‘What did you do?’: What your reaction says about you - your sense of value and self-worth

DOGE is for some people what a red cloth is for a bull: it triggers emotions, fears, anger, lust to attack and passive aggressiveness. Raw emotions.

In its latest move to clean up fraud and make government more efficient - an email was sent to all federal employees asking them to focus on outcomes and give five bullet points on what the staff did. While obviously no-one asked to spill out national security secrets - depending on the nature of your work — the reaction of people spoke more than a thousand words.

It revealed deep insecurities, issues about inner conflicts with personal self-worth and worthiness and a sense of value or lack thereof.

No, I’m not singing along the choir of voices that condemns negative reactions or call out entitlement of federal employees, although there are points connected to that. — I want to go into a different direction:

The connection of values, value and personal self esteem.

Issues we all have on some level. Issues we all have to address no matter where you work to really live fulfilled lives and be in a position to co-create healthy communities and a compassionate, abundant society. Issues we have to address to live our dream and the American Dream. They key to all of that is understanding our personal values — and the value — each of us brings to the world. There are a lot of learning lessons that the external world mirrors to ourselves about ourselves in that regard. And a lot of it is triggered by DOGE.

Before following my own heart and doing what I came on this planet to do, bringing a different type of communication, Heart Communications (tm) — communicate with the heart to another heart, Divine to Divine, I worked as a transformation expert advising companies on transforming businesses to mirror natural organisms and be able to change with change, at the the pace of change.

When I went in-house, I worked for a little while with local government people. People who loved their mission and their jobs. People who identified themselves with the idea of building thriving communities. People, who at some point thought they had became the idea.

As part of understanding the workforce and gauging whether our people felt purpose in the roles they were given, whether they were happy with the job descriptions they signed on for and had a clear understanding of the value and clarity of impact of their own contribution, I had sent out an email asking people questions about that after I had reviewed every single job description with the ridiculously long descriptions of the role. So long that no one really could summarize what their actual role was. What was sent out with a loving, positive intent in bringing out the best in people and laying the groundwork for collaboration across departments in a way that would broaden people’s field of influence, the email was misunderstood by some:

Rather than seeing this as an opportunity, an invite to work with us to ensure people were in places that brought out the best in them vs limiting their talents via rigid job descriptions that didn’t do justice to their real scope of work, where they were happy and thriving — some people felt we questioned their value; their “right to exist”, their right for that job. No matter how well we had actually described the purpose of the email questionnaire, the people who were triggered could never read beyond the question of ‘why are you here?’. They felt that their reason to have that job was in question; they felt unappreciated and became defensive. Why? Because that email had struck a chord in their own subconsciousness:

You can only be hit when something hurts in you. In other words, when you resonate with it. When you feel someone questions your value, then deep down you question your own value. That’s the Truth. This is why people get upset.

Reactions like these say more about people’s inner issues and the real issue at hand: namely that many people that felt hit were hit by the fact that they didn’t have clarity about their value. They were not sure about what they were doing and how they impacted the greater whole of the organization.

But how can organizations measure their real impact, if people cannot measure their personal impact on what they do? And it’s not all about metrics. It is all about personal clarity, a felt sense of self worth and self-worthiness. About a personal identification with a role or an idea of a particular role vs a real sense of self grounded in Self.

I learned a lot from that reaction about people and how every event that comes at you mirrors your own inner constitution.

See, a self-confident, self-driven person won’t mind, whether someone asks them about their accomplishments last week.

A self-driven, self-confident person has clarity in their mind on where they go and what they did.

A self-driven, self-confident, self-loving person does five bullets on their achievements at the end of every day - for themselves. To learn about their own productivity, to sharpen their focus on their life goals and fine-tune their self-direction.

People with unclarity in their mind are the ones who bulk. I’ve been there. There are some people who don’t mind “evaluation meetings”, and others who get triggered by them as for example people who grew up with narcissistic, de-valuing parents. Like I did. They take any evaluation then as a re-enactment of re-experiencing de-valuation with every eval meeting. And because our subconsciousness and nervous system is programmed to certain experiences, we tend to re-create them subconsciously until this issue is resolved in ourselves, by ourselves. From that point on, you look at evaluations as something positive, because, as the word contains, you know your value. And that value isn’t dependent on someone’s else’s judgement. You’re proud of what you did. And you own it.

It’s the same with the DOGE email. In the private sector, these type of emails are normal. A person with clarity about their role and impact, clarity of focus on their path, will use an email like this as an opportunity to fine-tune their impact and actually broaden their value and importance to the organization. They show that they bring unique value every week that would be missed when not there. Like a player in an orchestra. When one instrument doesn’t play, the rest of the orchestra misses it. Now, that doesn’t mean all federal jobs are important like that. Many are not necessary. But: whatever you do, should give you a sense of your own value; it should increase your understanding of your own sense of self worth, not diminish it.

The moment you get defensive is the moment you know you have an inner conflict with yourself

On the other hand, a person with low self-esteem will see emails like ‘What did you do?’ as having to defend their reason to be in that job. And the moment you get defensive is the moment you know you have an inner conflict with yourself. This is not Elon Musk’s fault. This is your issue. Elon Musk is just the trigger.

Knowing your personal value is Star Quality

Value - particularly knowing your personal value - being able to communicate it easily is star quality. It’s at the heart of happiness and building positive contributions for your family, your environment and your own health.

So often, we think we know our values and value, but unless you can communicate it clearly and with ease - and emotionally live it - you don’t know your self worth or self value and certainly don’t own it.

We had an episode about values, value and knowing what makes you really you. I invite you to watch it and participate in the short assessment to give you clarity on what it is that makes You you. If you want to go deeper, you can then do that, too. It gives you a basis.

For all those who struggle with the email on delivering bullets: do yourself a favor and listen, really listen to yourself when you ask yourself: Why am I reacting to that? Why does this make me upset? What is it that angers me? When you do that, look in a mirror and say it to your face. And then go a bit deeper and start a healing process. You will see that with a bit of time, you suddenly see emails like this as an opportunity to further cement your career than questioning it.

Here are some clips about values, value and what drive you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9TMDkvJU9w

How your personal values can lead to tangible career goals? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HDWnvLQLkc

Full episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBMZbLWz3Ik

How do you discern what are your values and whether you live someone else’s?

As always, I would love to hear what you feel and think. Have a great week.