Are You Undervaluing Yourself? –Cultivating Adaptive Self-Worth
- Dec 29, 2023
- 6 min read
Updated: Feb 12, 2024
Written by: Natasha P. Trujillo, Ph.D., Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
What does it mean to be worthy? How do you define worth? Self-worth? Others’ worth? Worthiness is defined as “the quality of being good enough, suitability; the quality of deserving attention or respect.” But really, this is so subjective. What does good enough mean? Suitability? How do you know if you are deserving of attention or respect? Take a few minutes and brainstorm what these terms mean to you before reading on.
Now that you’re thinking about it, consider this: our world is dominated by key performance indicators, social media metrics, and constant comparison of not only what’s better, but what’s best. We often chase perfection and measure our worth amidst a battle for flawlessness we simply can’t win. It can be easy to mistakenly equate self-worth with only those tangible achievements that can be written on a resume or hung on a wall. How many letters are after your name? How much money do you bring home? What kind of car do you drive or designer clothes do you wear? How many championships are under your belt? How many awards can you claim? The list goes on and on. While accomplishments can certainly bring joy and satisfaction and deserve to be celebrated, relying solely on them for our sense of value as a human being is like building a house on sand – unstable and fleeting.
For stronger security in our unavoidable humanity, we must learn to cultivate self-worth rooted in a deeper understanding of intrinsic value. Doing so can ensure a more reliable foundation of self-esteem, resilience, self-trust to adapt to life’s challenges, and lasting contentment. Feeling puzzled about how to redefine this for yourself? Let’s start with busting some myths about self-worth:
Worth must be tied to success or failure.
You must compare yourself favorably to others to have worth.
Worth is fixed.
These myths share commonalities in that they focus solely on a subjective and arbitrary outcome (rather than a gradual process focused on improvement) that often involve moving targets without defined endpoints. Many people may view their worth as fixed while simultaneously changing the end point in which they would cross the threshold of worthiness. When you assess worth only by reaching goals, you risk striving for perfection and unrealistic expectations and often make biased comparisons that serve no useful purpose for growth.
I want to be clear – I am not suggesting that setting goals or considering achievements as part of what makes up your worth is a bad thing (it’s awesome to push yourself to consistently self-discover and grow), but there are risks if that is the only assessment tool for how you view yourself. For example, you may suffer from ephemeral satisfaction, meaning the joy from an achievement may be short-lived and once the euphoria fades, you are on the next pursuit, leaving little if any time for true contentment and rejuvenation. Your self-esteem may become conditional with success, making you more vulnerable to poor adjustment and coping in the face of uncontrollable or unforeseen setbacks or failures. You may also burn out, as it is both physically and mentally exhausting to constantly chase milestones that suddenly mean nothing to you once you’ve passed them.
If this sounds familiar, perhaps you can tune up your process for how you appraise your merit. Remember, you are more than the sum of your achievements. Here are four ways you can nurture adaptive and holistic self-worth:
Self-compassion: Consider your self-talk and demonstrate kindness. Would you repeat what you say to yourself to someone you care about? Would you treat someone else’s body or mind the way you treat your own when in distress? Recognize and accept that everyone, including you, is imperfect. Hold yourself accountable and make room to forgive yourself. Mistakes and failures happen, but what can you choose to do with the wisdom gained from them?
Recognize intrinsic value: You have inherent worth just by being alive. Your experiences, feelings, and thoughts are unique and contribute to the richness of the world. The ways in which we contribute to others and the world aren’t always immediately visible to us, nor do we always know the true impact we have on those whose paths we cross.
Challenge comparisons: As human beings we cannot completely stop the urge to compare (so to encourage that feels disingenuous and unrealistic), but we can seek to balance it with recognizing how different each and every person is. Resist the urge to diminish your own experiences and value by using harsh or unfounded judgments that don’t promote perseverance.
Acknowledge, appreciate, and celebrate non-achievement-based values: Consider your display of virtues such as compassion, empathy, creativity, resilience, and connection. As a chronic over-achiever, when I first began to learn about this concept, I was less than enthused. So, I would bet many of you rolled your eyes on this one. Once again, I am NOT suggesting that you don’t continue to set your sights on ways to improve and chase important accolades that align with your passions – rather, I am suggesting you widen the lens to better capture authentic portraits of yourself with aspects of life that can’t be as easily measured.
If you are someone with an insatiable appetite for more and pesky perfectionism that impedes on your own journey with this, I also want to offer four activities to assist with the above ideas.
Inspirational affirmations: Note here that I didn’t say positive. I don’t endorse a toxically positive approach to life, and sometimes when things are hard, the least helpful thing is to repeat positive mantras with the hopes that you can convince yourself to believe them. However, affirmations that inspire are another story. How do you define inspiration, and what types of words or ideas bring that to life for you? For me, sports references and quotes that are painfully beautiful and highlight the dualism of life get me every time.
Mindfulness and meditative practices: I can’t understate the power that comes with being able to suspend focus on the past or future and simply be in the moment. Detaching from the pursuit of future success and/or shame of past failure can allow you to acknowledge your current existence. Mindfulness can help you learn to sit with positive, neutral, and negative thoughts and feelings while learning they don’t have to overcome you. This practice can make it easier to cope with and allow feelings to pass altogether through focused intention to be with them.
Act in accordance with other values: Spend time considering who you are, not just what you do. This could encompass building and sustaining relationships, creating meaningful experiences, and allowing yourself to be with the simple yet profound aspects of life. If you value nature, when was the last time you paid attention the way the clouds positioned themselves in the sky or the baby branches on trees swayed in the wind? If you value fitness when was the last time you focused on the internal experience of what immediate movement provides for your body and soul?
Practice gratitude: You can reinforce intrinsic value by recognizing both the gains and losses in life. As painful as it is to admit and accept, you cannot love without loss, you cannot experience joy without sorrow, and life is consistently both bitter and sweet. Recognizing what you are thankful for can deepen personal meaning beyond how you keep score.
Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and visit my website for more information about my practice. Visit my upcoming book website to subscribe for important updates on its release in early 2024!
Natasha P. Trujillo, Ph.D., Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Dr. Trujillo is a counseling and sport psychologist dedicated to helping individuals, teams, and organizations build awareness of self, others, and the world to reach their full potential in and out of their craft. She owns a private practice where she seeks to educate, consult, and provide mental health and sport psychology services that are evidenced-based and collaborative. She works primarily with athletes, performers, and high-achievers to help them find balance in their pursuit of success and acceptance of their own humanity. She strives to help people learn how to simply “be”, and get better at what they do. She has specializations in grief/loss, eating disorders, trauma, anxiety, & identity development.
