In high school (and grade school and college), my grades largely defined how I felt about myself. I graduated 5th in my class out of about 300 people, not because I loved all my classes and was highly interested in the material that was taught, but because the thought of getting a “bad grade” was so fear-inducing for me that I did everything I could to not put myself in that situation.
At the end of college, when the talk of landing a job was constantly circulating, I set a salary threshold for myself. I didn’t look at any job openings with lower salaries and largely paid attention to the dollar signs that were being posted. I didn’t pay nearly as much attention to the job description or even the company as a whole. If it paid what I was looking for, that’s all I really cared about.
I used to care about being and staying a certain weight. I went through the awful stages of life when I felt like the scale determined my fate, and seeing it fluctuate weighed on me (pun intended). It’s sad that a number has that much control over people and can deteriorate an entire mind. As sad as that is, it happens everyday, and it used to happen to me.
In the age of social media, it’s easy to get tripped up on how many followers you have. Although I haven’t really ever paid too much attention to how many followers I have on Instagram, I do have vivid memories of conversations where people were discussing other people’s “followers to following” ratios. Times when others were picked apart and scrutinized for having fewer followers compared to the amount of people they were following. In those times, I remember checking my “ratio” and feeling not so hot. Even if the feeling only lasted a few seconds, it didn’t feel good.
So, what the heck do all of these scenarios have in common? In each instance, my self-worth was being dictated by a number.
Which is literally so lame.
I do want to say, I used to be a data analyst, and a large portion of my job was to consolidate and triangulate numbers to find a pattern, detect an issue, or figure out how a certain product was selling. My coworkers and I primarily used data to tell a story, so I know firsthand how numbers can influence major decisions. Without them, we would have had nothing to analyze and would have been making decisions willy nilly. But if you omit qualitative information and strictly make assumptions off of quantitative information, you are missing a huge piece of the puzzle.
There are people in my life who like to track how many calories they burn in a workout. They also like to count calories consumed, count steps taken, count time standing and sitting, and count much more than that (mostly all thanks to the Apple watch, which makes everything incredibly easy to track).
Except, numbers alone will never do a person full justice. Numerical reassurance may be rewarding in the short term, but it can also leave you constantly hungry for more. More calories burned, more steps taken, more followers gained, more money made. It can end up being the thief of your happiness when it started out as the opposite.
More so, it is unhealthy for numbers to be the sole indicator of your progress and how you feel about yourself. The number on the scale, the amount of money you have in the bank, the grades you receive on exams, the amount of followers you have on Instagram are so unrepresentative of who you actually are, and that’s because numbers don’t tell the full story.
The number on the scale doesn’t differentiate between muscle and fat. The amount of money you have in the bank won’t help you buy your way to self-love. The grades you get on your exams don’t reveal how great of a leader or athlete you are. The amount of followers you have on Instagram doesn’t mean sh*t if you don’t have fulfilling friendships in real life.
If people were as committed to paying attention to the value of what they were doing versus the number it was producing or causing, they would learn to foster a much healthier mindset. When you focus on the qualitative sides of your life either in conjunction with or in place of the quantitative sides of your life, you will see a shift in the relationship you have with yourself.
For instance, you can focus on how much effort you exude during a workout instead of how many calories you burn. You can focus on how much you enjoy the work you’re doing instead of how much you’re being compensated for it. You can focus on actually learning and retaining the material you’re being taught instead of caring about every grade you get. And, “instead of” can also be “alongside”. It doesn’t always have to be one or the other.
I think it is really helpful to understand that numbers will tell you a lot, but they will not tell you everything. You can always have more money, more followers, burn more calories, take more steps, get better grades. But letting a number define your level of happiness means you’re missing out on so many other factors about you that aren’t being measured.
There is nothing wrong with being vigilant about metrics that matter to you. Some people are really interested in data points and are healthily motivated by numbers. But being controlled by numbers is an entirely different thing. When you become consumed by them, you lose sight of all the other factors that aren’t being measured, which a lot of the time, are the best parts about you.
You are way more than a number. Remember that.
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