Where does your sense of worth and value come from?..
Does it come from your bank account? Does it come from your occupation title? The number of degrees that are on the wall? The amount of books that you've read, or the number of countries that you've visited in your life? Is it the number of friends that you have which determines if you are valuable or invaluable?
Is it other people who get to decide if we should feel a sense of worth and value?
If we choose to derive our sense of personal worth and value from those sources, then we might not ever be happy and fully satisfied. When we derive our sense of worth and value from those places it puts ourselves at risk, because those things can always change over time; we might lose friends, lose our job, spend all of our money, etc. And then what are we to think of ourselves?
Another place where we can easily tie up our sense of worth and value is in connection to our own personal views.
Whenever our sense of worth and value is tied up in our views and opinions, then it can be very easy to feel insecure whenever someone doesn't agree with what we think and say. And when we are confronted with people who disagree with us, it can be easy to let that make us feel invaluable, stupid, and worthless etc.
When we tell someone else our thoughts and opinions, if others don't agree with them, it can be difficult to separate our sense of value from our own opinions at the time; the views that others are disagreeing with. And it can feel like a direct attack and that the person is rejecting you when they are rejecting only your opinion. In other words, we can still choose to love people or be friendly with someone, despite them holding views that we passionately disagree with. And just because someone might not agree with one particular opinion that we hold, might not mean that they are disregarding and rejecting us entirely.
Of course though, we don't have to like or treat others kindly that we disagree with, and it's a way of living that is obviously very difficult to achieve for many, but I think it's a high standard that's worth trying to make the effort to achieve. And maybe by trying to practice it with others, in not rejecting them when we hear one thing we might not like, it will in-turn help us to not feel rejected when we are confronted by other people who disagree with our own views.
How do you feel when other people disagree with you?...
Do you feel stupid? Insulted? That you are being rejected and not being respected? There are many opportunities for us to come across people in our lives who aren't going to agree with every view that we have and if we are going to feel worthless every time they disagree with us, then that's going to easily set us up for many struggles.
Our confidence plays a big part in our life experiences and if it's rooted in something that can easily change, or is solely dependent upon the approval of others, then that can greatly limit our enjoyment in life. We can look to others to confirm that we are valuable or we can confirm it for ourselves. We can struggle for the rest of our lives trying to meet the world's standards of what other people think should make us worthy or valuable, or we can get rooted in something much deeper.
If we are always on the hamster wheel, struggling and trying to achieve approval from everyone else in the world other than our own selves, before we feel confident and valuable, then that limits our freedom. Shouldn't freedom entail being free from the pressure to try and impress other people?
Learning to love our self and value our self can help us to enjoy our lives and it strengthens us to be able to take on the difficulties that we will face from day to day throughout our entire journey on this earth.
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