(Un)mployment/skills/salary is just one peculiar property of the world you live in, making too much identity out of that seems unhealthy. Frankly, the first tim

(Un)mployment/skills/salary is just one peculiar property of the world you live in, making too much identity out of that seems unhealthy. Frankly, the first time I recall thinking about myself in such terms was when, as a young stupid kid, I wanted to punish some kids whose envy pissed me off by deliberately bragging how great I am. So, don't treat yourself the way I did my schoolyard enemies :) To me, no matter how you think and try to rationalize your worth, the sense of worth seems to be strongly connected with empathy. You may experiment with things like making people happy just for the fun of it when you stumble upon some right opportunity for that. I think this slowly improves my relationships with some people. And I mean actually happy and actually fun - you see, others have empathy too and they know if you are sacrificing yourself for them. This may be appreciated in the short term, but not always in the long term. Sometimes you may paradoxically make them feel better by slowing down a bit, if they can handle that. These processes are slow, all you do is maintain vigilance and use opportunities as they come. It would be hard to engineer one quick action which fixes everything, humans are weird and unpredictable.