I was fourth and the lowest member in my family’s chronological chain. Growing up, I was told nearly every day I was fat, stupid and ugly and rotten to the core.
I remember my mother screaming at me in her frustration how rotten I truly was. My brother chased me around the dining room table almost daily, taunting and teasing and prompting me to believe I was fat, stupid and ugly and an idiot to boot.
Even though I was born a magnificent Being, I was never encouraged to think of my Self that way. I was told if I loved myself, I was conceited, vain and egotistical.
Self Worth is the place we come from when we love our Self unconditionally. It’s from this place we know our heart’s truest emotions and desires, unconditional love, joy, peace, forgiveness and gratitude. We were all born with this gift.
Most of us, at some point in our development, forget how deserving, worthy and valuable we really are. Most of us have forgotten that we have a choice to believe it. I didn’t even know I had a choice. I never felt deeply worthy because I was programmed to believe otherwise. Based on my environment and conditioning, in order to survive, I buried the pain, created an imaginary world to live in, pretending to be the person I longed to be and that’s how my ego personality developed. Unfortunately the ego constantly needs to be stroked. It needs to feel puffed up. It needs to experience it’s own self esteem. Sadly, no acknowledgment is ever enough for the ego’s esteem so it doesn’t last very long and is extremely superficial.
Every life decision I made was based on the pretense of bolstering my self esteem. Every issue I dealt with was rooted in the depth of my fear of being unworthy. For years I studied and practiced to overcome the belief that I had no value. The concept of Self Worth was not even in my consciousness. I survived abuse, cancer and my own ridiculously inappropriate decisions.
I studied everything to do with “self help”, traveling the world, following gurus, doing seminars and workshops, studying psychology and becoming a “life coach”.
When I was diagnosed with a stage five cancer in the mid eighties, my first reaction was “how can I get rid of it?” I knew enough to immediately take responsibility for creating it. I knew my body was reacting to thoughts about myself that my subconscious mind believed. and so my deepest work began.
When I dug down into my soul, though I didn’t think I believed it consciously, I gained insight into the rottenness I believed myself to be. I created a visual image of a decaying maggot infested apple core at the centre of my being. My self worth was infected and infested with this disease.
There were many processes I used to release the venom attached to my thinking. I gathered all my information and data so that I could transform my entire belief system.
As an actor and student of life I used my course studies and workshops to act out the various characters and parts that were played in my disease. As an artist I drew and painted a myriad of pictures depicting the visual images of my cancer and as a writer I wrote essays and letters to my tormentors which I burned in effigy. As I watched the ashes being released into the atmosphere I allowed the unworkable energy to flow away from me as I let go of my preconceived beliefs all at the same time.
As part of my master’s program and “The Anderson Method” which I was involved with at that time, I used every psychology class and group to further my progress in letting go of each poisonous attachment I had to people past and present, to the concept of God and to all my toxic beliefs about myself. Along with surgery and radiation, I watched the malignancy disappear from my body and my soul. I was healed and my work toward living a magical life continued.
Several years ago I became part of a women’s tele-conference group. Each week a group of women from around the United States spend one hour on a phone call discussing topics that are generally not part of our everyday conversations. When I first was invited to the call, I immediately knew I had come home. We were discussing issues and sharing our souls with each other without complaining or judging.
I felt loved and accepted by virtual strangers who didn’t even know me. I was disarmed by the intimacy and still looking for reasons why I was feeling so euphoric about being accepted. It must have been because they told me how terrific I was or because I was learning to be patient and listen or maybe because I was making a contribution to others. Every reason was indulging my ego and was putting limitations on who I truly am.
Oddly, this weekly phone call has become the single most important process I have yet to discover. It is a place where I feel safe to communicate anything without being critically judged. Through the eyes of these other amazing women I began to see the mirror of my true value. As we grew individually and as a group we began to share information that was not just helpful, but life changing.
After reading Wayne Dyer’s quote,
“You are always a valuable, worthwhile human being – not because
somebody says so, not because you’re successful, not because you
make a lot of money – but because you decide to believe it and
for no other reason,”
I realized I was still looking for reasons and hadn’t deeply discovered my true Self Worth. I’d made up so many reasons to believe in myself and to elevate my self esteem, I was convincing myself I was okay. It’s exactly what my ego fleetingly needed. But, in doing this, I had to rely on too many outside forces and comparisons to justify raising my self esteem. Everything I felt about my self esteem was conditional.
Self Worth, on the other hand, is a place to come from when we identify the value of who we really are. It’s internal and unconditional. It’s our own magnificent Self. It has nothing to do with our accomplishments or what we have, how we look or our pretense. We’re all born with Self Worth and it’s the central place we grow from. It’s a Universal vibrational energy we’re connected with, even before we’re conceived. It’s me loving me unconditionally. It’s the gift we’re all given at birth.
This is a Self Worth exercise I’d like to share with you:
Take a deep breath in through your nose – hold it- and breathe out through your mouth. Now relax and breathe naturally.
Allow your Self to feel these words in your soul as you say them out loud.
* I am a Magnificent Being
* My Self Worth is the foundation of my Self Belief.
* I recognize how Valuable I Am.
* There is nothing I have to do to love my Self.
* I am willing to love others as I love my Self.
* I deserve to live a life of Joy.
* My Self Worth connects me with the Infinite Universe.
* Loving my Self sets me Free.
Now take a deep breath and make this your Truth.
I see myself very differently now. I know I love my Self. I acknowledge my own magnificence and worth first, just because I say so and I believe it in the depth of my soul. I remind myself to choose it every moment of every day. There’s no question whether I’m good enough or deserving of. I know I matter. I see this mirror image when I see you. I’m surrounded with unconditional love, a deep sense of joy and gratitude and a huge desire to serve and share it with others.
When we allow ourselves to see and feel our own magnificence without reasons or excuses, we are inspired by the Worth that lives within Each and Every one of us.
In resurrecting my Self Worth and loving my Self for no reason, peace and freedom are mine! And this is how I live a magical life.
