You Are Already Worthy

Episode 14 – You are Already Worthy

 

 

Friends, I want to talk to you about something that a lot of women don’t believe. And it’s simply this. You are already worthy. You have a voice and a light and a brain and a heart, and so you have something special and you are already worthy.

 

Do you believe that?

 

You don’t have to lose weight to be worthy. You don’t have to look a certain way to be worthy. You don’t have to have children who follow the straight and narrow in order to be worthy. You don’t have to be married to be worthy. You don’t have to get the degree. You don’t have to make more money. You don’t have to hustle.

 

You are already worthy.

 

Do you know how I know that?

 

Because God said so.

 

And God doesn’t lie.

 

Over the last year as I’ve built my coaching practice, as I’ve had the privilege of working with hundreds of women now, I am still in awe and amazement at how diverse every person I come across has something beautiful to offer and it’s completely unique and special to who that woman is.

 

But I’ve noticed that it is common for women to think that if they reach a certain goal, then they can love themselves. There is a deeper issue going on when this is the reason for pursuing a goal. Deep down, they believe they don’t have anything special to offer until they prove it to themselves, that they’re just filling space, making meals, keeping the family running smoothly, showing up in their various roles, and while they are doing those things, they just kind of go through the days wondering if there’s more to life.

 

If you are wondering if there is more to life, then you are onto something. There is more to life. And it’s the fact that it’s time to believe that you are special and you have something special to offer and you are worthy to pursue it – simply from a place of wanting to, not from a place of having to prove your self-worth.

 

This is one of those topics that is really at the heart of what I wish I could give every single woman within my sphere of influence, I wish I could give them this personal belief, that I could package it up pretty and put a big bow on it and say, here you go! I’m giving you the gift of believing that you are already worthy.

 

Really, at the heart of this belief is the thinking that you enough. You are smart and talented and intelligent, and kind, and beautiful and hard-working and giving enough.

 

If we aren’t operating from the belief that we are enough and that we have something to offer, then we’re most likely operating from the opposite belief; that we aren’t enough, and we don’t have anything to offer, which isn’t true.

 

I believe God is handing women the microphone so to speak, he is calling women to step up to the mic and speak their truth, tell their stories, lift and encourage and give and create and make the world a more balanced, loving, place for the next generations.

 

I see women answering the call to believe in themselves and to do the work of honoring their creative yearnings, to build businesses, to write songs, to get the degrees, to redecorate the grown children’s empty bedrooms and transform them into their art spaces, so many ways that women are answering the call to grow.

 

But I also see women trying to quiet that voice, because it can be scary and it can demand more of you, to get out of your comfort zone, and to put forth the effort.

 

It’s so much easier to hide than to answer the call to believe you have something to offer.

 

Believing you are already worthy will require you to draw upon some Courage. And courage requires us to open our hearts to the possibilities. For me, courage is loving myself when it seems I have no reason to.

 

When I am so aware of my flaws, it can really be hard to love myself and believe I am already worthy of that love. But courage is looking at myself with an honest lens, telling myself the truth about it all, and being willing to try again even if it means getting it wrong again.

 

 I am urging you to stop ignoring that loving voice, that pull deep inside to accept the truth that you are already worthy. I want to offer to you that if you resist it, you will unwittingly suffer.

 

It’s okay to want. It’s okay to have desires. If those wants and desires are calling to you and the voice is only getting louder, it’s time to really listen and step into your courage and believe that you are worthy to have it.

 

For me, it meant getting my second degree. I had to get really clear on my reason WHY for doing that. I knew it couldn’t be like the first time around, proving to my professors I was worthy to be there, I was worthy of my scholarship, all of that kind of proving myself energy.

 

No. And I see our teens and young adults doing this too. I get it. I understand how the system is set up.

And even so,

 

What if we could approach our goals, and our education, and our art, and our businesses and our family life from a place of believing ‘I am already worthy’ and I have something special to offer just for being me?

 

Does that seem too far fetched to believe?

 

Does that seem impossible to do?

 

What if it were possible? To shift the proving ourselves energy, into the I am already worthy energy? What would that look like?

 

And so the second time around, when I kept hearing the voice inside calling me to go back to school and heed the call to become a therapist, I decided to listen.

 

And I was afraid.

 

I was afraid of myself.

 

I was afraid of moving into that hustling kind of energy again.

 

I wrestled with God on this.

 

And here’s what I discovered.

 

I didn’t have to do it to prove anything. I could just do it simply because the pursuit of it was elevating and full of possibility. If I could do it with an open heart, open to where the education would lead me, I would make myself proud from a different kind of energy, one that felt sustaining and life-giving and fulfilling.

 

As I moved along each semester with my classwork and as I juggled all the other responsibilities involved with the ages and stages my little family was in at the time, I sometimes questioned why I was adding school on top of what I already had to do.

 

But I would keep answering all the questioning with the answer that something bigger than me was asking something of me that I didn’t quite understand yet, but I would eventually know, down the road, and so to have faith, and to keep answering the call to learn and grow.

 

That was about seven years ago, when I first went back to school for my undergrad degree in Marriage and Family Therapy. I had to start over completely with my degree, since my first degree was an Arts degree, and this one was a science degree.

 

During this time, I was also working through my childhood with a therapist. I realized that the therapy world is not quite what I wanted to do with how I saw myself helping other moms like me who wanted help healing their childhood pain, or wanted mentoring, more forward momentum, more traction to move forward.

 

I didn’t know anything at the time about Life Coaching and how it approached mental health in a completely different way.

 

And so what I realized, as I followed this winding road of getting my undergrad degree, showing up and doing my own therapy sessions, I realized that God was preparing me for a different approach to mental health – one that would help me eventually reach my people in my own unique way. And while the degree has been a beautiful foundation to build on, I didn’t do it to prove my worth to anyone. I did it simply because I wanted the growth.

 

I’m learning that step one in all of this is to believe that you are already worthy

 

If you are feeling called to something and that something scares you, then you know you are headed in the right direction.

 

That’s what I see time and time again with my students, and in my own path.

 

That’s when you know it’s powerful, if that something feels scary.

 

Understand your power. Do not tell yourself that you are powerless. Or that you don’t have any choices.

 

It starts with you. If you don’t heed the call, who will? Do you know that you are the only one with your unique brand of gifts and talents and intelligence and abilities? And that no one else has what you have?

 

No one has the same voice as you.

 

No one has the same mind as you.

 

No one has the same heart as you.

 

Or the same life experiences.

 

And you have something special.

 

You are already worthy.

 

This goes back to one of the biggest things that can hold us back, for some women it’s their age – thinking it’s too late.

 

I don’t believe this at all anymore.

 

But I used to. I remember holding myself back thinking I was too old, that I had missed my chance.

 

That kind of scarcity thinking, thinking that we’ve missed our chance, that ship has sailed, it’s just not true.

 

Or maybe you think that you aren’t smart enough. Stop it! Of course you are. And where you see that you need to learn and grow, then get busy. Order the books, underline the passages that speak to you, and journal and use a highlighter and use your beautiful mind to learn what is  calling to you.

 

One of the reasons we shut down our dreams before they get off of the ground is because we protect ourselves from feeling uncomfortable, and by that I mean, uncomfortable emotion.

 

When we avoid emotions, we cut ourselves off from being ourself. We shut down our ability to live more fully. This is the exact opposite of growth and evolving.

 

It will cause us to stagnate and seek out buffers.

 

I haven’t fully addressed what buffering is, now is a good time: Buffering is something we do to avoid fully experiencing our lives. We don’t want to feel a feeling or we don’t want to face the truth of our circumstances because we don’t think we can handle the uncomfortable emotion, we don’t trust ourselves yet.

 

Everyone buffers. Everyone has their own style and their own brand of buffering behaviors. Some of them are more self-sabotaging than others.

 

The most obvious buffers that get in the way of people living up to their potential are overuse of drugs and alcohol. And so if you are listening to this podcast, I’m going to guess  that those aren’t your buffers. Maybe they are – I don’t judge anyone’s buffers. Maybe it’s something like Facebook or sugar, or shopping.

 

W all have our buffers, and we all have our private battles, and in our culture, we are constantly bombarded with messages that life is about pleasure seeking and pain avoidance, and so we are sold countless ways to feel pleasure.

 

But ask yourself this question: what would your life be like if you were willing to feel any uncomfortable emotion?

 

If we can build trust in ourselves in such a way where we realize we can be uncomfortable and be just fine, and we are willing to experience uncomfortable emotion, then we will find the kind of thinking that motivates us to overcome our buffers.

 

If you are willing to feel negative emotions and remove the buffers that are getting in the way of believing in your ability to grow and evolve, then you will remove the false pleasures that are adding up to a net negative in your life, and you will trade them in for a heightened experience of true well-being, fulfillment and meaning.

 

I know I’ve spoken to this before, but I just want to reiterate how important it is to pay attention to your feelings, and stop trying to shut down the negative ones. Feelings are the reason we do everything we do.

 

They are the fuel, the juice for all of our actions. When we set out to do something or when we decide Not to do something, it’s because we are trying to feel a certain feeling.

 

If you want a new car, you have a belief that a new car will make you feel a certain way.  

If you want to lose weight, you believe that changing your body will make you feel better.

 

If you want a romantic relationship, or if you don’t want to be in the one you are in, you are thinking that a different person, or removing the current person in your life, will make you feel better.

 

If you don’t know that you are already worthy, you will do a lot of things to try and prove your worth to yourself, or to other people.

 

Everything we do or don’t do is motivated by how we want to feel.

 

And feelings are caused by our thinking.

 

So if for the here and now, the question is: what do you want?

 

What is it you REALLY want?

 

One of the most important things I do for my clients is help them get to the heart of this very question.

 

Sometimes the answer is right there on the surface and we get to work charting a course forward.

 

Other times, the answer has been buried and we have to do some excavating to reveal the true desires that have been covered up by self-doubt and buffering.

 

But once we truly understand what it is we truly want, then it’s time to get clear on what it is you want to feel on purpose.

 

What are the feelings you want to create more of in your life?

 

Since everything we do or don’t do is based on how we think it will feel, it becomes so important to think about what we want to feel.

 

And so here’s where it gets exciting, to me.

 

Did you know that we can create any feeling we want to create on a regular basis?

 

Have you thought about feelings and emotions like this before?

 

I hadn’t, this was news to me.

 

And I wish I would have known this gold nugget when I was younger.

 

But it’s fine. I’m sure happy to know it now.

 

Feelings and emotions can be generated on purpose. This is the best news ever.

 

Because it means I have more power over the Results I want to create in my life, and that it isn’t just a matter of hustling for self worth.

 

I can generate the emotion of worthiness on purpose. Whuuuuuut?

 

This is amazing!

 

I don’t have to feel unworthy, or ‘worth less,’ and let it define me.

 

Instead, I can notice that I’m feeling low, I’m feeling down and unmotivated, and low in energy, and I can get to work rewriting an new emotion script, a Worthiness emotion script.

 

Worthiness is a biggie for me.

 

I hardly ever feel worthy on default.

 

In fact, I’m noticing how unmotivated I feel in my natural base line state. And it’s fine. Nothing is wrong with that.

 

It just means I have a little reprogramming to do, a little rewriting and tweaking of the code.

 

I know that the human experience is a balance of positive and negative emotions. The goal isn’t to resist negative emotion, but to notice it when it’s there, and to allow it.

 

Once I’ve processed it through, then I’m ready to create the emotion I want to feel, on purpose.

 

As our species has evolved with language skills and cognitive skills, so has the landscape of our emotions. Our thinking has become so sophisticated with the expansion of language, and I think our emotional landscape is quite sophisticated too.

 

But many of us don’t give full credit to the power of our emotions, we don’t take the time to experience the negative ones, because quite frankly, it can be super inconvenient.

 

As our brains move into new territories of intelligence and thought, it’s important to explore our new emotional territory.

 

This requires us to pay attention to and develop our understanding of emotional balance.

 

I’ve come to realize that life is 50/50.

 

Life is 50 percent positive and 50 percent negative.

 

Whenever I try to argue with that equation, I suffer, because the 50/50 is everywhere in the natural world, it is a true scientific principle.

 

Newton’s third law of motion articulates it well when he stated that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

 

The yin and yang symbol illustrate the 50/50.

 

Scriptural texts of many different religions state how there is opposition in all things.

 

And so I see it everywhere.

 

A bird flaps its wings, and the lift the bird experiences is equal to the opposing forces of the air against the birds feathers, allowing the bird to take flight and defy gravity.

 

What a beautiful metaphor.

 

A bird can’t fly without the opposition of the very thing that allows it to fly.

 

So interesting.

 

And so, if our language and our thinking is always telling us that we should seek happiness all the time, if our cultural script is about pleasure, pleasure, pleasure – and that negative emotion is something to be avoided, or that something has gone wrong if you feel mad, sad, depressed, unmotivated, anxious, you name it, negative emotion, then you will do everything you can to try to eradicate it, and you will get lost in thought loops and buffering.

 

Buffering comes from the need to experience more pleasure than pain.

 

It comes from the need to argue with the 50/50.

 

But when we can accept that pain and discomfort are actually a healthy and balanced part of the human experience, we can release the need for buffering and false pleasure, and we can get out of our comfort zone on purpose in order to grow and evolve, simply because life becomes more interesting when we choose to do so.

 

So – going back to the truth that you are already worthy, I want to ask you,

 

Do you believe that?

 

Do you believe that you are worthy?

 

And if so, are you acting on that belief?

 

Are you trying to but feel stuck?

 

Most of us struggle with a couple things when feeling blocked from believing that we have something special to offer.

 

Either we do believe that yes, I know I have worth and I have something special to offer – I just don’t know how to act on it or what I should do with it,

 

Or,

 

We don’t believe it yet because we haven’t developed our ability to trust ourselves with failure, or finding meaning in our failures. Most of us make the act of failing mean that we ARE failures, and then conclude that we are unworthy – or worth less. No. Those are two separate things. and so we spin in frustration and second-guessing and ruminate on all our past failures.

 

Either form of blockage are real motivation killers.

 

If either of those sound familiar, don’t judge yourself.

 

It’s normal.

 

And nothing is wrong with you.

 

I’ve put together a mini workbook to walk you through some steps that can help you gain some traction through your thinking if you feel blocked in believing you are already worthy and have something special to offer. The workbook is called, ‘You Have Something Special to Offer.’

 

These small but mighty mini workbooks I put together are so fun. My clients love them. And I want to share them with you. It’s how you can take what you are learning here on the podcast, and apply it. I love that you are here and listening to this podcast and engaged in personal development. It’s so admirable.

 

And I want to offer you my best tools to help you take what you are learning, and apply it to your life, to your present circumstances, and gain some forward momentum.

 

My whole goal is to help you feel better.

 

When women believe they are already worthy and that they truly have something special to offer, they are the real change makers and they create a better world.

 

I’m all about that.

 

So download my mini workbook, there is  a blue link under the episode, # 14, you have something special to offer, and I walk you through some steps, some journal prompts to help you move forward towards stepping into this belief. Join the newsletter here.

 

Thank you for being here my friends.  I appreciate all of you so much. Have a beautiful day.