“Walk It Like I Talk It”: Seven Candid and Down-to-Earth Lessons about How The Word “Self-Value” Has Transformed My Life
In his book The Wealth Choice: Success Secrets of Black Millionaires, Dennis Kimbro shares a quote from John H. Johnson, an American businessperson and publisher. “If you want to know how people feel about themselves, look at their bank account. Money is the greatest measurement of your mind-set. Wealth is less a matter of circumstance than it is a matter of knowledge and choice.” While I find his position compelling, it doesn’t mention behavior. It assumes that a money mindset translates into bottom lines. It assumes that a mindset guarantees a behavior.
As someone who coaches and teaches women principles around becoming the heroes in their own stories, I can tell you from experience and practice that many of us can’t leave that connection to chance. The follow through from mindset to behavior has to be intentional. And so, I’d like to offer an alternative to Johnson’s message. I think there is another measure that is just as compelling, less loaded, and possibly more democratic. And if you’re into these sorts of things, I also believe that this other measure can increase one’s bottom line while decreasing one’s waistline. This measure is self-value.
In my 44 years of living, I’ve run across words that transformed the way that I do life. In my late 20’s, those words were “legacy” and “integrity.” In my 30’s, those words were “boundaries” and “entrepreneurship.” In my 40’s, the word “self-value” has been the game changer (right along with the word “wealth”), in part, because I see it as a way to hold myself accountable, as a way to make sure that my actions align with what I say I value. Value and self-value, it’s a checks and balances system. The big and small moves we make (or don’t take)—in the name of what we say we value—is the truest measure of how we feel about ourselves. In fact, I think it’s this constant interplay between values and self-value that creates the kind of accountability system that leads to living a more satisfying life and positions us to accomplish more of our goals and dreams.
During this last week of November, as we transition from gratitude to gifts, I’d like to share with you the importance of a self- word that often gets buried, conflated or confused with the others, at best. At worst, it’s overlooked. And yet, knowing and understanding this one, in particular, has the power to change the way you do business, connect with family, grow your empire, and practice self-care. It’s powerful—so powerful that I had to write about it.
And yet, I struggled with writing this post for two reasons. I wanted to ground the discussion in something tangible, not come across as too woo woo, and it was unclear to me how I’d accomplish that. Also, I was concerned about respectability politics. I didn’t want this post to be about policing other women’s behavior, shaming or the expectation of others to conform to a set of prescribed norms. So much of the messaging associated with self- words brings this kind of energy. This post offers something different. It offers a set of tools that will help you to remember your power and move in a way that leads to fulfillment— on your own terms.
Lesson 1: Don’t take your values for granted.
We can’t talk about self-value without talking about values. While they are connected, they are not the same. And yet, they are interdependent.
The Cambridge dictionary defines values as “the principles that help you to decide what is right and wrong, and how to act in various situations.” Values are core beliefs that help you determine what you should do. Self-value, on the other hand, is about action, it’s the follow up and follow through on those principles and beliefs. Dr. Steven Stosny, a highly regarded psychologist and author who has seen over 6,000 clients, defines self-value as “more behavioral than emotional, more about how you act toward what you value, including yourself, than how you feel about yourself compared to others.” Prior to learning this, if someone had asked me to offer my understanding of the word, I would’ve said, with extreme confidence, “Self-value means to feel like you’re worth something.” I’d be sort of right. Stosny makes it very clear that feelings are secondary. Self-value is primarily about actions. And that’s what sets it apart from values.
We often think that because we have a code of conduct that our behavior will automatically align with it. That’s simply not true. Here’s why. Sometimes we’re unclear about the code. This is often the case with religion and politics. For many of us, these value systems are inherited, taken for granted, never fully understood, studied and/or analyzed, and so our actions reflect the limited understandings that we have. We either move wherever the party line takes us or we act out of fear and peer pressure to avoid judgment and criticism. Or we spend time feeling guilty for not acting at all. Sometimes, our actions don’t align with what we say we value because, over time, our values expand, shrink or change altogether. And, if we’re not careful, we think that’s enough. We believe that the evolution of our mindset is the same as the evolution of our behaviors. We say things like, “When you know better, you do better.” But that’s not true. When you DO better, you DO better.
But why am I sharing this? I’m sharing it because you’re busy, and maybe you haven’t had time to give it much thought. Many of us are sitting at our computer eight to ten hours a day. Our minds are growing. We’re learning more. Our values are changing. But our behaviors are not keeping up with that change, in part, because we believe that it’s enough to know better, to believe better. Some of us know that knowing isn’t enough. And we want to do better, but our need to survive is dictating how we behave. Our work calendar and our bills are determining our every move. We are desperate, forever playing catch up, and always at the mercy of our schedule. We feel trapped. In fact, we feel so confined, SURVIVAL is the only value that’s determining our steps. Like a weed, the need to survive is suffocating every other value looking to grow around us. And we’re not even aware of it. And if we are aware of it, we believe that “it is what it is.” But it doesn’t have to be that way.
Here’s my challenge to you. Take a page out of my book, literally. Download, for FREE, the Self-Value Tank exercise, extracted from Covet: The “Disrespectful” Health and Wellness Journal, and complete the activity. It’s simple (maybe even fun), and yet, eye-opening in that it invites you to not only identify what you say you value, it asks you to indicate how much gas you are putting towards each of those values. And then it asks you to reflect on what you’ve learned. I created this tool for those of us who may not have an accountability system that helps us understand and think about the alignment (or misalignment) of our actions and words. Because we don’t have one in place, our life may be chaotic or unsatisfying or inefficient and full of holes. I created it so that we can have a visual for how we invest our energy and time to assist us with making choices about how to redistribute these resources, if necessary. Consider this: Some of us value wealth and wealth building, but our energy isn’t going towards increasing our net worth. Some of us say we value independence, but every chance we get, we’re giving our freedom away. I designed the Self-Value Tank to assist us with the work of “making it make sense” so that we can create the alignment we need to experience the life we want. You’re welcome :).
Lesson 2: Watch out for competing values…they will confuse your behavior.
For some time now, I have mentored and coached a woman who is the CEO/founder of a small business. She says she values wealth and stability. She says she values a life of ease, pleasure and comfort. And yet, her actions suggest something different. Her refusal to invest in her craft and charge prices that will stop her from being overworked, underpaid and resenting her clients suggests that she doesn’t take herself seriously and/or doesn’t believe in her talent. Her “Jill of all trades but master of none” approach to earning a living signals that she doesn’t think she can grow a company strong enough to sustain her.
She rationalizes that, in keeping with sound wealth advice, she is managing five to seven streams of income. But what she is really doing is flailing. She is throwing spaghetti at the wall, hoping it sticks, because at the core of everything, she doesn’t believe she is good enough to not struggle. She believes she is destined for hardship. In fact, dare I say, she is comfortable with struggle. It’s predictable and familiar and she believes that’s all life has to offer black women and girls who look like her. I say this with compassion and love because I recognize so many women that I coach in her. I recognize an earlier version of me in her.
She knows she has what it takes to succeed, and that scares her more than anything. Afterall, her success will contradict the worldview that she has held onto for so long about women like her: dark-skinned, born in poverty, a child of a single-parent home, daughter of an addict, etc. And if that belief system is shattered, who will she become? Besides, success is so isolating. It will take her away from everyone and everything she loves and values because very few people she knows have purchased houses, no one has made six figures, her friends and family have heard of investments but don’t know what they are or how they work. She will be alone.
The truth is this: Sometimes our values compete against and cancel each other out. And we’re not always aware of the internal conflict that’s raging within us. We want to be wealthy, but we fear selling out. We want to succeed, but that means that we may be separated from friends and family— at least for a while—but we value community. We want to build a successful company, but we want to also win at love in a patriarchal society where CEO and wife can be two identities that are at odds with each other.
And yet, as complex as these dynamics can be, here are some strategies to help you negotiate them. First, recognize that the tension is there. Don’t suppress or ignore it. Second, list the parts of you that are at odds with each other. Name them. Third, evaluate and prioritize—which values stay, leave or are placed on hold…for now? Fourth, rewrite and redefine the terms surrounding your remaining values in a way that makes room for the ones that are at odds to co-exist. The idea is not to compromise. Instead, the idea is to complement. The point is this. Don’t run from the internal war. Honor or resolve it with intention.
Lesson 3: Own your values without apology so that they don’t catch you off guard.
Some years ago, I was in a relationship that made me come to this conclusion: “If my actions are not aligning with what I say I value, I need to either change my actions or change what I say I value.” I was settling. At the time, I was a grad student with a very hectic schedule who was also raising five children without the benefit of a partner. Struggling to balance the rigors of earning a PhD and being a mom to a gaggle of little people, I sought advice from an Afro-Canadian woman in my program that I admired. She was in the final stages of her doctoral journey, and she seemed to have it altogether. The question was this: How? How did she make it look so easy? Here’s what she shared, “It was difficult for me. But my advisor told me something. He said, ‘You got the same 24 hours in the day that everyone else has. How you use them is up to you?’ That advice changed my life.” It changed mine, too.
Thinking about how I could make that advice my own, I realized that my prime time work hours would have to be when the kids went to bed. And so, I created a schedule that seemed like an impossible, unachievable game of Jinga. Carefully, I stacked my responsibilities in different time slots to ensure that my kids were asleep by 7:30 pm, and I was in bed an hour later so that I could be up by 4 am. Over time, I mastered that schedule, fell in love with getting up before the sun, and produced more than I imagined. Finally, my life was balanced.
And then I got tangled up with some guy who told me that my schedule— the one that I worked so hard to achieve—left no time for him. Never mind that he had more flexibility than I did, as he was juggling far less than I was. I adjusted my plan so that I could accommodate a man that made no adjustments for me. Before I knew it, my life was back out of order, and he was gone. That was the moment I had to take a long, hard look at myself. It was the moment that I asked, “What do I value? Having a man or accomplishing my goals?” The truth was this: I valued both. Prior to that, like many powerful and goal oriented women, I was either too ashamed or too proud or both to say out loud that I wanted a partner. I was just quietly hoping that it would happen. I thought being “effortless” in my approach to love prevented me from appearing weak or vulnerable. I didn’t want to step outside of my comfort zone. And so I had no plan, criteria or strategy about what a partnership would look like or how I would balance it with my doctoral pursuits. Ultimately, I not only compromised, I jeopardized my mission to succeed.
In hindsight, I realized that I needed to prioritize and establish some boundaries. I allowed someone to make decisions for my life, didn’t protect what I worked to create (my schedule), and gave away my power. To decrease the likelihood of these things ever happening again, I decided that, to the extent that I could, I’d be honest about my values. I wouldn’t let anyone shame me about what mattered to me. And in doing so, I would monitor my actions to make sure that I was living out my principles, be intentional about addressing any conflict among them, and adjust in ways that made sense— not out of fear or insecurity—from a place of empowerment.
Lesson 4: Improving your self-value improves all the other self- words…
Between 2020 and 2021, I lost over 40 pounds. I was a long way away from my weight goal. And yet, the more I worked out, tracked my meals, drank water, got eight hours of sleep, walked and took my vitamins, the more my self-esteem increased. I was still overweight, and yet, I had more respect for myself during my weight loss journey than I had when I was at my goal size.
The reality was this: Where I was trying to get to, I had already been. My goal weight was once my normal weight. I didn’t appreciate it then because the only relationship I had with my body was detachment and other people’s judgment of it. “You’re husky.” “You’re built for hard labor.” “You have the perfect mind. I just wish you were ‘packaged’ differently.” “You’re like a Cracker Jack box, every time someone goes in, they get a prize.” Other people had constructed the narrative around my body. And I gave them that power.
When I started owning my health and wellness journey, that changed everything for me. My self-esteem was no longer associated with how others perceived me or with the number on the scale. Instead, it was connected with the relationship I was building with myself through the daily and consistent steps I was taking towards my health and wellness goals. I think that is one of the biggest rewards I’ve experienced with my self-value journey. Because my actions align with what I say matters to me, I have grown in the areas of self-esteem (what I think and believe about myself), self-confidence (belief that I am good at a particular thing), self-worth (a deep knowing that I am valuable no matter what) and self-love (how warmth towards myself plays out). With this in mind, if I had to recommend a self- word to begin with, it would be self-value over everything else.
Lesson 5: If we’re going to compare, might as well let it fuel your self-value journey (Part 1)
It’s been said that “comparison is the thief of joy.” People write articles about this. They talk about it. And yet, as humans, many of us cannot avoid it. We get in our own way, comparing ourselves to others. When we’re not doing that, the more savvy among us (note the sarcasm) compare ourselves to ourselves. (That’s me. I am among those people.) The problem is this: Whether you are comparing yourself to others, or I am comparing myself to myself, either way, we’re creating a distraction from what we say we value which means we are potentially compromising the steps we need to take to honor those values.
But why? Sometimes we do it because we don’t believe we have the ability to develop the behaviors and habits in ourselves that we admire in someone else. We compare not because we admire the outcome (the Gucci bag, the expensive car, the doting partner) but because we don't trust ourselves enough to follow through with the process that leads to the outcome. (Somebody is “shook” right now because I’m referring to them, and I don’t even know it.) Sometimes we compare ourselves to ourselves because we haven’t accepted who we are today, or we are frustrated because we are no longer who we were yesterday. (Now, I’m “shook” because I’m referring to myself, and I do know it.) Whatever our reason is, it’s important that we figure it out and don’t get stuck on the parallels. Otherwise, we not only find ourselves in some kind of limbo space that exists between vision and actualization, we run the risk of behaving in ways that delay our ability to follow through with our values, as well as contradict and sabotage them.
Consider this example from my life. With regard to my own weight loss journey, my progress has been stifled because I’m mad that I’m here in the first place— here being on the wrong side of my goals. I was well on my way to where I needed to be— down 40 pounds, practicing yoga regularly, strength training several times a week…and walking every day— and then life happened. When I think of all that I had to go through to get to where I was, to make the progress that I had made, I get frustrated for two reasons: 1) I don’t trust that I will be able to do it again, and 2.) I want to pick back up where I left off, but I know I’m not there yet. Slowly but surely, I am starting to accept that. Prior to this recent acceptance, I hadn't been able to create a realistic health and wellness plan. The results? Every time I started, I failed. When I wasn’t doing that, I wasn’t doing anything at all. This is the problem I’m having with comparisons: It makes it difficult for me to do the things that I say I value. I value health and wellness but, lately, my stubborn refusal to accept that I have to start where I am has sabotaged any previous behavior that tried to honor that value.
Here is one way to resolve the comparison issue: acceptance. That’s the buzzword for this section. Of course, in an ideal world, I wouldn’t be sizing myself up against who I was. But the world is less than ideal. I accept that there are moments when I compare myself to who I was last year. Instead of judging or criticizing myself for doing it, or instead of feeling ashamed or guilty, I hold space for it. I ask myself this: What is it about the past version of me that I keep looking to? What is that version of me trying to tell the current me? What am I supposed to learn from her? This is me trusting that the impulse to compare is not because I am broken or damaged or flawed or evil or bad but because there is something that I need to understand. And so, I open up myself to receive that message in a way that is objective and gentle, kind and concerned with my best interest and growth. I ask myself, how can I take what the other (be it the other me or someone else) has to offer me and turn it into fuel that helps me honor what I say I value?
Lesson 6: If we’re going to compare, might as well let it fuel your self-value journey (Part 2)
Here’s something else to consider. Sometimes, when we hold space for the comparison, we discover that we are comparing ourselves to someone else not because they have a lesson to teach us that will help us honor our values but because there is something in them that is calling into question our actual principles and beliefs. We are struggling with whether or not we should dig deeper into our convictions, amend them or abandon them altogether.
Consider this example. When I was in grad school, I watched my ex and his then girlfriend thrive. They bought cars and houses. They traveled and gave their children things I couldn’t provide for my own. I was jealous. There I was, in school, doing what I thought was the right thing. They were selling drugs, caught up in identity theft, etc. But I envied them. Watching through my rear-view mirror, I drove away many times, as they partied and had fun. I watched them as I headed back to the discomfort of torturing myself by reading theory and criticism, struggling with ADHD to sit and write papers, and sacrificing friends and family ties so that I could make it through that program. If that wasn’t bad enough, I had done the math. I would have to work one million years to get to a place that only took them two years to arrive at— not really, but that's what it felt like. I was resentful. It didn’t help that they often mocked me and told me that I was stupid for wasting all that time in school. According to them, I’d just end up broke.
For a few years, I couldn’t find an easy way to resolve the tension within myself. Obviously, I didn’t want to do anything illegal. But I also understood why they were doing illegal things. I knew where they had come from, and I knew their circumstances. I understood the opportunities they didn’t have. I also understood that so many startups had gotten seed money from “less than ideal” circumstances— be it white collar crime or otherwise—so I wasn’t judging their lifestyle. For me, the issue wasn’t about respectability. In fact, I didn’t know what it was about.
Over time, I realized that, the difference wasn’t even about the outcomes and who fulfilled their dreams first. It was about values. And yet, even then, things were murky. Like me, they valued stability and a roof over their family’s heads. Like me, they valued hard work, friends and family. And even if the degree to which we valued these things were different, like me, they valued freedom and education. Where we parted ways was our principles around drugs, beliefs about safety, ideas of integrity, and codes around loyalty. Again, they had these things, but their practice looked different from my own.
Understanding the similarities, nuanced differences and major differences, I decided to continue my walk because my values and self-value were aligned. I didn’t have that language at the time. Whether I saw it this way or not, they held a mirror to me. It was one that made me question my entire journey and could have led to me aborting my mission of earning a PhD, as I was unsure about whether or not the hardship was worth it. The gratification was too delayed. I was longing for something quick and fast. Yet, I strongly valued education and research. I valued teaching and studying women and mothers. I knew that even if I chose to leave academia, in order for me to do those things well, I needed to be trained. And I valued the training I was gaining through my doctoral program.
Sometimes comparison gives us what we need to practice self-value with conviction. Sometimes it gives us the inspiration we need to change some of what we say we value and to revolutionize our steps.
Lesson 7: Measure the measure.
In our previous post, I shared a common experience I had while working at the Writing Center. I wrote about how students would verbally tell me their thesis and supporting points, but when I asked them to point these out in their writing, they couldn’t show them to me. I think that our experience with self-value can be like that. We believe we live out what we say we value, but when it’s time to point to the behaviors that support our claims, we come up short. Part of the problem is that we often do not have checks and balances in place to make sure our words and actions align. Here are three tools to consider having to help you keep those two in sync.
With regard to health and wellness, I swear by my apps. As a business owner, mom, and partner, keeping up with the details of my own life can be challenging. For years, I convinced myself that I was getting roughly 7-8 hours of sleep. I knew that’s what I needed to function, so I made myself believe that I was in the ballpark. I’d be confused about why I was tired and struggled to focus throughout the day. But when I started wearing my FitBit, the report was sobering. I was getting anywhere between 4-5 hours of sleep. I valued movement throughout the day, and not living a sedentary life. If you asked me how many steps I took on a daily basis, my answer would’ve been about 7k-10k. In truth, the response was about 2k. I thought I was getting about 32 oz of water, but when I started tracking my intake using a water app, I wasn’t even getting 24 oz. At night, I gather all my personal stats for the day, recorded across my apps and write them in the spaces provided in my Covet journal, and then I reflect on them. There is no guessing or biased estimations. There’s only objective data to help me understand if I am doing what I say I value, or not.
Coaching is an integral part of my self-value plan. I have ADHD. I struggle with structure, organization, deadlines and, of course, focus. My mind is like a library full of books with no shelves. Meeting my coaches on a regular basis— writing, health, financial, etc.--helps me to create playbooks, maintain follow through and stay inspired on my journeys. The coaching I offer often overlaps with the coaching I receive. This means I am fully capable of designing and developing my own strategies for success (which I often do). I am capable of being my own cheerleader (which I often am). I am capable of consistently showing up for the plans I create (which I do). But I’m stubborn, and sometimes I refuse to stray and pivot from a carefully laid plan. I can’t see my blindspots. There are days I feel too broken, uninspired and unsure, to speak life into myself. It’s for these reasons that I am a coach who has coaches. They assist me with developing and maintaining the behaviors that will make it possible for me to live a satisfying life.
Before coaches and apps, journaling was my main checks and balances system. It’s where I questioned my behaviors, clarified my position on things, and called myself out. During a health and wellness pilot program that Infamous Mothers launched in 2020, our women were showing up, doing the work, and transforming themselves. But over time, I watched a disconnect begin to develop between their minds and their bodies. They forgot why they were doing the work. They needed something to glue the two together, otherwise, it would be a matter of time before things would begin to unravel. We tried spreadsheets, apps and journals that were already on the market. None of them worked. And so, I created Covet: The “Disrespectful” Health and Wellness Journal. Because of my own experiences with journaling, I believed in its power so much, I created one for women like us. And the feedback has been mind blowing, mainly because it has been helping women align their values with their self-value in so many ways. It’s an experience that reminds them of their power.
Conclusion
My grandma used to always say, “I mean what I say, and I say what I mean.” I think in 2023, I’m going to challenge myself to “Do what I say, and do what I mean.” If between 2018 and 2019 I was living out my “year of yes,” I think 2023 is my year of self-value. I am declaring to be that. And based on the success I’ve had over these past years aligning my mindset with my behaviors, I predict that I might accomplish dreams wilder than my wildest ones. What do you think? Will you join me?
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About the Blogger
Dr. Sagashus Levingston is an author, entrepreneur and PhD holder. She has two fur babies, Maya and Gracie, six children (three boys and three girls), and they all (including her partner) live in Madison, WI. She loves all things business, is committed to reminding moms of their power, and is dedicated to playing her part in closing the wealth gap for people of color and women. She believes that mothering is a practice, like yoga, and she fights daily to manage her chocolate intake. The struggle is real, y’all…and sometimes it’s beautiful.
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