Today I want to talk about self-worth. How do we get to have a positive sense of our worth? How do we learn to feel worthy of having good things happen in our life? How do we learn to feel like we deserve happiness?
Let’s imagine, there are 4 life cups. We’ll label them Spiritual, Emotional, Mental and Physical. Each of these cups represents an area of our life, how we spend our time in any given week and where we are spending our energy at this time.
These 4 life cups and how they are filled, not filled or balanced between them are actually the basic ingredients to having high self-worth and self-confidence. The cups are related to each other. When any one cup gets too low, it will begin to effect other cups. Cups that are overflowing are not necessarily good for you. Could you take some of the time you’ve been spending in one area and dedicate it to another area? While having certain cups at a high level contributes to us feeling good, if any area is too low, feeling good in a few areas of our life won’t be enough to make up for the unbalanced area.
Even though I like to write, I prefer visual ideas to help me remember big concepts. The picture of the 4 cups representing different areas of my life and how they interact has always been extremely helpful to me in identifying where I’m out of balance in my life and where I need to prioritize spending more time. I’ve often thought of literally having 4 cups labeled with each area and moving rocks in between them to represent where I’m spending my time and effort at any given time.
When we are out of balance in an area of our life, we don’t feel that great. We can do it for a while, but we aren’t at our best and if other areas are neglected too long, then eventually there will be consequences. Maybe we will get burned out at work, or suffer from health problems, maybe we will feel disconnected from our relationships or end up in a divorce. Sometimes these things in life would happen anyway, but other times, looking back, we know that if we had shifted our priorities BEFORE things were at a critical level, then a lot of pain, heartbreak or lost time could have been avoided.
Sometimes the cups can also help us recognize our strengths. Where do we naturally put our time? What areas of our life do we enjoy? Which areas are flowing well?
What does all this have to do with self-worth and self-confidence?
If your spiritual cup is full, your emotional cup is happy, your mental cup is stimulated, and your physical cup includes exercise and healthful eating, we can concentrate on creating what we want in life without these areas becoming additional challenges. These areas can also each give us unique sources of help, talents and strengths that we can draw upon as needed. When we can use elements synchronously from all 4 life cups we can literally create what seems like magic to people on the outside. But, is really just our own best self, shining through without the fetters of extra struggles and challenges.
When life feels better, when we feel in flow with the Universe and our own sense of God, when we feel good and like this world is a good place, this is the heart of self-worth – the feeling of
“I matter” – just as I am, just because I exist helps us to create the life we really want.
Self-confidence is taking this feeling and applying it to actively deciding what you want in life and taking a series of actions to manifest and create that vision in your mind out in the real world. The core of that ability is having the belief and confidence that it is possible. When this happens, your feeling of self-worth is, at its core, that you deserve good things.
If you struggle with self-worth and self-confidence I offer you these ideas to consider for yourself:
1) You are actually incredibly powerful – even when it doesn’t seem like it in the moment.
2) You don’t need to do anything to earn worth. You are here and that is all you need to begin to learn this, it is a skill and it isn’t your fault maybe no one ever taught you how to feel good about yourself.
3) You can focus on taking positive actions to effect change in your life and how you feel about what is possible for you – stop thinking about things and start doing things.
4) Don’t do things just because someone else things that is the “right” answer, find your own answers.
5) Gather just enough information to get started doing, only stop and look for more as needed, don’t get trapped in endless information and weighing things. Decide, create, refine, keep going.
6) There is always someone with things better and someone with things worse – be grateful instead of jealous. You don’t ever know what is really going on with them and it is never as simple and easy over there in their life as it looks like it must be.
7) What you truly want can be.
I challenge you to find some cups this week and a Sharpie marker, label them Spiritual, Emotional, Mental and Physical. Get some rocks and for the next week, place a rock in the corresponding cup when you do an action in your day to day life that fits that category. At the end of the week, notice: Are you balanced? Does one or more area need more attention? Is any cup overflowing to the point where maybe you need to shift some priorities?
Based on what you discover, try to make some changes and see if you feel better about your self-worth, self-confidence and your belief that the good things you want in your life really are possible.
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