Stop Worrying About Your Own Worth

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

For many years - so long that he could hardly remember exactly how many - Iain owned a very successful pub in a small town in the heart of Ireland. Ian was well known there. He had a bunch of friends, many of whom he often saw when they came to his place for a drink or a snack, and he was quite happy.

But in the end, Ian decided to sell his business. Combining his savings with the proceeds from the sale of the pub, he received enough money to continue a comfortable existence. He was finally able to relax and enjoy the results of his labor.

Instead, he fell into a deep depression almost immediately. And it hasn't gone away for 15 years.

I have seen stories like this many times. Head of an investment bank. Famous French singer. Founder and President of a grocery chain. And these are not just instructive stories about characters unknown to almost anyone - these are real people whom I know well or knew before.

They are united by several things: they were engaged in some kind of business and were unusually successful. They had enough money to live at a more than comfortable level all their lives. And all of them with age plunged into the abyss of depression.

So what's going on?

The typical answer is that it is important for a person to have a goal in life, and when he stops working, the goal is simply lost. However, many people I have come across personally still want and continue to work. The French singer continued to sing. Investment banker - manage the fund.

Perhaps the cause of depression is the aging process itself. However, we all know examples of people who manage to be happy even at 90 years old. At the same time, many people who have experienced depression are not old at all.

I am convinced that the problem is much simpler, and its solution is much more logical and rational than just being involved in work or thirst for eternal youth.

People who achieve a certain financial and social status are successful in pursuits that form their relevance to others. Their decisions have an impact on many. Those who heed need their advice.

Very often, if not always, they form their position in life, as well as to a large extent their own self-esteem, based on the premise that everything they do and say (and in many cases even everything they think and feel) is important. for others.

Take Ian. If he made changes to the menu, changed the opening hours of the establishment, or hired someone new, this in some way affected the lives of the people in his town. Even his friendships were formed in large part due to the fact that he was the owner of the pub. What he did determined his importance to society.

Demand, as long as we manage to maintain it, always bears fruit. And at any level. But what happens when we lose her? This loss can be painful.

As we get older, we need to excel at activities that are completely opposite to what we have been striving for all our lives. We must learn to be unnecessary.

It's not just about retirement. Many of us are so intensely, almost painfully concerned with our own worth that it ultimately destroys our happiness. As a result, we feel overwhelmed and utterly busy, responding to every request, ready, like brave firefighters, to rush into the fire of the highest level of difficulty. Are we really so needed and irreplaceable?

How we adapt to a situation in which we do not play a defining role, both during our career and after its completion, is more important - and this is worth seriously considering.

If we lose our job, all we have to do is adjust to the feeling of being unnecessary and not sink into depression. This process turns out to be the key to survival until we find a new job. If managers and leaders want to develop and expand their teams and businesses, they need to learn to give themselves less importance so that others can feel their value and become true leaders. At some point in our lives, at some point in our lives, we matter less to others. The question is: can you come to terms with it?

Is it easy for you to just be around other people? Can you listen to someone's problem without trying to solve it? Do you enjoy communicating with others if there is no specific purpose in such communication?

Many of us (though not all) can enjoy spending whole days with ourselves, admitting to ourselves that what we do has no meaning in the world. A year? A decade?

With all this, there is a key to mastering the ability not to be needed, and this key is in the word freedom.

When you are planning a change in your life like this, you can do whatever you want. You can take risks. You can be brave. You can share unpopular ideas. You can live a sincere and real life. In other words, when you stop worrying about how important your actions are, you can finally fully become yourself.

This ray of hope could be our most effective antidepressant. Enjoying undemanding freedom can help avoid depression and ensure a happy and fulfilling retirement life, even for people who saw careers as the core of their lives.

So how do you enjoy the feeling of not being in demand, even if you decide it's time to end your career? It may even be easier if you realize that the process itself is important, not the result. Try to enjoy the activity itself, the very fact of your existence, and not the results of your work.

Here are some rules that will help you avoid feelings of disappointment from your own lack of demand right now:

- Check your email only at your desk and only a few times a day. Try not to do this as soon as you get out of bed or at every free minute.

- When you meet new people, do not tell them what you do. As you talk, notice how often you want to feel more important (what you were up to yesterday, what you plan to do, or how many things you have planned for today). Feel the difference in communication when you just talk with the other person to establish contact with him / her or when you communicate in order to feel your relevance and importance in his eyes.

- When your interlocutor tells you about his problem, try not to immediately offer him / her solutions (if such a conversation takes place at work, think that your subordinate can "grow" in this way and figure out the issue on his own).

- Sit on a bench in the park and try to do nothing for at least a minute (then increase this practice to 10 minutes).

- Talk to a stranger (I personally managed to talk to a taxi driver today, for example) without having any specific goal. Just try to enjoy the communication itself and the person with whom you started this conversation.

- Create some beautiful “product” and enjoy the result without telling anyone about it, enjoying the aesthetics.

Pay attention to what happens if you just enjoy the moment and your work without drastically redoing or changing anything. Just think about the fact that you can be happy in a certain segment of the present time and without moving somewhere, making any decisions and generally changing the world around you.

You see, even if you are not in demand by someone, you are significant to yourself..