Do you want to make more money?

Do you wish you felt more confident negotiating for yourself?

Do you see your income as a reflection of your worth as a person?

If any of those questions resonate, chances are you have some unhelpful ideas about monetary value that are holding you back in ways you don’t even realize.

That’s why this week, I’m going to explore some common thoughts about money and worth, and teach you how to advocate for yourself financially without unnecessary drama.

First, I want to explore your beliefs about your value as a person.

Why?

Women are socialized to question our worth and value in every way.

We’re taught from a young age that our worth depends on other people’s evaluation of us.

We’re taught that how our body looks to men matters more than how it feels to us.

That making other people happy is more important than making ourselves happy, and that the most important thing is that other people like us and approve of us.

And so we end up relying on external validation to prove our worth, over our own internal experience.

As you can imagine, this puts us at a huge disadvantage in financial conversations.

Because what happens when we doubt our value on a moral level?

We seek validation – especially from men and authority figures – to prove our worth.

Which, of course, translates to: anxiety, people-pleasing, and self-doubt.

When your conception of your own MORAL worth is wrapped up in your FINANCIAL worth, when your very right to exist is on the line in your own mind, you will always be plunged into emotional drama when it comes to negotiating your salary or creating your pricing structure.

Whether you get a 3% raise or a 7% will feel like someone is deciding whether you are a good enough person to be considered worthy to exist.

And if a potential client balks at your prices, you will feel like they are devaluing you as a human.

Sound familiar?

Here’s what you need to know: Your economic value is not your MORAL value.

You have inherent value and worth simply because you exist.

And more than that, you are not less of a person because the market doesn’t place financial value on something you create.

Just look at all the things we consider “priceless” that we can’t exchange for currency: love, intimacy, kidneys.

Love doesn’t lack value simply because we can’t trade it on the stock market.

Value is just a thought someone has, and there are as many types of value as there are human thoughts about it.

Only when you are truly able to separate economic worth and value from all other kinds of value can you feel secure in your own moral value and worth.

That is when you can make aligned decisions for yourself about what kind of value you want to create in the world for yourself and others – economic or otherwise. 

That is when you can enter financial negotiations from a place of power, knowing that no amount of money can validate your worth as a human because your worth as a human is intrinsic and invaluable.

When you remove the drama from the equation, negotiations are actually pretty straightforward.

Your job in a negotiation is to advocate for the monetary value of the results you can produce through your labor.

It isn’t your boss’s job to see your value or to magically agree with you, or even to validate that you’re smart enough or good enough.

It definitely isn’t their job to validate your worth as a human being. That isn’t up to them even if they wanted to.

What you are paid is simply a reflection of the market. It’s a reflection of the person who is trading you money for your work seeing the financial value of the results you produce.

As an employee or an entrepreneur, you are responsible for producing valuable results AND communicating that value.

When you ascribe meaning beyond that to a negotiation, you set yourself up for failure.

You take everything personally and put too much emotional weight on the conversation. You don’t think strategically because you’re caught up in validating your own ego.

But if your goal is simply to explain the financial value of the results you produce?

Now you know what to brainstorm about, how to explain your value, how to communicate about why someone should hire you or pay you.

Now it’s math, not drama.

If someone disagrees with you, either you didn’t explain it well, or you have a difference of opinion about the financial value of your results.

You may decide to live with what they’re willing to pay for your results, or you may decide to find another boss or client.

Either way, you won’t experience unnecessary drama about the situation, because you won’t feel like your right to exist is on the line.

Whether you’re interested in tripling your income or you’re more focused on creating other kinds of value in your life, you can know with certainty that you are valuable and worthy as-is.

That is never up for debate.

Everything else is just math.