What Is Your Value?

There always comes a time in your professional life where you feel like you are not being valued or well compensated for your efforts. There’s also other times where the organization you work for feels like you are not of enough value for what you’re being compensated for even though you have no complaints yourself.

We always hear all these successful people sharing their journey, the titans of industry people like Jack Ma the Founder of Alibaba from his humble beginnings trying and failing to get a job at KFC to all other successful people who had failures and were at some point fired from their jobs and deemed surplus to requirements. You even see this at your workplace, it happens to your colleagues who are let go or the ones that leave because they haven’t been getting a raise after years of consistent performance, or just not feeling appreciated.

So far in my career I have always been a pivotal member of the team and praised by both my colleagues and seniors. I have risen through the ranks and been given promotions and raises so I have not experienced the flipside, yet, but it is bound to happen as this is a part of life. You have to taste the sweet and the sour, see the dark times and then come out the other side. I am now at a point where I feel like challenging times are about to cross my path. I’ve been through challenges and dark times before and came out the other side eventually, however it is no-one’s preference to experience these cycles all over again even though it is inevitable in life.

All those successful people are now owners of multi-million and multi-billion dollar enterprises even though they all had those failures in the past. After giving it much thought I have realized that getting fired or not being appreciated does not mean you are of low or little value. It is just in that moment or scenario, where your skills and talents are not producing value. The same skills or talents might be of high value and greatly appreciated in a different scenario, company, business or entrepreneurial endeavor. It is a reminder that when facing tough times, it’s just a matter of finding where you’ll be most valuable again. This could be at your next job, at your next entrepreneurial journey or even in another country altogether. I mean that’s what happened to all these greats who are now at the pinnacle of their journey.

So let’s remind ourselves to constantly think where and how our skills and traits can be valued most. If someone came to me asking “Hey! This top of the line Mercedes everyone is after has just become available again after a long period of being sold-out worldwide, would you like to buy it?”. I would probably reply that no, I’m not in the market for a Mercedes, or I don’t need one because I already own one, or just the fact that I can’t afford one right now. Does that in any way diminish the value of that car? It was just offered to the wrong person at the wrong time because if it was offered to a different person who was after purchasing that Mercedes he would have jumped at the offer!