a few loving reminders
Hello Love,
There’s a pesky belief floating around in our world that in order to be worthy, we need to prove it by contributing to society according to certain criteria (wealth, status, beauty, popularity, possessions).
Here’s how the fearful narrative goes: in order to increase your worth, you need to earn more money, obtain more qualifications, win more approval, gain more prestige, craft a better body, raise a perfect kid, have an incredible partner, and accumulate more belongings.
The tragedy about this whole fear-based narrative is that when we finally arrived at a place of being worthy, it’s because we earned it.
At some level, we know if we had to earn it, we can also lose it.
Herein lies the worthiness hustle.
Social anxiety, fear of rejection, people pleasing, and self-sacrificing all rise from a lack of worthiness.
Imposter syndrome, feeling like a fraud, and the constant worry about what others think of us are born from the belief that we aren’t good enough.
When we beat ourselves up for mistakes, feel terrified of criticism, or expect perfection from ourselves it’s because of this self-sabotaging subconscious story: when we make mistakes, when we don’t measure up, we lose our worth.
Have you bought into the illusion that you have to hustle for your worth?
I’ve worked with hundreds of clients who grew up in an environment where they were taught they needed to earn their worth, they needed to prove it. They devoted their lives to the worthiness hustle (often losing themselves, or burning out, in the process).
We strive to be the perfect partner and parent, the model employee and best boss, the favourite friend and hard-working volunteer. We do all this while sweating to have the perfect home, kids, business, body, and life.
Because we believe every missed opportunity, mistake, failure, and shortcoming will diminish our worth, we live in a constant state of fear:
- fear of failure
- fear of intimacy
- fear of success
- fear of rejection
- fear of judgement
- fear of humiliation
- fear of commitment
- fear of vulnerability
- fear of not being young/old/short/tall/fit/strong/smart/pretty/wealthy/qualified enough
The relentless, obsessive, exhausting pursuit of worth creates tremendous suffering.
Here’s the truth:
feeling worthy is a basic human need.
Worth is the essence of your being.
You are worthy just because you are here.
You were born worthy and you will die worthy.
Nothing you do between birth or death will make you more or less worthy.
Your worth is inherent – you are loveable for who you are, not what you do.