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The Power of Contrast and Self-Value

Today, I would like to jump right into the topic of self-value. A while back, I was going through Twitter, as you do, and I came across a tweet from Blair Enns that said, and I’m paraphrasing:

“If you’re not willing to pay for value, then you can’t learn how to value-price effectively.”

Blair Enns

That got me thinking about the power of contrast and self-value, so I want to explore that topic with you today.

Why Is It So Important to Value Yourself?

The first thing I’d like to say about self-value is that how you value yourself is the same way you value others. If you don’t value your time, you won’t value anyone else’s time either. For creatives, independent freelancers, and artists of all kinds it is very difficult to see your own value and even fostering that value in the first place can be extremely challenging.

However, it’s so important that you learn to value yourself and your time sooner rather than later. The lack of self-value creates the kind of inner conflict that keeps you from realizing your full potential. Once you sort out that conflict, you won’t hesitate to ask for more money when you’re working on freelance projects. We see this all over the freelance market; people don’t feel confident enough to ask for the remuneration that they are worth.

Why? Because they don’t value themselves, their time, or their skills enough to confidently price their services or product as they should. It is very important to spend time self-reflecting, looking inward, and honing in on how you value yourself and how others value you. It is also important to understand your relationship with yourself and with time because it’s such a finite resource.

Get Invested in Something Greater Than Your Ego

There’s another tweet that got me thinking and this one is from Diego Zambrano, one of my subscribers. In the tweet, he talked about how “real friends are the ones who stick around when you’re happy; the ones who disappear were feeding on your misery.” He also provided great advice for people who want to be happy in saying that they should “attach their ego to a higher purpose than themselves.” There’s a lot of truth to that.

When you’re working on something new that goes against what’s expected, whether that’s building a new business, starting a YouTube channel, or whatever project you have in mind, you’ll notice that a lot of people around you won’t support you like you thought they would and you will actually find that support in strangers.

That often happens because you are going on a new path and the people around you are stuck in their ways, so it’s difficult for them to come to terms with you taking steps forward while they are glued to the same spot. Of course, this is not all black and white. There’s a lot of nuances involved! The type of value you offer has to also be relevant to the people’s attention you crave! See value pyramid.

Have a Healthy Competition With Yourself

Another tweet that truly got me thinking comes from Sahil, and he said: “Competing with yourself is the ultimate positive-sum game.” This got me thinking about how we often fall into the comparison trap. We look at the best version of other people, which is what they show to the world, and we compare it to our version of ourselves, which is still under construction.

You may be having a rough time and then you go on social media and see all these people living the perfect life. That automatically makes you feel defeated and bad about yourself. However, you have no idea what those people are struggling with because that’s not what they show you. That’s something you have to keep in perspective.

The Importance of Contrast

Contrast is everything in life; black and white, sweet and salty, day and night, cold and warm. As human beings, our senses operate from contrast and everything we enjoy has contrast.

For example, there’s a big difference between eating something that has the perfect balance of sweet and savoury and eating something overly sweet and has no nuance to it. Which one do you enjoy more? It’s often the former because it has contrast.

That is true for everything in life. Contrast is always present and it’s what makes things interesting. You can use the power of contrast in your thinking and day-to-day life to make everything so much better. Learn to hack it and you will see a big difference in your career and your life.

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By Paul Syng

Paul Syng is a multi-disciplinary designer based in Toronto. He focuses on a problem-seeking, systems thinking approach that can take any form or function.