My psychologist and I were talking one day, about negative feedback that I had received. And her response to me was, “But what if you weren’t good at it?” And I was left speechless…
Because that was the reasoning for the question, do I need to be good at everything, and beat myself up when I’m not. Do I need to be good at contemporary dance? No, but it doesn’t stop me from doing it. Do I need to be the best writer there ever was? No, and it shouldn’t stop me from writing.
Because at the heart of feelings of inadequacy and not being good enough, for things that are not inherent to who we are, is a lack of self-worth. And it is something I personally need to interrogate with myself. Because it’s not isolated to education, or work, or motherhood, or hobbies, or friendship – it permeates every interaction, every thought, every role that I play.
So what is self-worth? And how do we get it?
I have been focused on self-knowledge, self-acceptance, self-love and self-care, and while all these are important, I need to be aware of the importance of self-worth. Lest I attach my worth to something fleeting. To be honest, I’m very much in the “packing” stage of my self-worth journey, but I’ve learnt so much, that I just want to tell people about its importance.
I read a very interesting article by Dr Caroline Hibbert, and she speaks about the pyramid of self-worth. It starts with self-awareness, meaning you need to know who you are, what you are made of, what your values are, what comprises your identity, your strengths and weaknesses – who you are. It involves getting to know yourself.
Once you know what the parts that make up who you are, you need to accept them. You may not like who you are or your different parts, or even what you have identified as your strengths and weaknesses, but it’s important to accept that this is who you are. It can be difficult to acknowledge what your strengths are, or to be able to accept your weaknesses, but they are who you are right now.
And then, a crucial part, is to learn to love yourself for who you are, flaws and all. Self-love includes self-care, self-compassion, being kind to yourself, treating yourself well and taking care of your needs. Give yourself permission to give love and accept love from others.
Self-worth then, as defined by the American Psychological Association, is evaluating yourself as a capable, valuable human who deserves respect and consideration.
When we have low self-worth, we don’t have much trust in our abilities, we become fearful of failure, and then as a result, we are unable to accept positive feedback and become overly focussed on our weaknesses. Additionally, because we believe we are unworthy, we perceive others as having more value than us, and then we allow them to infringe on our boundaries, we minimise our needs or become people pleasers who are unwilling to stand up for ourselves.
On the contrary, if we have high self-worth, we tend to believe that we will be all right, no matter what happens and we have the confidence that we will be able to manage whatever life throws at us. What we know about ourselves because we have self-awareness about our weaknesses, we are confident that we can improve them.
So what can we do to improve our self-worth?
Remind yourself what does not encompass self-worth like your job, your salary, your grades, social media likes etc
Work with and challenge your inner voice so that it is not always critical and reinforcing that you are not worthy
Do things that you enjoy and are good at
Exercise and do things that challenge you because it provides you with evidence that you are capable of achieving things that you may have previously not thought possible.
Seek support, if you have access to a psychologist they can help you through what is hindering your self-worth, and you can determine strategies to improve it.
Resources used in this post:
https://dictionary.apa.org/self-worth
The Mispronunciation of Me 