What value can you bring to the world?

I woke up this morning thinking about the value that I bring to this world. This meant pondering about what I was contributing to my fellow humans. Was I doing enough? I decided that I can do more. I can add more value into this world if I chose to spend my time in different ways than I am right now. I still need to stay consistent and be deliberate with my actions.

But why care about creating value? To me, it feels good to create value in someone’s live. Whether that is through my job or hobbies or interactions with a stranger or just about anything. There is always the opportunity to create value.

Value and creation seem to go pretty well together. So what is value? I think that value is providing some thing or service that makes a problem a bit better of an experience. This happens through creation.

Where is value created? Pain is an inevitable life experience. All of our pains feel like problems. Problems that we seek to solve. We value what can solve these problems. Everyone has problems of some sort.

It’s these problems that drive our economic systems where we exchange things of value for other things of value that solve our problems. Money has made this exchange process easier, but before that we had trade.

Value is usually created by solving problems. This is why successful businesses and people focus on solving problems. If there is no problem then there in no market. It’s also why businesses with a customer centric focus do better. After all, it is the customer who has the problem.

The opposite of value creation businesses and people are ones that are scams, frauds, overpromising and under delivering, and any other inauthentic practices. They’re like leaches on our society that zap away value. Just like people that perpetually complain. Complainers think that by verbalizing their complaints that they make the world a better place and add value with their “insights”. But they don’t.

Trust is one of the most value intangibles that a person or business creating value can have. Delivering value can be difficult without trust. You have to trust your customers to pay you properly and fairly. You have to trust businesses and people to hold up their end of the agreement. Trust is the backbone of our value creation systems.

Why else seek to create value? I think there is a connection between purpose and value. On a personal level if you are providing value I think that it is intrinsically fulfilling. If in your job or life you feel like you are not creating anything of value then you are more likely to feel unfulfilled.

I don’t know the feeling yet but I think that is why people say parenting is one of the toughest but most rewarding things you can do in life. There is so much value being created for your kids and time given. But value creation is work and takes energy. Parenting especially.

So that’s the trade off. Hard word and energy used to create something of value. Something I need to do more of.

I appreciate you.

M

P.s. This post is a bit more scrappy, rambly, and less polished. They might be this way for a bit (or a long time) while I get back into writing and posting. I’m aiming to get better.