Wanted to talk about very basic things today, values and self-worth. Something I have often thought about and wanted to understand, I noticed that my ability to produce quality work improved with increasing my own sense of self-worth. And one of the things that working at Lucasfilm gave me – it may sound corny – but it gave me a spine. A sense of self-worth built on competence. Many people are born with loads with it, which I admire but I personally wasn’t one of this people and had to find my self-worth like water seeping into the ground – drop by drop.
But before we go into any personal growth nonsense I wanted to share my favorite stories on our inherent worth here. There is one story from Tony Robbins that I like – at one of his seminars, and I heavily paraphrase here, he told a man he is going to give him fifty million dollars if he loses fifty pounds by tomorrow morning. Everybody got quiet and Tony kept asking, well, is it possible to loose fifty pounds by tomorrow morning?? Of course, it is possible!.. Cut off a hand, cut off a leg and you have the fifty million dollars!
Would you cut your leg or hand for fifty million dollars? How much is it worth?
Let’s talk about price points. Again I am going to paraphrase here I think from Dale Carnegie, let’s figure out how much your leg and your right hand are worth. How about your left hand? Fifty million, one hundred million, two hundred million, how about a billion dollars? Would a billion dollars be enough to lose a hand? How much exactly would it take for each of your hands, legs, ears, eyes. What is the price on your head? Say for your sense of hearing, or eyesight? This is scary territory but the reality is that you are sitting on the kind of wealth that not all the Croesuses and Rockefellers combined ever owned.
So build yourself a capital, self-worth independent of outside sources – talents, skills, competencies. Build on top of the pile of gold you re already sitting on. Build yourself the kind of capital that can’t be easily taken away from you. I really like to compare my own experience in this to a DIY project. DIY projects are a nice metaphor because these are the kind of projects we usually like doing, a labor of love when no one really forces us to do and which happen in the cracks while we are doing something else. I liken the process to building a shed.
I came from middle class background with solid habits but nothing to my name – no connections, no money, no support network, and only two hands and a head on my shoulders. I started out with only one thing to my name – I knew that I liked what I did, for the most part. It’s like building a shed – you need to build a shed and would like (the idea of) building a shed. Starting out you don’t know how to do it well, and if within an organization – it’s not even your shed ( but this could change later ). So you go on internet forums, surf the web, gather information of the best practices to build a shed. You find out the best sheds out there, you talk to the people who built nice sheds and gradually figure out how to go about it. You start building it, you make mistakes, you do some bartering with people who own nice tools ( that you don’t ).. but eventually, since you are into sheds – you build a decent one. One day your neighbor sees your shed and goes “hey, nice shed, can you build me one?”. This is how it went. I never put buzzwords like “face time”, “schmoozing”, “networking” or “making myself look good” into my shed building adventure. Approach your work in the world as if it is a DIY project – make sure you like the idea of doing it, find out the best practices, get together with people who already got their sheds going, figure out what you have got available, get what you don’t have and go about it.
These are just lessons I learned and observations I made while on the ground in the Silicon Valley. And these got me results at the time. There is a time and a place for everything. There are mistakes, and everyone’s story and circumstances are different. At the end, I personally found out that working in the Silicon Valley got me only so far. And this “so-far” place is building self-worth. Self-worth and a sense of being a capable human being is worth a million dollars.
It is the same, only longer lasting, feeling as if I had built a nice shed in my yard. A sense of accomplishment especially growing up without anyone to build it for me. Which is not required.
Things have changed since my Lucasfilm days but one thing I am as sure of as ever – invest in self-worth, no matter which way you choose – self-worth and self-respect won’t be taken from you and never go down in value. And self-worth does not necessarily equate self-confidence as they sell it in the lifestyle magazines – when your car brakes down you don’t need a confident mechanic – you need a competent one.