Realizing Our Self Worth

Realizing Our Self Worth 

“Ninety percent of the world’s woe comes from people not

knowing themselves, their abilities, their frailties, and

even their real virtues. Most of us go almost all the way

through life as complete strangers to ourselves.”

Sydney Harris 

Positive feelings of self-worth represent a healthy way in which we view ourselves as valuable individuals. Humility is considered an asset, while being confident is often viewed as a fault. What we believe about ourselves and our abilities serves as a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we continue to tell ourselves we are worthless, our actions will follow suit. By raising our opinion of ourselves, we will accomplish so much more. We will end up contributing more to our communities and households and experience more life satisfaction.

            The Native American people were beaten down so much for centuries by acts of genocide, assimilation, discrimination, and acculturation that our self-worth is often residing in the very depths of our souls. Many of us will need a crowbar to unlock that treasure. What did the history of our parents and grandparents do to our feelings of self-worth? We can obtain feelings of positive self-worth when we honor ourselves with self-love. If we love ourselves for who we are with all our gifts, faults and other nuances, we will tap into our valuable self-worth.   

            If we are experiencing feelings of low self-worth we may: 

·         Come from a troubled and dysfunctional family.

·         Blame ourselves for everything.

·         Fear rejection.

·         Have a lot of “shoulds.”

·         Feel ashamed of who we are.

·         Think we are not good enough.

·         Feel as if we are different from the rest of the world.

·         Reject compliments or praise.

·         Feel depressed because of a lack of praise and compliments.

·         Take things personally.

·         Have been victims of sexual, emotional or physical abuse, neglect, abandonment, or substance abuse.

·         Pick on ourselves constantly about the way we think, look, feel and act. 

·         Tell ourselves we can’t do anything right.

·         Be afraid of making mistakes.

·         Expect ourselves to do everything perfectly.

·         Feel a lot of guilt.

·         Feel guilty when we spend money on ourselves or do fun things for ourselves.           

            Conversely, how do we know if we love ourselves?  The following represent signs of self-love:

·         We start making time for ourselves.

·         We set up boundaries to protect ourselves.

·         We forgive ourselves, not just for trivial mistakes, but for larger mistakes.

·         We let go of unrealistic expectations of ourselves and feel good about what we have already accomplished.

·         We find one thing to do every day that makes us happy even if it is brief such as smelling a flower.

·         We take a moment to breathe deeply and pay attention to our breath.

·         When we hear ourselves thinking something demeaning about ourselves, we practice thought stopping, and develop thoughts which are more compassionate. 

It is difficult to love thy neighbor when we don’t love ourselves. We need to tell ourselves daily that we love ourselves and practice thinking kind thoughts on a regular basis to build our love for ourselves. It is not narcissistic to love ourselves and place importance on ourselves. Self-love is a necessary component to maintaining healthy relationships with anyone including ourselves.

We need to take a good look at ourselves in the bathroom mirror and say one of the following things to ourselves daily: 

·         “I’m strong and attractive and I like what I see.”

·         “I deserve to have a great life.”

·         “I enjoy being me.”

·         “I am confident in myself and my abilities.” 

We need to focus on our strengths instead of focusing on our faults and shortcomings. Paying attention to the latter can destroy any amount of joy we may have in our lives. Our strengths are the very qualities which could make us look our best, yet we try to describe our strengths by making them sound like they are deficits in our character. For example we may say something like this “my weakness is that I care too much.”  We do so, to put a positive spin on whom we are and get the validation we are seeking by presenting ourselves to the outside world in a humble manner, humility is the key to being accepted by others. Our strengths are defined by what we actually do and need to be considered when we are trying to enhance our feelings of self-worth. They are the things we do on a regular basis. To discover our strengths use the following guidelines consisting of these basic ingredients: 

·         Explore our talents, such as empathy, assertiveness, or competitiveness. Since we often take our talents for granted, step back and put a label on our talents. These talents are things we were born with and they stayed with us. 

·         Examine our skills which are things we developed during our lives and are not innate.  They were learned abilities.

·         Discover our personal knowledge which is learned and developed through experience, formal learning activities, reading and learning from others.   

            When we put these ingredients together we can gain an understanding about our strengths. Let’s say we are an advocate for people who have been diagnosed with a disability. Our assertiveness allows us to be able to secure services for our clients, our communication skills permit us to convey what our client’s needs are, and our knowledge of what services are available permits us to make decisions that are in the best interest of our client. 

            Another example may be talents consisting of our ability to be empathetic if we work as a day care provider for young children. Our empathetic abilities give us the capability of understanding what the children under our care need. Because of our skills we are able to provide activities which will enhance the engagement of the children in play time activities and our knowledge of child development will enhance their learning experiences and provide them with a safe environment.

            When we begin to describe our strengths, examine activities we have felt most successful accomplishing. Defining the ingredients in this manner demonstrates what comes naturally and what is learnable. To capture a full understanding of our strengths, we are going to have to go beyond the generic labels and explore how the actual activities make us feel by the use of four signs: success; instincts; growth; and needs. We will need to take the following steps by paying close attention to our feelings before, during, and after our weekly activities. When did we feel successful at accomplishing our goals? To examine our instincts, we need to explore what we find ourselves looking forward to doing. What activities create the most positive growth for us?  The instinct sign refers to how we feel before we did the activity; growth refers to how we felt during the activity, conversely the need sign refers to how we felt right after we have done the activity. We may really feel good after doing the activity and we want to experience that feeling again. 

A person lacking internal feelings of self-worth feels a need for continuous validation, the greater the lack of self-worth, the greater the need for validation. If we have confidence in ourselves, we will gain respect from others. It is so necessary that we demonstrate this confidence for the sake of our children and grandchildren. They need for us to believe in ourselves so that we can guide them to the right paths to take and so they will take us seriously. Confidence is a way of behaving that doesn’t happen automatically. It occurs because we have learned how to nurture ourselves with self-talk that promotes confidence. It exists when we have learned to speak from belief rather than doubt, from uniqueness rather than conformity.

We need to examine our self-talk and ask is it full of doubt?  Remember our self-talk influences our behaviors and the outcome of any given situation. If we want to take on a leadership role, we need to have a higher level of confidence and feelings of self-worth. We can do so by thinking about all the things we can do right. Start small and think about how well we make our bed in the morning or how well we cook eggs. Then move onto the bigger things such as our job related skills. 

Even if some of us work at McDonalds, praise ourselves on how well we do our jobs. There was a documentary covering the complexities of working at McDonalds in which television icons demonstrated how difficult it was to work at McDonalds. We cannot discount anything we do in life. If we survived abuse during our childhoods, consider the strength we possessed to endure such hardships. We need to focus on our strengths.

             A person who suffers from a low level of self-worth will feel as if they will lose something if they give honor to others. Test those waters and see how comfortable you are with complimenting others. Does it come naturally or is it a struggle for you to do so. The compliment must come from the heart and not be superficial. We need to rehearse truly complimenting others before trying it out on actual people if it is not a common practice for us. Others can sense when we are not being genuine and that will damage our credibility. 

            I know this will be a hard road to travel because we have been told we need to get beyond ourselves and think of others. I am also aware of some people who think mostly about themselves. Do they do so in a loving way? No. They do so because they are overly concerned about their own personal comfort. It is strictly an act of avoidance of anything that may place them in an uncomfortable situation. If we are one of those people who work very hard at avoiding being uncomfortable and instead of facing things, we may handle possible uncomfortable situations by being passive aggressive, work on this problem because we will end up causing harm to ourselves and others. For example, if we tell people what they want to hear; but we don’t follow through, we are going to get the reputation that we don’t do what we say we are going to do, our credibility will be damaged. This will damage our feelings of self-worth.

A lot of people believe that since their self-worth was based on their early years concerning how their parents, teachers, and friends treated them, they can do little to change their feelings of self-worth. It is true that our feelings of self-worth were determined by our pasts. This can be changed. How we judge ourselves is what really counts. It really doesn’t matter what others may think about us. Low feelings of self-worth are based on mistaken ideas and we all have the ability to change these notions if we choose. When looking back at negative experiences think about how we would have dealt with those situations if we would have had a positive, confident attitude.  Don’t look back with regret. Rewriting our past history will have a powerful effect on our future. 

Every person is obligated to be aware of their valuable self-worth. Everybody is unique, born at a specific time to a particular family and living in a certain geological area. This uniqueness in itself gives us great importance. From this point of view we do not have to feel inferior to anyone else. When the Europeans came to this country, the Native American people were referred to as half human by the Europeans, undeserving of respect. The color of their skin was looked upon as inferior. Also wealth was and continues to be a determining factor of how much a person is worth. Famous athletes or actors are deemed as being worth more than others. It is unnecessary to be burdened with feelings of low self-worth when we can easily create specific criteria in which we would be considered a success. No one has a perfect life including those who have achieved fame. Examine all the things we can do and consider our strengths.

Our feelings of self-worth are very important and diminished feelings of self-worth can definitely make a negative impact on our sense of happiness. We need to feel as if we are valuable individuals with exceptional strengths. We are unique with talents and gifts others do not possess. We are not just an employee at McDonalds or any other place of employment; we are people with abilities that enable us to handle a job at McDonalds. We do make a difference. Say positive self affirmations daily such as “I am a worthy person.”  Native American people throughout history have been told otherwise and we can fix that damage. Rewrite history and make us and our ancestors the victors. We are still here, aren’t we? Develop a list of things we can do, even if we have to start small such as making our beds properly. Develop our own criteria of why we are great and don’t let others do that for us. We need to nurture our self-worth as if it is a newborn baby needing our care.