I basically started this on twitter, but I want to write something that I think everyone can take something away from. You charge your employer for your time. Maybe not as much as you like, so lets assume you charge your employer what you feel like your time with them is worth.
Now here is a value that you can loosely use to factor into decisions. When you spend time with people, you do it for free; you are roughly giving up the amount you charge your employer in order to spend time with some person. When you think of these people in your head, would you pay someone (or forgo) the amount your employer would pay you to spend time with them? If not, and you think you would spend less money to spend time with them, and you spend time with them anyway, you are saying that your time is less valuable than you charge strangers (your employer). This is magnified exponentially if you actually spend money on the person as well.
If a person cannot assess your value, or cannot communicate your value to you, that person is intrinsically creating a space in which they will not give you what you are worth in the time you spend with them. So don’t spend time with them. Over time, this assumption of non-worth changes your internal value scale of what you are worth, because they treat you like you are worthless, and you accept that. I am worth what I charge my employers at the very least, and all of you are worth what you think you should charge them.
I realize this analogy is a bit tenuous, but it’s just to get people thinking. When you are alone, you have all the power in the world to create a $100/hr or $200/hr or $300/hr experience. But you lose some of this control over your experience around others in order to relate to them. If you can create a $100/hr experience for yourself, your friends should at least be able to meet or exceed that. If you’d only give up $50/hr to spend time with them, you are saying to yourself that you are worth that instead.
For your sake make sure your experiences with others are of a higher value than what you would give up to deal with the people you deal with all day at work.
