“Convinced that we are not good enough, we can never relax. We stay on guard, monitoring ourselves for shortcomings. When we inevitably find them, we feel even more insecure and undeserving. We have to try even harder. The irony of all of this is . . . where do we think we are going anyway?”

You are not your job description, your place of birth; you are not your abuse; you are not your defeat, rejection, or failures. Many of us attach our self-worth to external factors such as our jobs, cars, material possessions, etc. When we lose any of these material things, it usually affects our self-worth and mental health because we have attached so much meaning to them.

In the social media age we are in right now, many of us place our self-worth on the number of followers, retweets, likes, reshares, and all the other metrics used by social media to validate our popularity or awesomeness. The metrics used by social media platforms to validate us are all ephemeral yardsticks, which are not built to last but built to make us come for more; we become like a drug addict always needing the next shot. We are all in a trance.

There is a story about an elderly dying man who told his child:

Here is your grandfather’s gold watch and it is a couple of hundred years old. But before I bequeath it to you, I want you to go to the watch shop and see how much they would offer you.

The child went, and then came back, and said the watchmaker offered 7 dollars because it’s old and has some scratch.

The old man said: go to the coffee shop.

He went and then came back, and said: they offered 4 dollars.

The old man said: Go to the museum and show that watch.

He went then came back, and said to his father “They offered me a million dollars.”

The father said: “I wanted to let you know that the right place values you in the right way.

Don’t find yourself in the wrong place and get angry if you are not valued.

Those that know your value are those who appreciate you, don’t stay in a place where nobody sees your value.

Never doubt, and always believe in yourself by knowing your worth and that there are those who clearly appreciate these values.

“The key to immortality is first living a life worth remembering.”  – Bruce Lee