Productivity ≠ Worth
Where does worth come from?
I ask this question to my clients all the time. I’m never quite sure how it will come across: maybe too simple, or maybe too complex, or maybe annoyingly therapisty. But I do want you to take a moment to consider your answer—where does human worth come from?
I’ve got a collection of years’ worth of answers, and most of them fall into two buckets—either worth comes from our actions, efforts, and contributions (extrinsic worth), or our worth exists independently of what we do and lies in the miraculous “just because” of being human (intrinsic worth).
The interesting bit is that folks answer differently depending on who we’re talking about. When we talk about humanity in general, intrinsic worth seems obvious—of course other people deserve respect, dignity, care, and love. But when we talk about ourselves, the language often changes. Our personal worth sits in what we do, what we offer, and how hard we worked to get there. There’s a (largely unconscious) sense of exceptionality here: people have inherent worth. But I have to earn mine.
And as we know, there really is no place where you can rest and say you’ve earned it—perfectionism is a monstrous existential treadmill with no arrival point. As flaw-filled mortals with expiration dates, earning our worth is already a dicey proposition. Throw physical or mental afflictions on top of that and now the idea of “earning” our way to worthiness gets even stickier.
A valid tool for quantifying and calculating who deserves dignity, love, and rest...right?
Photo by GOWTHAM AGM via Pexels.com
Nothing has radicalized me more for Team Intrinsic Worth than my years running a chronic illness support group called Thriving-ish. We had group members who had lived with medical conditions since birth, and others whose symptoms began later in life. Some had to step away from meaningful careers, and some never had access to certain opportunities. Nearly every person in the group struggled to maintain conventional “work.”
One member (who reads this newsletter—hi, friend!) was a fellow therapist, and her capacity to see clients was massively diminished by her health condition. Due to her specific symptoms, all she could do at times was lie on the couch, listen to audiobooks, and stare at a fixed point on the wall or ceiling for days at a time.
And not one ounce of her human value was tarnished by her incapacity to work a 40-hour week. And even if she wasn’t as witty, talented, and big-hearted as she definitely was, her worth wouldn’t be diminished by that, either. Human worth, I think, just isn’t that easy to shake off.
This group taught me so clearly that our value has nothing to do with what we “get done” or how much we “bring to the table.” Even if hard work and effortfulness were valid metrics of goodness, many disabled and chronically ill people might be the hardest workers in the world—some people expend extraordinary effort just to get through a Tuesday.
Would anything change for you if you joined Team Intrinsic Worth? Including intrinsic worth for yourself?
© 2026 Summer Hopkins Myers | Already Good
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