Good morning and happy Friday.

I hope you've got your cup of coffee with you.

I'm Heather Masters and this is Friday features.

And if you've been following me this week, you'll know I'm doing a 10 day challenge with the hope of getting a little bit of promotion at the end of it to help me grow my channel.

And on growing my channel, I would love it if you could follow, subscribe and like the video to help me grow a little bit more and get, get my videos seen by more people.

The, the idea of doing these is that someone somewhere will find something useful in these.

So that's my plan to, to help anyone in any way I can.

So if you can support me in that, that would be brilliant.

So today I'm diving into a topic that really just came up for me this morning.

But I think in these days where jobs are changing and we're being called probably to take on two or three jobs just to get through the day that our self worth linked to our work can, you can kind of lose confidence in yourself if you feel you're doing a lesser job, if you like.

I know I've been there and done that and I know that if you allow it, your mind can convince you that you know, you're no longer good enough to go get the work that you really want to do.

And I think that's, that's quite untrue.

I, I do feel sometimes we can learn so much from the work we do.

We can learn so much about ourselves and what we're willing to tolerate, how we can improve our self worth, what we learn about other people as well.

And it can actually encourage ourselves to be compassionate where we may not have been seen before.

So let's dive in and really explore the concepts and, and what I actually mean by all of this.

So when we think about self worth, it's easy to tie it to our job and it's easy to tie it to job titles and also to identify ourselves with the jobs we have.

Yet we're not our jobs, we're not the work that we do.

So self worth should come from more of what we, what we feel ourselves to be.

We're all miracles.

You know, it's a miracle that we're all here.

If you, you look at the statistics, we're all essential to the jigsaw puzzle of life, to the jigsaw puzzle of the universe.

You know, if that one piece is missing, then the jigsaw puzzle just isn't finished.

So whether you're a CEO or a toilet cleaner.

Your contribution matters.

And every role plays a part in the bigger picture.

And as I say, even our, our identity shouldn't be linked necessarily to the work that we do.

And in fact, if we can be who we want to be and step into the truth of who we are, then everything else kind of falls away.

Whether you're cleaning bathrooms or whether you'', the CEO of one of the biggest organizations in the world, your self worth shouldn't really be tied to that.

And if we think about those who clean bathrooms, for instance, because I've been there and done it, I did that during, during COVID your self worth is, it shouldn't be tied to that.

And the, the intention, the reason you're doing it, has a much greater value than the work that you're doing.

And if you're taking pride in your work, no matter what type of work you're doing, whether you're planting seeds, whether you're cleaning bathrooms, whether you're in customer services, that pride in the work is what's important.

And every role has a place.

I've heard it said that cleaning bathrooms, for instance, and caring are low paid roles because you don't need that many skills.

But should it be more about the value and importance of the role?

So if we don't clean bathrooms, I'm sure we've all had the experience of working walking into a public bathroom and deciding, I'll hold it because, you know, it's just not very nice.

So the value in having a clean space, the value in knowing that someone's taken care to provide that clean space is massive really.

You know, it gives that feeling of, yes, I can use this space because someone's taken that level of care for it to be clean.

And the same as with customer service, a customer service person, we go back to companies because of the customer service.

We go back to public toilets because we can rely on them being clean.

So, you know, have, have respect for those people who, who do good jobs and to take pride in their jobs no matter what that job is.

And when we link our self respect to the importance of our work, rather than just our intelligence or societal status around it, we can elevate our standards by kind of committing to being proud of what you do and to showing that pride in how you show up for that work, you can see your task as part of a larger mission.

I mean, one of the things that I used to do, I cleaned holiday cottages June 2020, when not many people wanted to do cleaning.

And for me the importance was of Looking at the standards that I had for myself.

So if I went somewhere, what would I expect in terms of the standard of cleanliness for a room?

And I would aim to go beyond that.

And that allowed me to take pride in what I was doing, even though what I was doing wasn't what I wanted to do, particularly at that time.

But I understood the reasons behind me doing it and I understood the importance of the difference I could make and providing an excellent clean room for the experience of those holiday makers.

And during that time what, what a difference that could make to them and that not only enhances, you know, your self esteem but it opens doors to greater opportunities because you're showing up with that energy, that energy draws better opportunities for you later.

So remember that everyone has a role on this planet and some of those jobs that we perhaps have seen in the past as being load paid, yet they're essential to our daily functions are actually going to become more important as we move forward as automation takes over a lot of other roles.

So recognize the unique contribution of those who are willing to do those jobs and who are willing to take pride in doing them on the basis that maybe that's where they are at that moment, that's where they are at their season in life.

For instance, I did some work for a B and B about 10, 15 years ago when I, it was a kind of a two month stint helping them work out how to put processes and things in place for this B and B.

And there was a woman there who was a cleaner and the guy who owned the BNB hadn't spoken to her and I used to sit down every morning and you know, her coffee break and have a conversation with her.

And she was actually a microbiologist who had come over from, I think it was Serbia, I could be wrong, but she was a war refugee and because she didn't have English as a second language, all she could do was that cleaning work.

To put herself through the English as a second language qualifications and to, to be able to get her qualifications recognized in the uk.

This is, this guy had basically looked on her as a person who could only get cleaning work.

And to an extent that was right, she could only get that type of work until she took the qualifications that were, would allow her her own higher qualifications and her own experience to be recognized in the uk.

So sometimes it's really easy to jump to conclusions as why somebody's doing that particular role and because we see it as a lower role that we, we look down on them when often they're doing something more courageous than maybe you or I would ever do.

Sometimes it takes courage to do what it takes, if that makes sense.

So don't always jump to assumptions about the people who are doing these jobs.

They have higher intentions, they have bigger dreams, and they're doing it for a fundamental reason.

And then more importantly, even though they're in that place, they're doing it with pride and with conviction and with positive intentions.

So I hope this helps today.

I don't know why this came up, but it just felt like it was something that, that needed to be shared and said.

So I hope, I hope it encourages people if, if you're losing your job and you're feeling you're having to do what it takes.

You know, Don, give up on the bigger dream and at the same time put in the passion and the purpose into the work that you're doing now because that will invite in the work that you want to do.

So this Friday, I hope this encourages you to reflect on your own self worth and your own self respect in your professional life.

Embrace whatever it is that you're doing with pride and recognize that every contribution counts.

So let's value ourselves and let's celebrate that value.

And please do like share and subscribe.

And this is day five of my day ten of going live.

So I will see you over the weekend.

So I'll see you tomorrow for Saturday and I haven't chosen a title for it, but I'll see you tomorrow for another live at hopefully around 11am have an amazing Friday and bye for now.

Thank you so much for taking the time to listen to this week's episode.

If you enjoyed it or think it would be valuable to others, please do share.

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All of the links are in the show notes and I look forward to seeing you next week on the Choosing Happy Podcast.