October 22, 2020

How do we sustain and keep our self-worth?

This is a good question, because when we go out into the world, in many different places where we meet many different people, we get confronted with situations that can bring up a lot of things on our self-value. When we’re home alone, we can sustain this feeling of nice warmth and comfort – being in our comfort zone – and when we get out into the world, sometimes we feel that we lose it.

What I would ask you is: Where do you lose your self-worth?

It’s really good to check where you lose your feeling of self-worthiness. Sometimes we lose it when we want other people’s approval, when we want other people to validate us. Sometimes we lose it when we compare ourselves to others, when we go ‘I’m not this and that… I should be like that… They are like this and I’m not…’, and so on. This is where we start to feel deficient and less than others. Sometimes we have fear of what people think about us, and that really sets us up in this whole storytelling, and ‘what if’, and ‘maybe they are thinking this’, etc.

We adjust our entire life around wanting other people’s approval.

It is a killer to self-worth and self-confidence, because when we care about what other people think, it is a sort of a trap. It is a trap to self-value. It prevents us from really enjoying life, and listening to the beauty of life. Entire cultures are out there adjusting themselves in what others might think of them.

It’s amazing what we do because of other people and what they might think. I say ‘Fuck it!’ Life is way too short to adjust our lives to what other people think. Do we really want to continue on like that? It’s no fun. What is important is you being loyal to yourself. Being honest with yourself and valuing yourself, instead of focusing on other people. At the end of the day, they don’t live with you, they’re not in your head, they are not the ones holding you at night and taking care of you. 

When we are able to be loyal to ourselves, we are able to sustain a deeper connection with ourselves, and a deeper self-value – a beautiful relationship with ourselves.

How do we keep up our self-confidence in a really toxic work environment? 

This is not an easy situation, because it is our work environment, so for many people it is about survival, their career, stepping stones, etc. Of course, you need to go where you need to go, but maybe you need to start questioning why you’re working there. Maybe you need to re-evaluate working there. but at the same time you need to honor what is happening inside of you. If you get all excited when you go home, and then when you go to work, you completely crash, your whole self-worth goes down. I would then start looking at the long-term picture – How can I shift this? How can I change it? You may not be working there anymore. That’s something that you might want to really consider. We have choice. 

You always have choice. The decision is up to you. 

How do we even find our self-worth? 

We have so much coming to us from the media, and stimulation of how we think we should be, and how we should adjust ourselves and make ourselves a perfect package. But it doesn’t exist. The perfect package doesn’t exist. The feeling of inner-connection, where we feel at home with ourselves – that exists! I know it through meditation, because when we do meditation, all of a sudden the outer-orientation (that fixation of trying to fit into the world and be perfect) just goes away. Then we start with the inner-orientation.

How do I sense myself? How do I experience myself?

It’s like coming home to ourselves. It’s a lovely feeling. Then we start to develop a deeper sense of self-worth. It is not out there. It is in ourselves. I think many of us know that, but somehow we still get lost in the trap of trying to find it ‘out there’. Getting another person’s approval. Comparing ourselves. Fearing what other people might think of us. It’s a trap. We are the most important place that we attend to. It’s like our garden. If we can attend to ourselves, then we can make connections with other people. However, this time, it is not dependent on what they think of us, it is not dependent on their opinions, because we have a place that we call home, that we feel relaxed in.

Relaxed presence. Relaxed confidence. Self-worth.