Either you believe in yourself enough to charge for what you’re worth or you don’t. I’ve coached countless of clients over the years on how to evaluate how much their efforts and time are worth (for their industry, service, etc.) and then to ask for that with many successful results.

Before I became a Coach, I made a very nice sum of money recruiting and managing accounts but even then, the Executive Coach I was working with at the time encouraged me to ask for more than I was earning because of the income that I was generating for the company where I worked. I couldn’t make the leap from the fact that I was already making more than I had ever dreamed of making. I was stuck in the model of you make x amount of widgets and earn x amount of dollars for x amount of hours.

I’m right smack dab in the middle of reconciling all that I have been learning and doing over the years with its value. Why my higher self decided that I should do this in the middle of a very big recession beats me, but nevertheless, here I am with my big ole spiritual scales weighing everything out to a nice balance. I take some heart in the knowledge that there are people very close to me (like one who is sitting only 3 feet away from me right now at his desk….) who are very respected in their work and are very talented and yet still find it difficult to really ask for the amount of money that they are worth.

One example of the importance of acknowledging the energy and effort for a service in some reciprocal form which is usually money is from a long time ago when I was in my twenties and just barely making it from paycheck to paycheck. I had been in psychotherapy for a couple of years and my employer’s insurance at the time paid for my therapy. Then I changed jobs and the new place I went to did not cover the kind of therapist I was seeing (LCP-MSW) so I had to pay out of my own pocket. Because my therapist knew I was taking the therapy very seriously, she helped me by letting me pay for half of my appointments and charge the rest to an account that I could some day payback. After a couple of year’s of paying her back, she generously wanted to waive my debt to her but as money-challenged as I was back then I knew that it was very important for me to pay her for the work she had done with me. Otherwise, I would have felt too out of balance.

This money thing and the worth issue can certainly be confusing. What makes Tiger Woods worth millions and some scientist figuring out a vaccine to end a deadly disease only worth thousands? There’s a lot of inequity in how we pay towards something we believe is worthwhile. I suppose for each of us, it is our responsibility to weigh and measure our own efforts and experience and at the very least, ask for what we believe is right and equitable. We may not get it, but then again, we may.

The bottom line is every single one of us puts our money towards what we feel is worth our time. Money is just a symbol for time we have spent doing something. Sit quietly with yourself and your higher power and keep asking the question about your worth until you come up with the amount of money that balances right inside of you. For me, when this is balanced right it feels like I have a psychic leveler inside of my chest.

All the gold is in the middle curving up at either end into a happy smile.