Today is Christmas day if you are reading this article on release day, but you will still benefit from this read if you read it after release. You might realize or have realized how blessed you have been these past few days. You might have felt an abundance of love and care. Perhaps, none of this happened to you, and it was just a regular day. Regardless of your mindset, I want to share with you the value of life in your life and others.

You might think little of yourself, especially if things are not going well. You might see improvements you can make. Perhaps you only see the negative, and your mindset is highly pessimistic. Regardless of your mindset, your worth is not diminished.

It is easier to see your worth when surrounded by positive people and living in the moment. On Christmas day, you might have had a warm bed, a roof over your head, great conversation, and many more pleasant moments that help you view life positively. We can begin to look at all the good things that bring value to ourselves or others.

I struggled early on with understanding my self-worth. Many times in my life, I chose not to take care of myself for whatever reason. However, the idea of self-worth does touch base with how you treat yourself physically and mentally, and then there is the other superficial part of how much you are worth. Yes, we can put a price on how much it costs for a baby to be born or how much food we need a year, but in terms of our value, it is more than just how much we cost.

I remember in 2017 when I was learning about the idea of self-worth and looking at the value of my life. I was living backward in the sense of what would make my life valuable. I was looking at all the things I didn’t have and how to fill my life with them rather than looking at the things I had. Many people get into this mindset of waiting to feel like enough because they need something. What would you say if I told you you had everything you needed right now?

Knowing what you are right now is difficult to fathom when living in a rough situation. There is some truth behind that because the brain cannot focus in survival mode. That is why people say breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and for a good reason. When we are hungry, our brain is in survival mode, thinking about where it can get some food, so it doesn’t die. Sounds dramatic, right? The brain can sometimes be dramatic, and it is up to us to understand how to curb its natural tendencies to take away our focus.

Many adults are in the habit of eating, and they will overeat because it is ingrained in them. Though you want to make sure you are fueled for the day, it is more important for children who are growing rapidly and need more calories because not only does their body demand it, most kids have a more active lifestyle than your average adult. Whether it be sports, hanging out with friends, or causing mischief, their bodies need fuel.

That fuel is important because they will not take action if they do not have it. They will stay home and play video games, and they might have already developed a bad habit of playing more video games on a screen than going out and playing in real life with their friends. Though video games can offer some value, it is nowhere close to the value of the friendships they could cultivate. That is where it all begins: understanding our values. It starts in the household and moves out of the home into peer groups.

For the most part, parents do a great job of letting their children know they are loved and valued family members. It begins to get shaky when they enter their peer groups because now their value is met with conditions. I will cherish our friendship under XYZ’s condition. This is where things start to go haywire, and we lose what value we hold for ourselves. We begin to look at the things we do not have rather than the things we have. For everything we do not, our value drops in the sense of our mindset. We become more pessimistic and only look at superficial things.

I cannot blame young adults for living this way because I was a victim. We treat peer acceptance as something with extreme value because it is in our DNA to be in a community and tribe-like setting. Not having that would be a death sentence, but in our day and age, we do not need that tribe as we did in the path. The brain fills in the gaps with something negative such as the desire for peer acceptance. This is where the concept of the value of life begins to take form.

I get asked by many young adults if there is a point to living because they feel like their life is pointless. I always tell them that there are things to see even when your eyes are closed, and the truth is that many people live with their eyes closed. They see their value as how much they make a year or how many friends they have, but in reality, none of that brings value to life. I had to learn this from one of my mentors in my late 20s because though my mindset could live in the moment, I could not see what was important and how to calculate my self-worth.

I remember that afternoon with my mentor; we had gone to Roaring Fork in Austin, Texas, to have lunch. I will never forget this day because he made me pay, and I had no money, but the lessons and wisdom I received from our time together were priceless. I was in between jobs again, trying to find my calling or create enough value to live decently. I was an open book to my mentor when he asked me how much am I worth. It was a question no one had ever asked me, and it was something I did not put many minds to until that moment.

The answer I gave him was that I was priceless; he was not amused. He began to dig and dug deep because the answer I gave him was not the answer he was looking for. He wanted to know a number. He wanted to know how much I was worth an hour. I kept telling him I was priceless and eventually gave him a lowball number. Many people will say they are worth one million dollars, which is a fancy way of saying I am entitled. I knew I wasn’t worth that much, but I wanted to believe I was.

After lunch, I did some soul-searching, contacted my business coach, and asked her about my worth. She helped me conclude that it was between $30 and $50 an hour. Once I knew my worth, that is what I charged until I noticed the value of what I was providing had increased. At that point, I increased my worth to $100-$250, and I started to see things even more differently than I did when I was starting off adding value to my life. It was not about the number but what the number represented.

When I started coaching, I was new to the game. I was a teacher for many years, so I do many things similar to teaching, but I had to get my foot in the door first. As I began to build my brand, so to speak, I was able to see the value I was bringing into other people’s lives. It was not about the money at any given point but rather the results. What was I producing in my days, and how was it affecting the world? Once I knew that the value of life was a two-pronged approach, I could see that life had more value than I was led to believe.

The steps I would take to help someone find their value is different than how I found mine. One of the benefits of coaching is that the coach you work with already did the trial and error and saw what worked and what didn’t. The path was confusing because I had no idea how to look at my worth from an intrinsic and practical standpoint. Today, I know the value of my life, and I help people find their value of theirs. To do that, we must dissect our life into what it is, what it was, and what it will be.

The first step to finding the value of life is looking at what you are right now. Along with this step, you must figure out where you are along the process. For example, if you are a college student with no experience, you might be in the $15-$25 range in what you should charge. After college or some experience, you can add $5-$10 on top of whatever it is you perceive your value to be. What this step does is that it helps you see your current worth. If you say you are worth one million dollars and cannot back up that claim, the subconscious mind will see your value as less than that million dollars because you do not have it.

The second step is to figure out where we were in the past. For many people, this will be their step one, but due to trial and error, placing this as step two helps the mind way more than putting it at step one. Step two enables you to see growth and progress. I do not expect you to stay at $15 your whole life, even though some people do. Whether it be because that is their true self-worth, they do not value themselves, or they allowed complacency would be situational. I can tell you that you can grow in any position; you have to see the growth path.

The last step is the final product of knowing what you would like to be worth. For this step, start low and help the subconscious mind build up to that million-dollar mentality. You might begin at 50k your first year and say that in year two, you are worth 53k. That is an easy jump for the subconscious mind to see. What I have found during this step is that even if you do not reach that monetary amount, your mindset is to create value in what you have said. Rome wasn’t built in a day, nor was your bank account.

Looking beyond the money aspect at the value of life, we have to look at meaning and purpose. If you can apply meaning and purpose in your life, you will automatically create more value for yourself. Now with the two combined, looking at how much you make and what value you bring to your life, the world, or others will help your mindset see the value in adding value to life. The process is simple, but it is a journey for us to understand that life has more value than we give it credit.

The value of life is more than just a dollar sign or how much passion you can lead out in a day. The value of life is more than just looking at the little things and learning to be grateful for what you have instead of what you don’t. The value of life is like a fruit basket that makes up the entire gift. We have not to see the value of life as one singular factor but rather as multiple factors leading to one solution, and that is understanding your worth. Yes, you are priceless, but you are so much more, and I encourage you to go on the mindset journey to understand what value your life brings.

Until then,

Michael Rearden

Founder of Reven Concepts