Is It Time to Stop Outsourcing Your Self-Worth?

JT - You're imperfect, and you're wired for struggle, but you are worthy of love and belonging ~ Brené Brown

One thing I have been passionate about for years is self-worth and remembering we are more than what we do. I have a mantra I use to remember this and it is a nice reminder I share with clients when I am supporting them to stop outsourcing their self-worth. Today, I wanted to discus worthiness a bit more.

What is Worthiness?

There are many definitions and ways to look at worth and worthiness. Some of them include –

“…having enough good qualities to be considered important, useful, etc” ~ Merriam-Webster
“…the quality of deserving respect and attention” ~ Cambridge Dictionaries Online
“…the quality or state of having merit or value” ~ The Free Dictionary
“Worthiness is not about who we should be or who we might be or who we could be. It’s about who we are. Right now. Today. It’s about waking up and believing, “I am enough.”” ~ Dr Brené Brown
“Worthiness is an as-is, here and now proposition.” ~ Dr Brené Brown.

Where Do We Discover a Sense of Worth?

We can discover our self-worth in many places. For many reasons, I have investigated self-worth and discovered we can anchor our value essentially in three places – internally and externally and of course both. The Contingencies of Self-Worth Scale indicate the following 7 areas –

Appearance: My self-worth is dependent upon appearance,
Competition: My self-worth links to how well I do in relation to other people, .
Education / Academia: My self-worth is influenced on how I do in my educational achievements,
Family Support: My self-worth is contingent upon what my family desire for me,
God’s Love: My self-worth is influenced by what God thinks of me,
Other People’s Approval: My self-worth is dependent upon what other people think of me,
Virtue: My Self-Worth is dependent upon my own virtues and living by those.

As you can see the above aspects of self-worth can be both internal and external. It depends upon where we focus our attention and obviously self-worth can be linked across more than one. I also think there can be more areas we can link self-worth – for example the amount of money we have.

Remember Worthiness Has No Prerequisites…

However, it is important to remember that worthiness has no prerequisites. Without realising it, many of us have allowed, created or been handed down a long list of worthiness “prerequisites.” For example – I’ll be worthy when I –

get married,
finish my degree,
win a tournament,
when I lose 5kgs,
can do the splits in yoga,
have 1000 Facebook likes or friend
make a living with my business,
when I write a book, and
can do it all and then some…