Your self-esteem affects every aspect of your life–your relationships, your parenting, your bank account, and how you interact with the world. In this video you’ll learn three reasons why you have low self-esteem and what you need to do to improve it.
Discover the root causes of low self-esteem and learn practical steps to boost your confidence. We'll dive deep into the factors that contribute to low self-worth and provide actionable tips to help you embrace your true value. Don't let low self-esteem hold you back any longer – watch now and start your journey towards a more confident you!
Transcript
What if I told you the quality of every single aspect of your life, your relationships, your bank accounts, your home, your emotional health boils down to one thing? This one thing, and unwavering understanding of your own value. This understanding is at the core of how you see yourself and how you allow the world to see you.
It's what I call self-worth. In this episode, I'm going to walk you through the three reasons you struggle with low self-worth, and exactly what you need to do to stop making these mistakes.
Hi there. I'm Meadow DeVor helping you with strategies and tools to build self-worth. On this channel, I share self-development tips and practical ways to change your life.
You Have Low Self-Esteem Because You Lack a Sense of Self
The first reason you struggle with low self-esteem is that you lack a sense of self. So self-worth requires you to have a sense of self. This means you must have healthy boundaries. The definition of a boundary is a line that marks the limits of an area. It's both a line of containment, keeping you in, and a line of protection, keeping others out. If you think about this like drawing a circle around yourself and inside the circle is your mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual space.
This is the space where you live, and it's the space that your whole self occupies. it includes all the aspects of yourself that you love, cherish, and celebrate. It also includes all the aspects of yourself that you have forgotten, denied and repressed. No one else belongs in this circle, and it can't be shared with others.
Boundaries are rules for who, what, how, and why you feel comfortable being close to someone else.
Boundaries are clear communication of what's true for you, helping others know who you are and how to interact with you. So when you're clear with your boundaries, no one is left guessing.
If you want to know more about building self-worth, my best selling book, the Worthy Project is available for free on Audible. I shared the link in the description.
You Have Love Self-Esteem Because You Spend More ‘Self” Than You Keep
So the next reason that you have low self-worth is that you spend more than you keep.
Bear with me. I'm gonna talk about money for two seconds. I'll get right back to self-worth. But this is a good metaphor and it really helps you understand how you value yourself. So in the realm of money worth follows a basic supply and demand model. Money is traded for things. And so to build financial worth, you must keep more of that value than you spend.
If things become too easy to get value, collapses and worth vanishes. And this is also how self-worth works. To build self-worth, you must keep more value than you spend. Where financial worth is about the accumulation of a thing called money. Self-worth is about the accumulation of a thing called self.
So when you spend more resources than you can afford, whether you're spending time, attention, energy, or money, you decrease your self-esteem and you reinforce a sense of worthlessness and you lower your self-worth. So when you're considering giving or spending things like time, your time, your energy, and yourself, it's important to know how to determine whether or not you can afford to spend these things or to give this away.
So to build self-worth, you need to ask yourself, do I have an excess of those resources to give or spend? this is kind of like the flight attendants advice of putting the oxygen mask on yourself before you help others.
So here, an excess of resources means that you have extra after you've cared for yourself first. If you have to put yourself into debt emotionally, health-wise, energy-wise, or time-wise, you can't afford to spend the resource. This means that before you give your time, your attention, your energy, or yourself to anyone or anything else, you first have to care for yourself.
Yourself. If you don't have extra to give, it means that you can't afford it because to build self-esteem, you must keep more resources than you spent.
So before we move on to the third reason, you have low self-esteem, I have a question for you. What area of your life is most affected by low self-esteem, work, relationships, money, something else? Let me know in the comments.
You Have Low Self-Esteem Because You Take Action That Reinforces Low Self-Worth
Now onto the third reason. You have low self-esteem. You take action that reinforces low self worth. This one is pure magic. So let me explain how this works. When you take action, that reinforces that you're not worth your own time, attention, energy, you reinforce a low self-esteem story about yourself.
This worthless story leads to worthless behavior and reinforces a sense of worthlessness. The best way to move out of this, what I call the worthless cycle, is to hack your behavior. This means that you take a deliberate action that reinforces the idea that you are worth your time, attention, and energy.
This doesn't mean that you have to do something big, and it doesn't mean that you have to write a book or get a PhD or lose 50 pounds or run a marathon, it just means that you can take just a tiny action instead of a big dramatic overhaul of the most challenging part of your life. You only need to take this little action that reinforces that you, your life, your self is worth your own time, attention, and energy because it's easier to get a new doormat, sweep the floor, or do your laundry or maybe, you know, sort out your hamper than to quit a mind numbing job or to overhaul your entire financial plan. So, These type of little hacks, like just by changing that tiny little behavior, instead of trying to overhaul your big, big, big problems and go, oh, I'm not gonna feel worthy until I do this huge thing.
You just do a little thing and it, these surprisingly small steps are just as effective as large ones at getting you into the worthy cycle where you start to build self-worth. It's the opposite. So by taking small worthy action steps, you immediately stop the downward spiral by placing intentional value on your true self.
Any action that cares for your precious true self will help you accumulate more self. More self means more self worth. The worthy cycle builds on itself and gains upward momentum worthy behavior, creates worthy consequences. And when you see the consequences of this new behavior, like you see the new doormat, or you see the swept floor, or you see the hamper clean, this reinforces a worthy story and it inspires more worthy behavior and so on.
Why You Struggle with Low Self-Esteem and Exactly What You Need to Do to Stop Making These Mistakes
So a quick recap. Here are the three reasons you struggle with low self-worth and exactly what you need to do to stop making these mistakes.
Mistake number one.
You lack a sense of self. Self-worth requires a self. The only way to have a stable sense of self is by strengthening your boundaries.
Mistake number two.
You overspend your resources. You need to be more conservative with how you spend your time, energy, and attention. So to build self-esteem, you must keep meaning. Invest in yourself, more resources in yourself than you're spending on anyone else.
Mistake number three.
Your habitual behavior reinforces low self-worth. You need to stop doing things that reinforce the idea that you're not worth it, and instead make a daily habit of taking one small action that reinforces that you are worth your own time, attention, and energy.
