Yardsticks: Thinking About How We Measure Our Lives
“Why do we measure our worth in such ways? We all do it -either by our bank account or pant size, our IQ or length of our bio, the number of visitors to our web site or the number of people in our rolodex”. — Patti Digh
By nearly every one of these measures, I’m not wining.
My standardized test scores were average and my GPA from undergrad below average. Fortunately my pant size has decreased over the years, my bio could be summed up in waves and words. And other than my online friends, most of them don’t have web sites so I can’t count that one.
Of course this is a common thought process that happens when we get into the business of comparing our insides to someone else’s outsides. If our sense of worth is always measured in yardsticks, there’s always going to be more than we currently are or have.
- More books to sell
- More money in the bank
- More visitors to the website
- More notches in your bedpost, list of countries you’ve visited, or cars in your garage
- More degrees to earn, more accolades to accumulate, more badges of honor to brag about
Someone is always ahead, and someone is always behind. I forget this at least once a day and become a world class CEO of comparing my insides to other people’s outsides. As I was reading through Patti’s book Life is a Verb, (my morning meditation for the last few days), I came across this sentence that inspired the idea for this essay:
“What if instead of acquiring country notches on my belt, I measured the depth of my engagement with different cultures?”
I started to think about the depth of engagement with my life and my work.
De Angela Duff introduced me to some of her masters students who are listening to Unmistakable Creative as part of their work at NYU
Yesterday another listener of our podcast emailed me to tell me her husband turned her onto the show, she started listening and now she has her kids listening
You can’t quantify or measure the value of these things with yardsticks. They don’t drastically raise downloads, or sponsorship income. But theres’ an immeasurable sense of fulfillment they provide. If you ask me where I made more money, it would be from my paychecks. If you asked me where I created more value, it would be from everything else I’ve done. If I only measured my life using yardsticks, it’s possible none of it would have been worth doing.
Of course you have to measure things to run a business. But while we do that, it’s worth keeping in mind the infinite value of things that can’t be measured.
I’m the host of The Unmistakable Creative Podcast.
