value.

What are you worth?

Are you thinking about money? I don't blame you. Society has made it seem like money is the only way to tell what you're worth. What kind of car you have, how many trips you're going on, whether you have the newest iPhone on the market or not, what you can showcase for others to see, but is that true value or are those things the value of what people perceive? Am I the only one who feels like when people ask me what I'm currently doing that I have to make myself sound like I'm so successful and sophisticated? What am I afraid of? We shouldn't have to base our value off of what others think about us because success is shown in so many different ways. Here's a personal example; I've gone to college for 3 semesters over the span of over 2 years and I've had to force myself to do it. In reality I believe that I was attending college because I felt an obligation to be "successful" and that I could only find success by going to school.

Wrong.

Education is key, but college isn't the definition of education. A friend once told me something that's stuck with me ever since; "Education is nothing without application." Some of the most intelligent people I've ever met have gone to school and have graduated with their bachelors, masters, and even their phd and I look up to them in so many ways for who they are and what they have achieved in life. At the same time I've met an equal amount of people who have created incredible lives, with stable family atmospheres and who are successful financially with a high school diploma. A degree doesn't indicate that you're a successful person, but rather it's the actions you take with what you've learned and how you apply yourself. Are you looking for opportunities to be out of your comfort zone, are you nervous, are you hungry for new opportunities and trying to push the fear aside of trying new things? If so, that's a GOOD feeling because that means that you're ready to learn something new, to fail and to pick yourself back up, and to ultimately learn new skills to apply in your life. As a recruiter in the past I asked the question "What makes you, you?" So many people would turn to their previous jobs and tell me about the computer knowledge they have and the amount of customer service experience they've had with people in a job atmosphere and then there were people who would tell me about parenthood, their trials, their goals that push them, their new hobbies that they're striving to turn into skills, and it's when I heard about THEM where I found value in who they were, not when I heard about their job experience or the qualifications that they had pertaining to a job.

I had a conversation tonight about what I would do if I won the lottery with the total being over 4 billion dollars. This was a serious conversation and I loved how authentic we were with our answers. The first thing that came to my mind was to invest the money in myself. You are your best investment. Yes, you can always invest in the stock market, real estate, bonds, retirement, etc. but you will always be your most crucial investment. What I mean by that is if you love to sing invest in yourself, buy equipment, take voice lessons, start writing, and use money to help you achieve something that you believe that you can be amazing at because the value in that will be 10x greater than the value of owning another property or putting money into the stock market. Don't get me wrong, having money is a crucial piece to achieving the specific lifestyle that you want for your future, but isn't your happiness more important? Or isn't the happiness and satisfaction of the person you love most important? We've turned this world into a world where money is most important, money proves value, but I want to continue reminding myself that value comes from who you are, how you connect with others, and what type of impact you're making for those around you. We need each other more than we need anything else. Make experiences together, start a blog and express your ideas, your creativity, your favorite things about life, start a podcast, take pictures, make videos, find new music every day, and above all appreciate each and every interaction you have with one another.

Value is who you are and what makes you, you.