If You Feel Like You Have To Earn Your Worth Every Day, These 3 Simple Habits Can Help
Tuğba Sarıtaş | Pexels If you feel like you have to earn your worth every day, you're not alone. A lot of us tie our self-worth to how we look, what we accomplish, how productive we are, or whether other people approve of us. I caught myself doing it just this week — standing in front of the mirror before two big networking events, convinced my hair determined whether I'd be confident, inspiring, or successful.
That’s how sneaky it is. One bad hair day, one messy kitchen, one missed opportunity, and suddenly we're questioning our value as human beings. When self-worth becomes something we believe we have to earn through performance, appearance, or achievement, our confidence rises and falls with every little outcome. Certain habits can help you stop proving your worth and start remembering that it's already there.
If you feel like you have to earn your worth every day, these 3 simple habits can help:
1. Change your perspective about where your worth comes from
- Adopt the perspective that your worth is intrinsic and unchanging
- Create a calendar reminder with the question, "Where am I assigning my self-worth at this moment?"
- Use notes posted on your computer, bathroom mirror, and front door to remind you that "Human worth, my worth, is intrinsic and unchanging."
- Investigate for yourself where you are acting like or believe your worth is dependent on a behavior, outcome, or pleasing others.
- What becomes possible when your worth is not tied to anything external?
2. Practice appreciating others without ranking yourself
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- As you encounter people throughout your day, practice thinking and saying to yourself, "What a beautiful human." Make this your first thought.
- Notice how this changes your experience of others, as well as your attitude about yourself.
3. Look for patterns in where you've externalized your worth
- Spend 15 minutes thinking about your personal history. Focus on times when you have made choices that did not serve you or uplift you. What do you see about where you were collapsing your self-worth?
- Forgive your younger self for not knowing better.
- Notice where you can apply your insight about your personal pattern of externalizing your worth to current situations, challenges, and goals.
What's going on when you feel like you have to earn your worth?
Self-judgement is social, psychologist Sharon Saline explained, "It’s the voice that spews negativity about simply being an outside-the-box thinker, an imperfectly perfect human like the rest of us. But this voice adds a toxic layer of insecurity: You walk around anxious that someone will discover the incompetent, foolish person you think you indeed are."
In our culture, though not exclusively, we collapse personal value with external markers — money, nice clothes, good grades, a clean house, or fame. These are viewed as good and positive. When we have them or accomplish them, we assign worth to ourselves. When we challenge what we consider good, then we judge ourselves as worthless.
Sounds harsh, and it is. Here we are with variable and fluctuating self-worth, a rising and falling of valuing ourselves. This extends to how we judge others as well. You got the job, and I see you as worthy. I ate the pie, and I am worthless.
We tend to become myopic, overly focused on judging one action or aspect, and forget the bigger picture.
A study showed this is one way we undermine our own confidence. We become more vulnerable to the brain's preexisting negativity bias. This, with prolonged bondage, can lead to depression and acting out our shaky self-worth through destructive behaviors — eating disorders, isolating, or playing small.
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What if we adopt the attitude that human worth is intrinsic and unchanging? This means nothing we do increases our worth, and nothing we do decreases our worth.
The mother in the story tried this shift. Now she responds differently to her dishes, thinking, "Wow, lots of dishes. It makes sense with the busy and full lives of my family." She now sees the larger perspective (activities with her family).
No blame, but rather observations. No guilt. No self-worth in bondage.
A clean house does not equal worth, nor does a dirty house compromise worth.
Personally, recognizing that my self-worth is innate and unchanging allows me to act from joy instead of fear. I am motivated to make the best decisions I can because it feels good to succeed. Not because I am scared that I'm secretly a loser or that I have to prove my worth.
That proving attitude is what kept me in an emotionally abusive relationship for nine years. He told me that if I left him, I was a selfish American. If I left him, I was disloyal. My self-worth was in bondage to these proclamations because I internalized them. If I had recognized my self-worth as innate and unvarying regardless of his displeasure, I would have left much sooner.
Cara Cordoni is a leadership and business Coach with over 20 years of experience in individual and organizational development. She's an experienced executive, consultant, entrepreneur, writer, and coach.
