Self-Worthy?

Self Worth.  A tricky topic because it goes deep into yourself; a scary place for people to be.  Lately I have been doing some soul searching and trying to find a piece of me that I feel has been missing. I know I lack self worth, but I didn’t know how to fix that, well because, I didn’t truly understand what self worth was.  You see, I thought self worth was telling yourself you are worthy, telling yourself you are a badass, convincing yourself that you are pretty, etc. Turns out I don’t think that is where self worth comes from at all. To be honest, I still don’t fully understand, but I think I have a better handle on it now, so I thought I’d share some of my thoughts.

    First off, I have come to the realization that self worth isn’t something you can just automatically have.  It’s not like some people are born with it and others aren’t. It isn’t something you can just put together by reading self help books and watching TED talks. (seriously I tried that….it doesn’t work like that) It isn’t something someone can give you either. Here is the thing about self worth, it doesn’t come from the good others say about you, or how highly they think of you, how much people love you, or the things you try to convince yourself of.  The only thing that matters when it comes to self worth is what you tell yourself and see in yourself. I don’t care if you have millions of people who love you to the moon and back, and are always saying how great you are; if you don’t love yourself and don’t recognize the person you are becoming in life, then it doesn’t mean shit.

  Are you able to stand in front a mirror, alone, in a quiet room while listening to your own thoughts and looking straight at yourself in the eyes?  I don’t know about you guys, but that makes me cringe just thinking about it, ya know why? I already know that I can’t stand my own thoughts in my head and the anxiety it brings me.  That voice in my head hardly ever has anything nice to say, it is actually unbearable at times to tune in to what I am telling myself about myself. I hate that voice in my head and just try to keep it quiet.  When it gets real loud I get depressed, anxious, I feel like shit. I have used drugs in the past to try to sedate the feelings and quiet the voices. I used drugs because it gave me that little time to be in peace and quiet, the world paused ever so briefly, and time stood still.  It gave me that brief period of no commotion or chaos in my head, in my life. I went through drinking binges, eating binges, and sometimes even tried to mimic this numbing feeling with self harm. Anything I could do to not be alone with my own thoughts. Now does that sound like me earning self worth?  Hell no. It sounds like I was trying to get through life by avoiding all the scary stuff deep down. In fact, it made me think even less of myself. Having to go to Narcotics Anonymous, being a sloppy mess when I went out with my friends, trying to hide marks on my arms and legs; I hated what I was doing to myself, and the negative thoughts in my head got louder, and the vicious cycle continued.  These thoughts that are in your head, how you really feel about yourself, that is all that really matters when it comes to self worth. You can have all of the love in the entire world, but if you don’t even love yourself then you will never be happy. So how do you love yourself? How do you improve in having self worth? Well, I don’t know if there is really even an answer for that.

I will say this: I believe as humans created by God, we all have potential inside of us.  The great thing about potential, in my opinion, is that it is limitless. As long as you are willing to put in the work your potential will continue to be exponential.  I truly believe that if we stop living the lives we THINK we want, stop lying to ourselves about our happiness, stop being afraid of our comfort zones and our feelings, stop sticking to a career because of money instead of doing something we love, stop being fake on social media for followers but instead be real and raw, and then dig deep down in ourselves for our true potential, along the way we discover self worth.

There should be no second thoughts about failing, fear of the unknown, money, resources, dreaming too big, or what other people think about it. In order to earn self-worth, you’ll have to do whatever it is you need to do to get what you truly want, period.  You will earn self worth by being more determined than ever before, you are going to throw yourself into situations that scare the shit out of you, do things that are so far from your comfort zone you will be shocked that you did it, you will be constantly tapping into unused potential which then leads to more self growth. You will be growing as a person and giving yourself a sense of self; that sense of “feel good” on the inside that no one else can give you.  It is becoming the person you want to be, it is loving yourself for who you truly are and not pretending to be someone you’re not, it is about standing in front of a mirror alone with all of your thoughts and not cringing away, but looking straight back at the best version possible of yourself with confidence Don’t you owe yourself that much? To live a life worth living without regrets or dying and wish you would have done more? If any of this strikes a chord with you, if you’ve been feeling lost, you feel empty, you feel like no matter what you do it always feels like something is missing, I urge you to dig deep in to your soul and discover your potential, figure out what you need to do to get there, and for the first time maybe ever, take that first step to earn the self-worth you’ve been looking for.