You’re worth more than peanut butter pie
Have you ever watched The Joy Luck Club? There are so many tremendous scenes, but one has always stuck in my head. One of the daughters whom the movie focuses on has been left by her husband. He comes by to visit and to see their daughter and she always makes him his favorite dessert – peanut butter pie. Her mother is staying with her one day when she is buying the fixings. The mother chastises her. “You are saying that you are worth nothing more than this pie he gets to eat. That is your value.” You can watch the full part of this plot here.
The real problem Rose has is that she thinks from the first time that she meets her husband (ex-husband) that he is better than her. He’s cute, he comes from a well-known family, he’s rich. The fact that he comes on to her immediately flusters her even though she’s brilliant in her own right, and she spends most of their life together losing herself in the wake of whatever he wants. I have a feeling that in one way or another, this story would resonate with a lot of people. You are going along and all of a sudden a person whom you feel is really important starts to pay attention to you. You feel flattered, flustered, excited, confused, lucky, even. And you are instantly hit with a worry. “What if they find out I’m not good enough?”
People come up with all sorts of ways to fight off what they feel is that inevitability. Some people make things like Rose does in the movie. Some people change their religions or change their personalities. In the worst case scenario, some people even succumb to abusive relationships, almost as if they expected things to go that way. The other person is so much better than them, after all.
Until you value yourself enough, you will signal to people that your worth is only in how you measure it. If you change your religion, your value is only as good as your new beliefs are deep. If you make things your value is only the value of those things. If you let yourself remain in an abusive situation, your value is the same as a punching bag.
When you find your value, when you know it and embrace it, you will no longer feel that nagging feeling that you need to make up for something. You will no longer feel “lucky” when people like you. You will no longer be surprised that people whom you like and respect like and respect you back – and for who you truly are. You won’t need pie or an act or anything but yourself.
What are you telling people your value is? Are you sure that’s the message you want to send? Are you sure that’s the message you want to believe?
Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jamieanne/4704792547/ via Creative Commons
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Great reminder, Margie and we must also remember that others don’t decide our worth, that’s up to us. They aren’t judge and jury on our value unless we give them that power.
“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent” Eleanor Roosevelt
@Kneale Mann Love that Kneale. That Eleanor – she knew what was up! 🙂
A dollar three eighty nine?
We’ve all seen it, people lower their expectations because for whatever reason they don’t feel ‘worthy.’ Screw that, I’m just as worthy as anybody, why not me, right?
I’m a volunteer Guardian ad Litem and represent abused and neglected kids; the people they gravitate towards or the situations they let themselves get into because they don’t feel worthy can be pretty sad indeed. It’s not easy to break that mindset either…….
@bdorman264 I’m sure it isn’t. When you are repeatedly treated badly, you tend to wonder, “OK, is this about me?” No matter how many people tell you “It’s about them,” you still start to wonder. I mean, you see other people treated well. So what’s wrong with you? It’s an extremely dangerous path to travel down.
I have focused a lot on helping others value me. I know how much I am worth but sometimes people have a different perception.
I guess in my case when I want to help out a small business owner etc I end up devaluing my work by sometimes handing them freebies. Over time I have noted that I have to be a lot more selective when it comes to that pro-bono work because many devalue the work I do for the fact that I extended a hand multiple times and did not charge them.
I know this might be a bit distant of what you are talking about but from my side I see it as a critical component of understanding how much I am worth!
@RaulColon I hadn’t been thinking about this in business terms but you’re absolutely correct. If companies find out that they always have wiggle room with you, one of two things are likely to happen. First, they will start to assume that the first price you offer is unreasonable and over-priced. Second, they will always push your buttons to lower your price, and you will end up on the losing side of that battle.
It’s really the same thing in our personal lives. People are good at reading signals, whether we realize it or not. If you signal that you’re not all that valuable, that’s how people will treat you. It’s a matter of training. First yourself, then others.
@RaulColon I fully understand what you’re saying. I, too, often don’t charge for my services. I feel that giving a hand UP to small businesses and entrepreneurs is important and I know that in time their success will hopefully mean they remember those who helped. Most do. Some don’t and that’s hurtful but over the years I’ve tried not to tie their choices with my self-worth.
And while I do offer my services (I’m a lawyer in real life) pro-bono, I have become more selective and have taken a page from some of my angel/venture cap investor friends. Rarely do they give without the person/company putting in something. Like a good-faith commitment, I’ve found that even if I reduce my rate substantially but still require payment the client sees value in the service. And even if I offer services for free I often follow up with a short letter and a “zero” invoice showing how much I would have charged.
I had a client once that I wasn’t going to charge because it was a quick matter and he told me never to do work for free for those who can pay and if I do then document your time and let them know you provided them a valuable service.
@saving4someday @RaulColon I find this comment interesting from a psychological perspective. Your invoice for free services fits a well know paradigm. It is true, we habitually value the things we pay for more.
For example, when you get a survey with a $1 bill included. You get to keep the cash no matter if you choose to fill it out or not. Results are that more people return the survey if they get that $1 bill.
Heck in health policy they proved that if you offer people a free plan or a $1 premium that those who get free health care use more services than they need. Those who pay $1 think more critically about when they should go to see a doctor. It is strange how that effects behavior, but it makes a big difference.
@susansilver @saving4someday I remember reading the Price Of Everything where they did some interesting experiments on Zero cost vs low cost.
What I do with helping out smaller businesses is create a full invoice and discount an amount until I reach their budget. The Invoices goes out for a website let’s say $7K and a discount for $5k.
I rarely do it but I am very selective when I do!
If you change your religion, your value is only as good as your new beliefs are deep. If you make things your value is only the value of those things. If you let yourself remain in an abusive situation, your value is the same as a punching bag.
@kathy116 Thanks Kathy. I couldn’t have said it better myself 😉
First off the bat-I love chocolate peanut butter pie.There are many times when a person is learnig something new , they have feelings of not being “good enough” This is also one of the situations you face when you start changing for the better. Comparisons to others creates many problems.Stop making comparisons and go for your own goal.
@GrandmaOnDeck That’s a great point. I sometimes get down when I see other people post their running times. They’re so much faster than me! But I have to remember that I’m still really new to it and that it doesn’t really matter how fast other people are going. I’m not racing them. Yet 🙂
I wasn’t sure to writer here. I didn’t want to be too revealing. Then I said chuck that, this is a topic that I think about a lot. I have been bullied before and felt insignificant because of it.
I recently saw the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. Bill Nighy’s character is a sweet guy who has been hen pecked by his wife. It is quite stereotypical, but also powerful . You just feel bad for the guy for taking her BS. It reminded me of how in those relationships the victim is so completely steamrolled that they beleive they must apologize for breathing.
Ridiculous. It made me want to hug all my friends who had to go through the same thing. I had a friend that was bullied out of his job because he wasn’t “fast” enough. He was a tutor and the kids were mocking him. Despite his brilliance in the field. Top student, can do calculations I could not dream of solving. It just takes him some time to explain it.
It isn’t always easy to understand why we stay in these types of abusive relationships. Sometimes we just don’t have he experience to know better.
@susansilver Thanks for sharing, Susan.
I think it’s easy for people to fall into the trap fo thinking, “Well, it can’t get any better than this, so I better hold on to what I have.” Maybe it’s a value thing. Maybe it’s negative thinking. But it takes an awful lot to break that kind of mindset once it’s in place, as Bill said below.
@margieclayman Agreed.
I think it underscores the importance of telling the people we love how awesome they are. Hopefully it reinforces their good qualities and protects them from people who would do them harm.
Long ago, before on-line social media, that is, when people usually met others at “networking” gatherings or attended an in-house “team-building” meeting often the organizers would make you sit at a table with people you didn’t know. The purpose of this “game” was to see how long it would take you to realize that you had something in common with the other 6-10 people. Did you ever experience one of these encounters.
Frequently you might find a real kindred spirit, but often you struggled to find something as simple as you and the person across the table were both left handed. Interesting, but hardly enough to base an entire lifelong relationship.
I now often feel that on-line connections are sometimes initiated on really trivial items and we struggle to build a relationship with that person to prove our worth to them and the community.
Long ago, and I do mean long ago, I married my high-school sweetheart. He was interested in all kinds of things: college, medicine, hiking, camping, backpacking, photography…and for six years I tried to “please” him by doing all the outdoor things. I can honestly report that on almost every outdoor adventure it became a life and death adventure. I am not kidding! I could write a pretty interesting novel about these trips.
Well by year six, I was finishing college and he was nearly finished with medical school and he announced he wanted his freedom.
As I worked my way through this rejection I said to myself from now on I am going to be “me”…I am not going to make-up my “likes” to suit another person. I found that once you make that committment to yourself it is much easier to meet and enjoy people, because you are being you.
As a side note: my second husband of 34 years has often warned people that “Judy’s idea of camping is a hotel room without room-service!”
Well, that was a long winded answer to a question I am not even sure you posed!
@JudyHelfand That’s a sad story, but it ends up empowering, right? The question we need to ask is why we have to wait to finally be rejected to find our power. It’s the same thing for Rose in the movie. She doesn’t think about changing until her husband cheats on her, and even then she is trying to do nothing short of pleasing him. It’s the story of her grandmother’s suicide that finally puts some sense into her head.
So, how can we find our power before we sacrifice too much? Well, that’s the real question, now isn’t it?
Knowing your own worth and acting upon it are sometimes two different things.
I started feeling comfortable with my self-worth when I realized I didn’t like the value assigned to me by someone who was supposed to be building up that self-worth.
I really appreciated the perspective I saw in a business book I read a few years back (think it was David Sandller’s You Can’t Teach A Kid to Ride a Bike at a Seminar). He explained the difference between intrinsic value and a situational value. He was trying to nail down the point that your intrinsic value will always be a 10 on a 10-pt scale. You were perfectly created to be you. Your value as a point guard for those Cavaliers of yours may be significantly less than a 10 (unless you’ve been working on your 3-pt %). In some cases, the value as an employee or even a friend may be less than a 10. But your intrinsic value will always be a 10. The bright side is that you can work at increasing your situational value…or move on to different circumstances.
But you should always know that your self-worth each day is a 10!