Know the Value of Your Time and Presence

When I was younger I used to never think in terms of what was best for me, but more always clearly identify with what disrupts the harmony within a social dynamic. Crazy right? Not so much to the overwhelming majority of people who identify with being emotional, emphatic, or intuitive. This idea can range across a spectrum of people with a range of preferences.

Many people lead lives with the conditioned focus and value on others. I’m going to talk a little about that, your truth, the space people take up in your life, and the value of your presence and time.

Why do we put others before ourselves? A commonly asked question to individuals all over the world who suffer from social cycles of putting others before themselves only to never move forward. This issue has a lot to do with the lack of valuing our self and more of valuing others. Somewhere along the way, these kinds of individuals were taught to put less of a focus on their own needs and more of a focus on others, either from upbringing, or survival perhaps.

Whatever the case may be, Never putting that focus on yourself can be extremely damaging and slow down your progress. Learning how to say no to others and yes to yourself can be seen as an obvious belief, but is more complicated then the action seems.

If you are reading this article, and you tend to put people before yourself, know that when you do this you neglect to give yourself what you truly need, whether what you need is attention, love, or respect. Valuing others before ourselves is a sign of self-esteem, self-worth, and self-confidence challenges, which stem from deeper fears, like being worthless, or not valuable.

A lot of these concepts are covered in a typology called the enneagram. To really break the cycle of putting others before yourself, you have to both look into the past and look at past experiences where you operated in a balanced way.

For example, if looking into your past isn’t enough to defuse the cycle, perhaps remembering a time when you did say yes to yourself will work. Not only that, but within that experience, ask yourself how it felt to put yourself, why did you feel that way?

What outcome was there when you did put yourself first? What were the long term effects? The moment you put yourself first and start valuing yourself before others are when you start to move forward within your interpersonal relationships whether they be personal or work-related.

Know Your Truth

Know who you are, what you stand for (within this moment), what you will or will not accept. Know what you will not stand for and accept from others. Know your boundaries. Be in the know, if you haven’t gotten the picture. So many people loosely float through social situations without knowing their own rules of conduct.

For example, do you mix business with pleasure, if someone makes fun of you will you tolerate that experience or say something? Will you stand up for what you think is right despite the majority's favor?

Part of this is trusting your core, what you feel and think to be right. Without knowing your truth, you live in the shadow and the ambiguity of others. You will lie open vulnerable to be given environmental data that you may not want to integrate.

For example, tolerating and giving people chances really avoids dealing with bigger actions that need to be taken personally, like sticking true to your self-respect. Know your truth applicable, and if broken, displace yourself from these situations.

Your Space

Knowing your space is a new perspective, but I’ll tell you one thing, everyone has their own space, their own personal land on which they operate. Respecting someone’s personal terrain is important in a friendship or relationship. For example, a very negative example is someone who allows anyone to come into their space, their home, their moments, their conversation maybe.

Allowing others to be intrusive is a signal that there is less the importance of what you need to feel secure and more allow others with a sense of lack of value or desperation, or attention.

Know your space, you are the traffic police officer to the intersection of your space. You can safely tell people to be on their way, or allow them into your space. Everyone has different preferences in how they work, and so I believe fewer people operate with this challenge. It exists, and sometimes you may yourself overstep into someone’s space without knowing it. Keep an eye out to be aware of how you affect others and where you find yourself walking. Make sure you are welcome!

Your Time

Your time is everything. You are given only so much of it in this life, and we tend to forget that we are on a limited duration of existence. Therefore, I think it’s safe to say that your time is not only an asset but something that only goes up in value.

Something I realized growing up that never made sense to me, was that people were trading their time to work for minimum wage, while the potential that person has to ale an even larger impact puts there’s time to be worth significantly more. Most people don’t think in terms of time. Most people go unaware that their time is worth more than what they are sued to understanding.

I’ve tested this idea out myself, asking people what they thought their time was worth per hour, if we were translating it to hours, and a lot of people failed to give me a number realistic to what they actually aspired to be. Knowing what your time is worth, is everything.

The first thing I think most people need to realize is that you are an asset, an essential person who plays a role within all that is. The next thing I think everyone needs to do in discovering how much your time is worth is literally understanding the dream you have to impact the world. Your current skills and I suppose job experience if you want to go there.

More often there not, people fail to metricize their personal worth, I guess from a fear of lack of value or self-worth. Knowing how much your time is worth is paramount in business, in dating, and in plenty of other dimensions in life.

When it comes to people, knowing the value of your time is no different. If people around you aren’t appreciative of your time being there, then they are not valuing your time as much as someone deeply and sincerely as someone else potentially. We’re living in a world where we naturally undervalue other’s time and fail to become aware of this fact.

There is, however, a growing trend that I’ve noticed, of people being more selective due to the individualist movement. People are starting to realize what their time is truly worth beyond what an employer is telling them, and that’s incredible. Get on that bandwagon.

Your Presence

Presence is more than just being present than how I was referring to in the time section. Your presence is something that is intimate, personable, and spiritual in nature. Having someone’s presence is having undivided attention, it's having that person's mind, body, and soul within the same moments you share.

Knowing the importance of your presence and the powerful role it plays to impact others is huge. Presence may be the biggest aspect of social dynamics that I know because presence is everything to communication.

Without presence we have passivity, we have a lack of attention, we have displaced energy. Presence is an active form of focus that encompasses that individual being totally interested. Giving and taking away presence is like the same as giving and taking a cookie from a child.

Some people have learned to utilize presence as a form of manipulation, some don’t know even know what presence is at all, and live through life continuously harming others subconsciously. Know that you have control of where you put your attention.

Know that also, not everyone is deserving of your attention. Attention is earned through mutual presence.

Your presence has an extreme value in the eyes of the other in which the whole is present with you. Presence serves a powerful purpose in connecting to someone on an intimate level, opening levels of awareness that are usually not accessible in everyday conversation. There is a steady progression when presence is unveiled between people.

Know your presence, and know that knowing your presence is an essential part of building the relationships in your life. Presence should be a prerequisite and must have with someone else to have a balanced friendship.

I hope you liked this article! You can check out any other blog posts or check out my YouTube “Daniel Speiss” where my writing comes to life! Thanks for checking in, and see you next time.