Self-Worth & Net Worth
Oct 10, 2021
"Happiness does not depend on what happens outside of you but what happens inside of you" – Harold B. Lee
Self-worth and net worth are inexorably tied to one another. But not in the way you might think. You must have one to have the other but only in one order. Reverse the order, and your life will be hollow. The correct order is self-worth first, then net worth after.
When you have high self-worth, your net worth will reflect it and abundance will flow. This is because you have become acutely aware of your own value. However, the contrast is that if you have a high net worth, you do not necessarily have high self-worth. Therein lies the outer world's trappings.
Self-worth is the understanding of who you really are. It is what you believe, think, and say to yourself about yourself. And it is much deeper than that because you are even more than what you believe about yourself.
When you agree even in the slightest and bring shame inside you, the internal critic can become relentless—harping on every flaw, every oversight, and every mistake. Creating negative mantras that beat you up constantly. These are what we must let go of to uncover the true self within.
Building Self-Worth Backwards
Many of us who feel unworthy or ashamed when it comes to finance subconsciously adopt the belief that the way to take away this negative emotion is to create a lot of money for ourselves. However, this is backward because we are going to attempt to have the outer world fix our inner world.
So we have a hypothetical person who doesn't feel their families love or their parent's approval and sets out to show them that they are indeed worthy of their love. And they are going to accomplish great things to prove it to them. So they go out in the world to make their mark on it and their fortune in it. Which of course, may or may not happen, but let's imagine for the sake of this mental exercise that it does happen and that this human gets to the promised land.
The place where they are making way more money than the average person in our society. They have got the big house, the nice car, the great job or business that they are amazing at. Maybe even the loving spouse and kids to round out the "American Dream."
But there is an emptiness to the person and they just can't figure out why. So they go and show off all the things they have amassed to their parents, if the parents are alive at this point, as if to say to them, "See I am worthy, I did it. I did better than you and created even more than you did. I deserve your love and approval." Hoping that this will fill the emptiness.
What do you think is going to happen? It could be a million different scenarios, but they will all boil down to basically three. First, they may actually be proud and beaming with love and respect. And say, "wow, you really did it, you are incredible. What you have done is amazing. We love you so much, and are grateful to be your parents."
In this scenario, the praise doesn't last long because you still have the internal critique telling you that your parent's opinion doesn't really matter and that you have to do more. Or, after you get to this pot of gold at the end of the rainbow and all the love and admiration of your parents, you stop and think, "this is what I really wanted, this is why I created all this stuff, for their love and approval? This is it?" And you feel let down because the success doesn't have the emotional fulfillment you thought it would. This is what happened to me.
The second scenario is that your parents or family member who treated you as unworthy, upon seeing all these accomplishments, still are not impressed. They still treat you like the kid who is not deserving of their love. They still critique the minor flaws in the beautiful life you have created. They still talk down to you and, in no uncertain terms, tell you, "you can do better." Basically, saying to you that you are still not good enough and that you will have to do more to get their love and approval. Hopefully, you see that it will never be enough for them, and if you continue, you will be seeking their approval for the rest of your life even after they are gone from this world. Because that constant judgmental parent will be living inside of your head.
The third scenario is a hybrid of the first two, in that the family member or loved one who sees all your amazing achievements approves but steals all your thunder. They say, "wow you really have got an amazing life built for yourself. I'm so glad I pushed you so hard and taught you so well. You should be grateful I'm your parent otherwise, you wouldn't have gotten this far." Thereby chopping your legs out from under you and devaluing all you've done. While I agree that everything happened for you and your path was designed to get you to where you are, this scenario just like the rest doesn't give you the worthiness you were seeking.
In all the above scenarios, we imagine that your parents or loved one who's approval you were seeking through accomplishment are still alive to see it. If not, and they are only living in your head, you might never stop seeking their love through achievement. The scenarios also imply that you actually reached the heights you set out to which trigger these types of conversations. Meaning you got to the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow or the imagined success you dreamt of. If not, you could still be seeking their love in this way and continue grinding for it, still hoping to experience one of the situations I described.
What is interesting about these scenarios is that if you do not see the colossal calamity of seeking your worthiness outside yourself, then the next logical thing is to keep going and do more. You make bigger goals and want to get more money, better toys, massive experiences, and giant achievements all to get the happiness you crave.
"You either walk inside your story and own it, or walk outside your story and hustle for worthiness" – Brené Brown
Building Self-Worth
If you have fully absorbed what I just told you and see that there is no amount of money or success that will ever fill the emptiness inside you, then you will come to the next conclusion. "Okay then how do I build self-worth?" You don't actually build anything because self-worth isn't something that is absent you need to create. It is something that has always been there, a constant that you have been blocking.
Building would mean you are starting from neutral or in a negative value and need to create a structure of worthiness to live in. The reverse is actually true. You need to take away all that has been stopping you from feeling worthiness. Imagine that you live in a home, and the entire ceiling is a skylight.
Forget about how that would be architecturally possible for a second and follow me down this thought exercise. Your entire ceiling is a massive skylight, and you have been covering up the glass and blocking out the light almost your entire life. Starting with when you first began feeling shame and unworthiness.
Have you ever seen a child, especially before the age of 5, feeling unworthy? Of course not because we come into this world completely blissful, in love with ourselves, our bodies, our families, and life itself. Shame and unworthiness are taught to us when we do something adults deem as "bad." We need to love that child who first felt shame and be there for them. We need to let them know they did nothing wrong.
So if you are feeling not good enough, not loved, or ashamed of who you are, then you are living in the dark. All we need to do is start removing those beliefs covering up the glass and let the light shine on you. All the worthiness you will ever need is inside of you, and it is those negative mantras of unworthiness that is blocking it. It starts with just become aware of when your mind is thinking these thoughts of "I'm not good enough."
I will lead by example. When I first began this practice, I noticed my thoughts were things like, "there is never enough money, how come I can't figure this out. Why am I so stupid, why can't I get this, am I always going to be this way? Have I done enough to deserve money? Will anyone ever love me for who I am? Will I ever be free?"
Maybe some of these negative mantras resonate with you, and some don't. I just wanted to get the ball rolling for you because, ultimately, it is what you are telling yourself that we need to discover. When they come up, and you notice them, I recommend writing them down so you can see them. When they are on paper, they are easier to work with.
When you can see all your self-limiting mantras and beliefs as false, they will fall away from you. This is how we clean off the skylight and let the light in. When a belief is seen as false, it will leave you. If you are still habitually living with a belief you think should have left, then there might be another belief reinforcing the one you got rid of. It means you will have to keep doing the work on yourself until it is all uncovered, and you get to the root beliefs blocking your worthiness.
Let me end with some universal truths that I found when doing this, from my heart to yours: You are not your money. You are not your lack of money. You are not your ability to earn money. The amount of money you have or don't have does not reflect your value to the world. Your worth is not dependent on what is in your bank account. It is not dependent on how your body looks, where you live, how you grew up, the color of your skin.
You are not your religion, your sex, your family, your occupation, the house you live in, the car that you drive, the clothes that you wear, or even the thoughts that you think. You are immensely greater than all of those things.
You are eternally loved beyond measure. There is nothing you can do to ever stop the tidal wave of love constantly upon you. If you were not worthy, you would not exist. Don't believe anyone who tells you otherwise, even if it's in your own voice.
From Heart Reminding You Of Your Divinity. Good Journey My Friends
