This is my understanding of value.

First, value is something that you give yourself. People are not inherently born high value or low value. It depends entirely on how you use the gifts you have been given. Also, it scales with potential: for a simplistic example, a neurotypical person being polite, punctual, and professional doesn't mean as much as someone with bipolar disorder doing the same.

Low value men believe that value is derived from control and power (but that is false). They don't always realize that this is what they believe, but it shows through their actions. When we buy into the power narrative, we start falling into the trap of, "Well, I'm not the girl who turns everyone's heads, I wasn't top of the class, and I don't make a lot of money, what right do I have to a high value man?"

Second, value is not about morality, even though there is some overlap. I say this because certain types of pickme behaviors stem from having morals and being a little too selfless. It doesn't mean you're a bad person, but that you habitually perform behaviors that lower your value. (Which is also a reason that it's really important to forgive yourself for a pickme past.)

There are two types of value. One is how you treat yourself, and the other is how you treat others.

Treatment of self that gives yourself value.
(This is neither a comprehensive list, not a checklist of requirements. These are just examples of actions that help move you in the right direction.)

  • Independence. Taking care of your basic needs, like getting a job so you can afford food and rent, cooking & cleaning, basic hygiene, budgeting, etc. Making your own decisions for yourself, not seeking approval from those you don't owe it to.
  • Physical self care. Exercise, grooming, styling.
  • Mental health self care. Treating your psychological wounds, whether from past abusive relationships (parent or partner) through therapy. Maintaining work-life balance, enriching yourself, spending time on hobbies, reading. Protecting personal boundaries. Not feeding trolls, block and delete. Forgiving (but still blocking and deleting). Having a sense of humor. Being confident.
  • Living in truth. Making tough choices that make you proud of yourself at the end of the day. Advocating for what you believe in. Not presenting an overly edited persona on social media (and minimizing social media use in general).
  • Having talents. I consider talents to be things you're born with (different from skills—yes, you do develop skills from nurturing talents but you also develop skills from working on things you're not naturally gifted at). This could be music, sports, art, academics, or just plain being attractive.
    Again, this isn't a checklist of requirements so if you don't have perfect pitch or you're not conventionally pretty, that does not subtract from your value. Only low value traits can do that.
  • Growth. Getting more advanced with your personal finances. Taking classes or even getting a degree. Developing new skills. Organizing. Making plans.

Treatment of others that gives yourself value.
(Again, not comprehensive.)

  • Respect. Being generally polite*. Respecting other's boundaries.
  • Being conscientious. Splitting chores equally with roommates or partners. Not littering on the street (or maintaining other environmentally conscious habits). Cleaning up after yourself in public spaces. Avoiding sensitive topics unless the other person really wants to talk about it. Being intentional instead of impulsive about decisions that affect others, like pet ownership. Learning about what people of other demographics want on their terms (instead of taking their expressions of frustration as a personal attack).
  • Being kind. Being supportive of others who need and deserve it, in an empowering way that doesn't hijack their agency. Listening to those you disagree with when they are willing to communicate in an emotionally mature manner. Using tact.
  • Making an effort. Being present, remembering details. Making plans (in a dating context, the man should do 70-100% of the effort, but otherwise everyone should do a proportionate share). Reaching out to people to stay in touch (but letting go if they don't reciprocate).
  • Influencing positively. "Be the change you want to see in the world" (Gandhi was problematic but the words are right).

*Not the same as being formal (e.g. "I apologize 'if' I made you feel that way" is formal but impolite).

Again, this is a list of traits. I don't think anybody embodies all of these. I for sure do not, and the ones I do, I don't necessarily do all the time. But I want to point out that there are so many options and different ways that you may have (or add) value. Anyway, from this you can also see how this translates to low value people.

Treatment of self that devalues yourself.

  • Dependence / codependence. Low Value Men get girlfriends to do their cooking and cleaning, sometimes even provide housing. Pickmes are unable to detach from toxic partners.
  • Physical self neglect. Low Value Men may do things like not wiping their assholes after they defecate, bathing infrequently, getting hooked on drugs, developing a beer belly, etc. In women, with the caveat that this is often a sign of someone else's abuse, they may develop eating disorders and either lose or gain an unhealthy amount of weight, depression may make it hard to bathe or cook, they may not sleep well at night, become alcoholic, etc.
  • Mental health self neglect. Low Value Men suppress most of their emotions and feed them to rage. In some sense, toxic masculinity is partly to blame, but nonetheless, choosing to lean into it is a choice. Some of the worse cases of No Value Men arm themselves and shoot innocent people as "revenge" on society for their "incel" status. Pickmes lose their sense of self and become very insecure.
  • Living in delusion.
  • Loss. Refusing to cut losses in a bad investment. Intentionally underachieving in order to get someone else (a Low Value Man's pickme girlfriend, perhaps?) to take up the slack. Indulging blackpill-ism.

Treatment of others that devalues yourself.

  • Disrespect.
  • Not giving a single flying fuck about anything other than yourself. Being willing to step on someone else to further yourself.
  • Being domineering.
  • Assuming you're always right.
  • Laziness, freeloading. "Oh, I'm not an expert (therefore don't ask me to try to help figure this out with you." "You're so much better at this, babe (and at everything else, so you should do all the work)."
  • Dragging down people who "don't know their place".
  • Never trying to do better. Using the small-ness of impact as an excuse not to do anything (e.g. "One plastic bottle isn't going to make a difference, so I always throw everything in the garbage," or even better, "I throw trash in recycling bins just to troll because goody-2-shoes tryhards need to learn to loosen up.")
  • Abuse in any form. Physical violence, belittling, gaslighting, cheating, etc.
    And for those of you struggling to identify whether you've been abused, if the answer to the question, "Do you trust yourself to take care of yourself?" is no for any reason, you've probably been abused. If you don't trust your own ability to keep yourself physically safe, to have good judgment, to feel the "right" emotions (this may manifest as numbness), to keep your facts straight, etc., you've probably been traumatized by abusive behavior at some point.

I should point out that not all low value traits are created equally. Abuse is worse than assuming you're always right, there are different levels to laziness, etc. Anyway.

I hope this can be a guide that can provide clarity to FDSers wondering how to rate their own value. A lot of times, relationships with low value people reflects how we honestly rate ourselves regardless of the accuracy of that belief. FDS preaches a hard message about raising standards that may be very difficult for you if you're daunted by the prospect of claiming the title of "High Value Woman" for yourself, but as you hopefully can see from my lists, there are many ways to make yourself high value and you're probably at least doing some of them; you don't have to be Amal Clooney to value yourself and permit yourself to ask for more.

Maybe you do have some low value traits. Nobody's perfect—then you can use these lists to identify somewhere to start working on yourself as a single woman and develop confidence in your development into a high value woman. That's one of the many, many things that makes FDSers not the female counterpart to the incel community. Where incels are entitled, FDSers try to level up. Where incels conspire and strategize to try to ensnare partners, FDSers focus on truly finding their own value as single women first.