Believe in Your Worthiness
Do you believe you are worthy? When I first got divorced years ago, I immersed myself in learning about self help and healing my life. One of the things I listened to regularly was a meditation by Louise Hay that talked about how you are worthy simply because you exist. I struggled with my self-worth for basically my entire life, so thinking that I was worthy simply because I existed was a very new and abstract concept for me to wrap my head around.
I always had felt like I had to achieve something, be the best at something, or be perfect to be worthy. But here was this very successful women and international best selling author telling me that I was worthy simply because I existed. Some of this lack of worth clearly stemmed from my childhood and so many things that I needed to learn to heal from. The concept of worthiness really got me thinking about how lack of self-worth seeps into all areas of their lives.
The idea of worthiness also made me think about the students I teach and how the school system is really not set up to show kids they are worthy. The system is set up only to show a very narrow range of students that they are successful and worthy in certain areas when really that is not true at all. All children have so many gifts to share with the world when we choose to look.
The problem with school is that it only values a very narrow area of competencies. As a result leaves many people feeling unsuccessful and that they are not worthy or valuable to society when actually the opposite is often true. You do not need to excel at school to excel in life. I wish our school system focused more on how help students see their own worth and value. Often when kids struggle in one area it affects their confidence in other areas.
I had a conversation with parents of a child a while ago which made me really sad because every year they had been pulled into the school and told that their child was completely behind in all areas. Here I was telling them basically the same thing….only this time my solution was a very different approach. They asked about putting their child in tutoring and taking away extra curriculars until grades improved. Knowing how hard this child worked to try to keep up with the class I felt that approaches like that would actually have the opposite effect.
So I told this child’s parents to focus on what their child is good at. I emphasized how important it was to celebrate the small wins, find things that they enjoy doing and really focus on as many positives as they could for their child. Just like adults, when kids begin to feel confident in one area it will begin to spread to other areas of their life, and slowly will spread into many areas. Then eventually they will see their confidence build and their self-worth grow.
What areas of life do you struggle with your self-worth in? It could be finances, relationships, family connections, intelligence, your career. What could you do to build your confidence? I know for me it was continuous repetition of meditations and podcasts that focused on healing and growth that helped me. Maybe this article will help a bit. Know that no matter what is going on with you, you matter and you are worthy simply because you exist. Much love!
