If your worth disappears when nobody’s watching, it was never really yours.

Worth that runs on attention behaves like attention: it spikes, it dips, and it leaves when the room does. Keeping that topped up is exhausting, and it is not a character flaw so much as the natural result of only ever being measured from outside. The steadier kind gets built from things that stay put with nobody looking, like what you do with an empty afternoon and how you treat someone who can do nothing for you.

Do one good thing this week that no one will find out about. Notice whether it still felt worth doing. The answer tells you where you currently stand.