What’s in your account says something about your situation. It says nothing about your worth.

A balance is a record of circumstances: what your family earns, what the rent takes, what hours you have been able to work, what happened last month. It is information about a situation, and situations change. The slide happens when the number starts working as a score, at which point having little makes you feel like little, which is a confusion worth refusing.

Separate the two deliberately this week. Treat the number as a logistics problem to be solved, and notice when it gets used as a verdict instead. One honest conversation about money beats a week of worrying alone.