How valuable are you?

Value is the holy grail when it comes to playing the social game. The pursuit of confidence, money and respect is never the right direction to take as they are all simply aftereffects of being "Valuable". Thus, sayings such as "Just be confident" never work as it is as foolish as saying "Just be valuable". It cannot be gained on the spot. Do note that value here does not refer to how much you would be ransomed for if you get kidnapped rather in this case it refers to what you can offer to other people in an immaterial sense. Deep down in our subconscious, everybody roughly knows how inherently valuable they are. Those suffering from low self esteem simply do not perceive themselves as having self-worth and those who suffer from social anxiety are insecure about their value to others. Naturally these would be linked as it is hard for one who does not believe they are worth much to believe that others would find them worthwhile. Hence, remember from now on the single most important question you need to drill into your head is how much you are worth to other people.

How about some examples? For starters having contacts, being fun and being good looking will boost your “social value”. It is always about what you can bring to the table. Though it is vexing for such to be the case, it is the truth that everyone questions what you are worth to them at least subconsciously. While measuring a person by their social value is a terribly black and white way to think of people, it is accurate and will allow one to faster learn the dynamics of society and become a "social beast". Knowing clearly what you need is the first step to attaining it. 

As hard as it may be to describe the social “value” of a person in words, I have come to believe that its total is comprised of “perceived value” and “actual value”. As the names suggests, the perceived value of a person captures the face value of a person. In the metaphor world it would be judging a book by its cover and is akin to advertising whereas actual value is how valuable you actually are once people get to know you. Here are just some examples of each subsection of value.

Perceived Value	Actual Value
Acting Confident	Being Confident
Dressing Well	Being Good Looking
Good Body Language	Having Great Personality
Fancy Car	Success in all aspects of life
	Interesting
	Intelligent

The list goes on but can you see how it works? I could very well dress the world’s most boring man person in Armani, slap on a Rolex and instruct him to drive a Bugatti around town and a sizable number of people would claw each other’s faces of to meet him. Of course this is until they discover how incredibly boring he is and proceed to find greener pastures.

But if perceived value is superficial then why do we need it? Because it is similar to ordering food.

Above is a picture of stinky tofu, one of the most unappetizing looking snacks sold in South East Asian markets. Had I not heard of it, I would avoid it like the plague and it is the same with perceived value. Upon meeting new people, we all need an acceptable level of perceived value for most people to even give us a chance of getting to know them better which is why it is so vital. On the opposite spectrum is having abundant perceived value but no actual value which can be summed up as following:

To conclude, the first step to conquering social anxiety and boost confidence is to work on obtaining both perceived value and actual value. Perceived value will attract people into getting to know us and actual value will keep them interested. 

In the next few articles, we will explore just how to go about generating this value.