The story I’ve heard a while back about the famous Pablo Picasso who was sitting at a cafe somewhere when a woman passed by and saw him and asked him to draw her.

He took a pencil, sketched her and gave her the result; she looked at it, it was a nice sketch,  and then he asked for 5,000 Franc, she looked back in shock, “This only took you five minutes to draw!”, she was surprised because of the amount that he asked for.

Then Pablo Picasso looked at her and smiled. He said, No, it didn’t take me five minutes. It took me ALL of my life.

This story have a lot of meanings, and a lot of learning; as for most of people, they just look at your end results and judge you based on that. While sometimes things can be – let’s say – more simple to comprehend, and some other times, the result is much more complex to understand. Just like when you look at a TV commercial or a logo or design, it may look super complicated to be done and other times it is very simple that it can give the impression that anybody can come up with the same.

When we look at a result that looks very simple, we often take it for granted that it didn’t take much time to finish nor much effort to create; Such an impression is not always necessarily true; The team who worked on it could have taken way more time to come up with such a brilliant idea that could be executed in a short period of time, or as a simple execution, it could have taken years and years of study, years of preparations so you can see such a simple outcome.

Needless to mention, it’s very difficult for some people to comprehend the process and why you can come up with a solution to a problem very easily that it would seem that you didn’t give it enough thought. While in reality, it could be your huge experience that led you to come up with that conclusion with just the short time. I saw a meme online once that say a designer can create something fantastic in 30 minutes however that designer have studied and trained for 10 years to be able to do it in 10 or 30 minutes.

This is a very common misconception in terms of analyzing the efforts which unfortunately, leave people trying to complicate things just to give it more value.

I was  reading and listening to motivational talks from the old times, especially from Zig Ziglar, (one of the most important motivational speakers in my life, I have only few of them and they helped me a lot during a lot negative times in my life) and what he was saying that: If right now, you lose your small finger, in order for doctors to reconstruct your small finger the same way as it was, which is a fairly complicated process, it would require hundreds of thousands of dollars to be able to do so Reconstructing something that you already have and an immense amount of effort, a very delicate procedure.

Those organs (or items) that you already have, you sometimes take them for granted, because you didn’t do anything to get them, they were just there when you were born. So for this week it’s about the value of YOUrselves, the value of your work, the value of YOU valuing your work and self properly and people will then start doing so; and if they don’t, then it’s their problem and you need to simply move on and not waste more time.

Let’s take for example Apple and the iPhone, it’s not a secret that they are making a huge profit on the device versus the actual cost of the device…  Huge profit, and despite that people are still paying and would still pay premium for it. But they are still making a huge profit because of the way it took to build the iPhone, the way they spend on R&D and marketing and think about all of the hidden factor that they have invested Together…

Just remember, no one will be valuing you and your time, if you don’t start valuing them yourself first…

Have a beautiful & valuable week.
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Samer Chidiac is a Strategic Innovation Advisor, a Business Psychologist, a Philanthropist, an Author and a Speaker. 

You can check his Books on Amazon & Sellfy, Follow him on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and check his Website for More.