Hey Reader,

I’m currently sitting on a train on the way home after a morning in the city.

I stopped to see a family member on the way home and had a little nap. Right before my nap, I got a reply from a potential client that was effectively a polite rejection, with no opening to a conversation moving forward.

(Needless to say, that is not what I needed to see right before I went to sleep.)

At the same time, I’ve been pondering what to do about my business and its positioning - and this felt like a timely sign.

Some of you know from the last newsletter I sent out that I’m currently asking for your support to learn about you, my audience, in this short survey. That’s because I’m doing a broader piece of work to understand where I’m really valuable.

And between that and the news this morning - this has become the topic I want to talk about this week:

How do we know that we’re really being valuable?

There is a multi-step process that I use to decide how to move forward when I'm questioning my value. I want to offer that to you here.

First of all, I want to express that by "valuable", I don’t necessarily mean your intrinsic value as a human being in a transactional way.

It’s really important that we differentiate between the physical value you are providing and your inherent value as a human being.

It’s really easy for people to say, “I’m not being valuable,” and for that to become, in their brain, “I am not of value in my being.”

An easier example: "I am not doing good enough [at this thing]" becomes "I am not good enough"

How? Simple - we delete language.

Human beings when we do something called 'deletion', where we unconsciously remove what part of our brain thinks is unhelpful information, but actually just leads to greater confusion for both ourselves and others. We do this because it's frankly just easier to say or think what logically seems like the same (or a very similar) sentence. Here's that that looks like:

We assume "the thing" - the context - is obvious over time, so we delete it to save time and energy:

Then, we remove the word "doing", because again, in context, it sounds obvious:

It doesn't help that a part of us might want to believe that we indeed "aren't good enough" because that can feel quite addicting to the ego (a topic for another day).

So now we're just left with "I am not enough" - which part of your brain repeats over and over. And that means, another part of your brain hears it over and over, and it becomes more and more familiar each time you do.

That's how we unconsciously use our neuroplasticity against ourselves.

When we allow our egos to obscure the message and forget that we can do one thing without it being who we are deep down, we lose touch with objectivity.

There is a difference between what you’re doing, what you’re having, and what you are deep down.

And our responsibility is to take a deep breath, step back, and choose to see things more objectively instead.

Okay, how does this relate to measuring our value?

I haven't forgotten the topic today, don't worry. If you're going through a similar mental challenge to myself right now, I want us to come out the other side together.

The awareness of all of the above is Step 1.

I'm now sitting in the garden to finish writing this, and now that I've followed Step 1, I'm starting to see the picture more clearly. This means I can go through Step 2 (measuring that value) and Step 3 (deciding how to move forward).

Put together, that means that once you get out of your own way, you can use information to take a measurement, and then create a clear action plan using that information.

But today's post ended up becoming really long - so to spare your inbox, I've decided to split this into a few parts Next week we'll walk through exactly what step 2 and 3 are.

So I just want to end by saying that I really believe that we are - deep down - beautiful, complete, and of value.

I was saying everything above to get through to your logical brain, and that's great.

But now I'm speaking to your heart: you have all the resources you need.

I suppose saying this to myself as well.

We all have incredible power to build the lives that we want, and all the resources that we need are within us to build our dream life.

So let's stop getting in our own way.

Where do you need to interrupt your unhelpful thoughts this week Reader?

Lots of love,

Seven

PS The survey I launched (just for this audience!) is closing in just a few days. If you appreciate the value I put into these for free, could you do me a huge favour and fill this out - it only takes 5 mins or less!​

Thank you in advance Reader🙏