I was recently in Jamestown and visited the Lucy-Desi Museum. It was super fun to cruise around all the nostalgic TV sets and learn more about her impressive life. Not only was Lucille Ball a wickedly smart businesswoman, but she also broke down barriers for women all over the world in the entertainment industry and beyond.
One of her quotes that touched my heart was “Love yourself first and everything else falls into line. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world.”
It got me thinking about self-love and self-worth.
For years I struggled with feeling good enough. In fact, I don’t think I’m alone. After coaching women from all over the world, despite how accomplished they were, each had some degree of not-enoughness.
It’s so easy from an outside perspective to look at someone and think they have it all figured out. That their confidence must be high if they are high achieving, right? Wrong!
Not valuing yourself heavily influences your decisions and quality of life.
Can you think of a time in your life that if you had more self-esteem then you would’ve made a different decision? One that would’ve served you better? Maybe that looks like saying yes to the wrong partner - one that brought you down or caused emotional pain and suffering. Or, it could be that you said yes to a project that was soul-sucking and suppressive.
We’ve all been there at some point in our lives.
Generally, we aren’t taught to recognize our personal traits and qualities. It isn’t until we are older and perhaps interested in personal growth that we even start to utilize tools like the Gallups Strengths test or partake in an Enneagram assessment.
It can be illuminating to see a report reflect your attributes back to you...maybe for the first time.
Won’t it be a wonderful world when we can teach our children to celebrate their wins - both big and small? To practice gratitude and honor our hearts on a daily basis?
We do have the power to nurture our inner child now even if there were parts that never got attended to in our past. We get to change the story for good and adopt a new paradigm.
What would a new paradigm of worthiness look like for you? What would believing new and empowering thoughts about yourself look like? What would it sound like?
If “I’m not good enough” has been a part of your makeup what would I am enough feel like? I’m a visual person. So with any change work, I like to visualize the process. When I think of changing the story and flipping around old limiting beliefs, I visualize designing a new fabric and seeing how that new, empowering design gets embedded in my physical makeup. That each new thread weaves in something beautiful and life-giving.
It helps me understand that we can rewrite old stories that don’t serve us, no matter how deep the root is.
We know awareness is the first step. So if you find yourself choosing things that are less than, it could be an opportunity to examine how it may be connected to the belief system of your worthiness.
For fun, there’s a very simple online test you can check out -
Rosendbuerg’s Self-Esteem Scale:
https://wwnorton.com/college/psych/psychsci/media/rosenberg.ht
Take your results with a grain of salt. For me, it was a chance to get a fast check-in.
On the same subject line, I recently connected with a friend and she mentioned that she joined a 12-step program for support. My interest was peaked and she continued to tell me it was underearners anonymous. I was curious and researched some of the symptoms related to UA. I was not surprised to see several areas overlapped with common issues that I help women entrepreneurs face and transform.
Some examples of not valuing yourself include:
Undercharging
Overdelivering
Working to exhaustion
Slow to praise or recognize contributions
It’s fascinating!
Now I’m not saying that we all have secret psychological issues. But what I do feel strongly about is that our thoughts control our feelings which in turn govern our actions to which our results are directly tied.
This means how we think about ourselves changes our reality. Think positive thoughts about yourself and embody worthiness and see your world open up and change for the better.
I’ve been studying the work of American psychologist Abraham Maslow. You’ve probably heard me reference his quote, “What one can be, one must be.” Love that!
He also included self-respect in his hierarchy of needs. “He described two different forms of respect: the need for respect from others and the need for self-respect, or inner self-esteem. Respect from others entails recognition, acceptance, status, and appreciation, and was believed to be more fragile and easily lost than inner self-respect. According to Maslow, without the fulfillment of the self-respect need, individuals will be driven to seek it and unable to grow and obtain self-actualization.” (https://virtuefirst.info/virtues/self-respect/)
Whoah!! Let that soak in for a minute. Two sides of respect - the need to be seen and appreciated from the outside and the need to experience and feel self-respect from the inside. A powerful duo!
I feel as leaders we must start with ourselves. That self-worth precedes seeing the value in others. This my friend is a crucial part of effective leadership - being able to see and celebrate the values in others — and it starts with seeing and celebrating the values in ourselves.
Steps can you take to increase your self-worth
Tolerate less - create and adhere to boundaries, minimize or eliminate what drags you down or makes you second guess your value
Prioritize your needs
Keep good company - Jim Rhon’s wisdom = We are the sum of the 5 people that we spend the most time with. Choose wisely.
Do what makes you happy - the power of joy
Celebrate micro wins - daily if possible
Let me know which one you are going to adopt as a new habit. I recommend picking 1, rocking it until it’s fully ingrained and them moving down the list.
To understanding your full beauty, glory, potential, and gifts. Like Buddha said,
“You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.”
Amen and a-ho to that!
Until next week...breathe joy!
