing.


Maybe you value your own resourcefulness, your ability to solve problems, how you get yourself out of impossible situations, how you navigate change, how you always manage to figure it out. Maybe you value your sense of humor, how you can break the tension in any meeting with a joke. Or how you make yourself laugh at the stupidest things, how receptive you are to being delighted. Maybe you value your adventurousness, your willingness to try new things, to travel, to seek out experiences, to do that weird new sport, or, you know, eat at that crazy new restaurant. Maybe your willingness to seek out experiences that make you present to what it means to be alive is something you value tremendously in yourself that's not on anybody's scorecard except yours. Maya Angelou said something that gets quoted a lot, and I think it's relevant here. She said, I've learned that people will forget what you've said. People will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.


So much of your value, your deep and lasting value, is your impact on the people in your lives. Maybe you're the person people count on for blunt honesty. You will always tell the truth, no matter what. You will find a nice way to say the difficult thing. Maybe people find you inspiring, that your choices light the path for them. Maybe you're always encouraging of that one friend's crazy ideas that she encounters a like meh. Well, maybe not that's weird from other people, but from you. She will get nothing but encouragement because that's how you show up for her.


Maybe when someone is hurting, you are the most tender friend. You are the most supportive when someone isn't believing in themselves, but you show them that you believe in them. Maybe you're kind. Maybe you're wise. Maybe you always say the right deep thing at the right time. Maybe you're a great listener. Maybe you value the way you love, how you show up for the people in your life. How you provide refuge for people when they're in need, how you are a shoulder for them to cry on, how you always make them laugh when they're feeling down.


We get caught up in all of this judgment of quantifying and counting and measuring and comparing, that we can sometimes lose sight of what we really value and what our values are. What do you value about yourself? What are your values? Do you need to recalibrate something? What do you want to stop counting and measuring and comparing? That is just not important to you anymore. That is just not making you happy or going to make you happy. In this next chapter of your life. This is your one and only life. This is not a dress rehearsal. I am a theater girl. I know the difference between the dress rehearsal and the show.


This is the show. You are in the show, and it's your show. And you are the star of the show. And you wrote the show and you have designed the venue and you are telling the story to the people you chose to be in the audience tonight. This is it. This is your show. And at the end of the day, now I'm going to go back to a different metaphor. At the end of the day, what you value about yourself and what your values are are the only things that will provide a compass to real happiness.


That's so hard. It's so hard to believe this. It's so hard to practice it. But imagine what you'd feel like if all or most or many or more of your decisions came from that calculus, the one that comes from what you value about yourself truly inside and not the external ones that were sold. Imagine what that might feel like and how that could set you free.


Thanks for listening to Hotter Than Ever. If you loved this monologue, pontification meditation, blah blah blah, you can find out more about this and other episodes of the show on our subdivid, which I promise to resume writing in the near future. At hotterthanever@substack.com or @hotterthaneverpod on Instagram comment on our posts. Drop me a note. Let me know how this conversation made you feel. Whether it made you think some new thoughts, whether it's a value to you, whether it's a value to you. Is it valuable? If you comment on our posts, I promise I will personally respond within a week. I really, really, really want to hear what you think.


Hotter Than Ever is produced by Erica Gerard and Podkit Productions. Our associate producer is Melody Carey. Music is by Chris Keating, with vocals by Issa Fernandez.

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