Welcome to week thirteen soul-work!
This week is the beginning of a new month of work for you. This month is all about self-worth recovery. You’ve done the work of deciding what you want, identifying what has been preventing you from allowing what you desire (by virtue of the thoughts and belief systems you have held about yourself and about your life) and you’ve undertaken the big task of taking steps to become more and more aligned with the truest and most authentic version of yourself. Now it’s time to consciously re-write that ‘worth’ story that’s been engrained in you since you were a child.
“I believe that the diminished self-worth is the root of all human limitation. Once you’ve recovered your self-worth you can have, or do, or be anything.” - Val
‘Self-worth’ is a tricky topic because the talk around it gets so muddled with conversation about ‘self-love’ and ‘self-esteem’ . When we have truly ‘recovered’ our self-worth (knowing and believing in our own innate value) self-esteem and self-love are byproducts. So much of the time, people try to go backwards and work on self-love or work on their self-esteem to improve their self-worth…but it’s a counter-productive and futile approach to self-worth recovery because, essentially, if you don’t feel worthy of love…and you’re trying to recover your self-worth through practices of self-love…you’re going to feel like a big fat imposter.
Wellness coach Sharon Martin so beautifully outlines that there are five massive indicators that we are living in a way that is trying to compensate for a diminished self-worth. They are:
Perfectionism - We feel unworthy if we are imperfect.
Overworking - We work to excess in order to feel valued and receive tangible proof of our worthiness (praise, financial compensation, awards, degrees, etc).
Busyness - We over-schedule and keep ourselves busy as a way to distract ourselves and feel needed.
Comparison - We look to others to measure our value. We compare ourselves to others and feel inferior (or superior).
People-pleasing - We prioritize other peoples’ opinions above our own. We compromise our values and needs to please others and we feel “less than” when others are angry or disappointed with us.
Today’s pen-to-paper work is actually an all week assignment. For each day of this week, write down something that happened throughout the day that was acted out of compensating for your diminished self-worth based on the five indicators above. In the next column you’ll write a more ‘recovered self-worth’ action that you could have taken and can take the next time you have the opportunity. Because when we know better we can do better!