Discovering Your Worth

The Cost of Not Knowing My Worth

OK, if real talk isn't your cup o' tea right now you may want to keep scrolling. I want to tell you something I don't talk about a lot.

I came from a good home, by all worldly standards. But by high school I was struggling with intense depression and horribly low self-esteem. I had a hard time making eye contact with people and didn't terribly like what I saw in the mirror.

Yikes. Said that one out loud. Whew....did that change your opinion of me? Anyway...

That's right - I held very low esteem for my worth/value.

The fact that I was the daughter of a decorated military officer, a pastor and professor (sometimes all at the same time), didn't keep me from holding tightly to a glued together mask of "everything's ok".

My sense of worth felt like it was the target in a game of dodge ball as I tried to make sense of the world I was growing up in, while also trying to walk the tightrope of being a "good girl".
Fast forward to college and maybe like many of you I tried super duper hard to be cute and worldly as my dorm-mates giggled about stuff that I found either gross, boring or scary. But giggled I did. Because it didn't occur to me that I had options, choices, a conscience or an opinion.

And you know what, it took me until I was about 35 years old to crack under the weight of realizing so many of my missed opportunities and poor choices were directly connected to the fact that I didn't know my own worth.

I constantly subconsciously rated my value in the world according to how much I had, how much I accomplished, what kind of job I had, who I was hanging out with (or who I was allowed to hang out with) - you get the picture.

Does any of this sound familiar?

And here's the thing - if you don't know your worth, you will not allow yourself to consider that you have options. You will stay stuck and in your comfort zone because doing scary things will feel like something for other people.

And now, let me tell you about the unexpected consequence of doubting your worth. And all it takes is one sucker punch from life to get you there.

The Unexpected Consequence of Doubting Your Worth

There are about seven life experiences that crushed my spirit to the point that I doubted whether or not I was valued and esteemed. I won’t list all of of them but I feel like I need to share a few for the person that has experienced something similar:

My miscarriage
The dissolution of my first marriage
The loss of my mother
You see, like most people who are driven, productive and conscientious, I got very good at “keeping it moving”. I didn’t allow myself time to grieve, take care of myself or even admit that I was struggling. Frankly, I didn’t feel like I had time for that. I didn’t feel like I was worthy of care, therapy, health, etc. I had subconsciously settled for silent grief, feeling unwell, feeling unheard and never rested because that is what - wait for it - I saw my mother and most of the women in my life do. Are you squirming yet? Well, I’m squirming and I’m talking about myself.
Here’s the thing - the unexpected consequence of doubting your worth is that you withhold grace for yourself to admit anything is wrong. It will look like everything is fine but you will ignore the signals your spirit, soul and body is sending alerting you that something is wrong. You will override the overwhelming emotions, physical symptoms, self-sabotaging

thoughts and mental exhaustion and other soul-crushing experiences and eventually you will just start going through the motions.

Rocking your vision will be laughable and therefore you will bury your hopes, dreams, passions and yes - your purpose because it’s too painful to do anything else with it.

The Best Power Plays You May Ever Read About Your Own Worth

I remember the first time I realized that the way someone close to me was treating me violated my sense of worth. What I know now is that in my own personal relationships, early in my life, I allowed people with a stronger internal sense of their own worth, authority or position to drown out my own sense of worth - over time.

That is not something unique to my experience. It’s a shared experience by many - male and female alike.

Looking back, there were patterns as I was growing up that reinforced that my value was not significant. There’s an amazing ending, so don’t stop reading before it gets good. But this is important.

Of course, as a young person I didn’t have perspective or language to know that an unhealthy pattern was forming (and if I did I’m not sure I would have known what to do with it). But I now know that my God-given discernment - my internal compass (in my world, as known as The Holy Spirit) was giving me clues - warning signals. I’m curious to know if any of these sound familiar to you(these are clues we will come back to later):

Crying, getting mad or expressing fear was unacceptable and simply addressed as a behavior that needed correction
Being bullied was a matter for my own personal growth vs an issue to address and remedy
My understanding of authority ranked the needs of others above my own awareness of my own
My own need for acceptance buried feelings of being unsafe, unheard or unseen
I lacked the discipline to be uncomfortable with the hard work of being unpopular - as a child, a young person and even as an adult
I was prone to dramatics and defensiveness if I heard feedback that painted me in a non-angelic light
I lacked the strategies and techniques to appropriately articulate my feelings, values and boundaries

Ok, seriously…I’m such a different person today (in case you were wondering if you should start following someone else). But I want to tell you the hard places in between my victories, otherwise I’m not really helping you understand what it’s going to take to rock your vision.

To be fair, not all of what contributed to my struggle with understanding my worth was done to me. Some of the causes were self-imposed.

This would be a good time to tell you…I’ve got really good news. Your best news is also mine: discovering your worth is a journey, not a destination. You don’t have to feel worthy to be worthy. Whether you’ve accomplished news and noteworthy things or you are struggling to discover your gifts and talents, your worth is settled.

Even if you started life thinking you could hang the moon and had everything at your disposal to do just that - we all eventually face something that opposes our sense of worth. All of us. Rich. Poor. Black. White.

Whether you experienced normal developmental milestones and life events, or traumatic ones - let me introduce you to a few #PowerPlays to help you look in the mirror with a little more self-love and whole lot more grace for yourself for what you’ve been through.

Whether your purpose on the earth is being fulfilled, is already fully realized or hidden from the world, as a human being, your very existence declares your worth (you are valued, esteemed and subject to the potential that lives within you). No life event or circumstance changes that. So often we determine our worth by some external accomplishment or aspiration. Is it possible that you already have what you need to be worthy? Is it possible that what may seem insignificant to you is highly valued and needed in your home, community, etc.? What if YOU are enough?
Your challenges, tragedies, flaws, insecurities and setbacks do not disqualify you. They QUALIFY you. They develop insight and experience that could potentially point you to your purpose. Disqualifiers are assumptions we have accepted as barriers to taking a step towards pursuing the vision that secretly taps at our hearts and minds. The thing is disqualifiers are illusions. They are temporary. We make assumptions that often follow us throughout our lives and keep us playing small - or just not playing at all.
Knowing your worth is not the same thing as embracing your worth. Knowing your worth is head knowledge - it’s something that can be stated in a tweet. Embracing your worth compels you to push through hard things, hard times and difficult emotions to create for yourself the runway to rock your vision - whatever that is. Embracing your worth is a process. It evolves as you experience life, grow and develop in the various roles you play in your life.

Disqualifiers are assumptions we have accepted as barriers to taking a step towards pursuing the vision that secretly taps at our hearts and minds. We make assumptions that often follow us throughout our lives and keep us playing small - or just not playing at all.

I Can Hear What You’re Thinking (or at Least Some of You)

“But Coach Karen, you don’t know what I’m going through/what I’ve done/what happened”, I can hear you thinking.

Beloved, I can tell you from first hand experience that the shame, hurt and overwhelm of some of what I’ve experienced at one time absolutely rendered me winded - emotionally, spiritually and otherwise.
What I didn’t know at the time was the following:
That taking time to heal, rest and get help is reasonable and wise. Taking a pause, a sabbatical or saying no to an opportunity can be a beautiful and

empowering way to express your worth. You don’t have to do everything, and even doing nothing is okay. Because you, Beloved, are worth it.

Making progress, exploring ones options and even dreaming - now I’m getting all crazy - is possible in the midst of figuring life out in the midst of the things that are going wrong. We have options when it comes to our obstacles - we can keep the status quo (because sometimes that’s healthy and needed), we can go around the obstacle, go under it, go over it or through it. When you begin to tap into your worth, you begin to see that any one of those options is yours to choose.

Taking time to heal, rest and get help is reasonable and wise.

So everything is perfect now, and I never struggle to see my worth, right? Wrong. Embracing your worth is about giving yourself enough grace to take care of yourself and get help when you need it. It’s about remembering that discovering your worth is a journey. Some stops along the way you will expect, and others may throw you for a loop. It’s okay.

Below are some resources that may support your efforts to discover (or rediscover) your worth.* Should you need additional resources, we encourage you to contact your doctor, pastor or pastor immediately.

Private Community/Social & Learning Connections

www.facebook.com/ryv2020

Reclaim Your Why Digital Course: https://courses.rockyourvision.net/pl/231679

Reclaim Tribe (Exclusive to Reclaim Your Why Course Students)

Individual Coaching Support

https://www.dudashexecutivecoaching.com/

https://www.bossconsultingllc.net/

Metro-Atlanta and Southeast Area Counseling Support

https://www.mindandbodygroup.com/

https://www.eagleslandingchristiancounseling.com/

Parenting Support

Parenting Support: https://birth2work.org/

National Mental Health Resources

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline 1-800-273-8255

Online Counseling Resources: https://www.betterhelp.com/

Articles

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/what-mentally-strong-people-dont-do/201707/how-do-you-measure-your-self-worth

https://www.psychalive.org/self-worth/

The Alice Project, LLC (parent company of Rock Your Vision) offers these articles, links and suggestions as a general community service. In no way are they construed to be medical advice. The Alice Project does not provide medical advice. The thoughts and ideas of the organizations listed here are their own. By clicking on these links and contacting these organizations you affirm that you do so at your own risk and release and hold harmless The Alice Project, LLC and it’s agents/representatives.