How can I stop determining my worth based on the attention I receive from others?
There are 2 places you can get your sense of self-worth from.
This is part 4 of 5 of a series called, “Insourcing Self Worth.”
In case you missed it, here’s part 1, 2, and 3.
From my experience, there's two ways people determine their sense of worth.
A) From other people's opinions or B) From your own opinion
And guess which one we have more control of?
The struggle is that most of us are conditioned by society to interpret our sense of worth by how we are treated or how we 'measure up' to what is deemed the 'standards' of our society. And often, how we are treated is a direct correlation of how we 'measure up'.
Nobody wants to be treated as if they were invisible. We all want to 'matter', nobody wants to be a 'nobody.' So that's why we try to fit ourselves into the mold of these societal standards.
Most of us are affected by this from a very early age, we measure ourselves by how many friends we have, how many cool toys we have, how good we are at sports, or how good we are at school.
You're friends with the cool kid? That makes you cool.
You're friends with the pretty girl? That makes you cool.
You're smart? That makes you cool.
You look funny or dress weird? You're not cool.
Your socially awkward? You're not cool.
And then when we graduate into the real world, it gets a whole lot more complicated. There's more people to please and more standards to meet. Our parents have standards, each circle of friends we're in have standards, our boss has standards, our colleagues have standards, and the media paints a hundred different pictures of what we 'ought' to be like.
In an attempt to have our existence acknowledged -- to have someone recognize us or take the time to care about us -- we shoot to 'measure up' the best we can so that people can come and admire us and give us the attention we desperately want.
And when we get it, we're proud, filled with a breath of satisfaction.
And then when we don't have it, we wonder what justification we have for our existence.
We can go from the most admired person in a room to a complete nobody in the next.
We'll be praised among one circle of friends and be completely dismissed by our parents.
We'll be adored by our significant other but our boss and colleagues might write us off.
It's a painful pendulum swing from being 'on top of the world' to feeling like you're a complete zero.
Yes. It is absolutely unhealthy.
Yes. We should talk about the alternative.
So to answer the question,"how," exactly, does one change where they get their sense of worth?
How do you get to a point where you are unshaken by other people's opinions? Where attention is no longer something you unhealthily crave? Where the stamp of approval from people (or lack thereof) has no affect on how you see yourself?
Well, you simply choose.
You choose to believe that popular opinion is irrelevant.
You choose to believe that other people and their opinions have an affect on your life, but only if you allow it.
You choose to believe that you ultimately are the one who controls whether you believe are worth something or not.
Here's the story/context when I made that decision for myself:
The result is a very counter-intuitive reality.
Once you make that simple decision that you don't need someone else's attention in order to feel better about yourself, you will feel better about yourself and people will start to give you attention.
Why?
Because you now have what everyone else is looking for.
Self-acceptance.
The confidence and security that comes out of it is very appealing. Having a sense of individuality and self-defined purpose is attractive and often rare these days.
And the other byproduct is that you stop comparing yourself to others, you stop getting jealous, you learn to be happy with and celebrate other peoples' successes, and you're no longer puffed up when you do have all the attention.
It's what confidence + humility looks like. You truly understand who you are, what you stand for, but it has nothing to do with trying to be 'better' nor is there a need to be known.
It's a confident satisfaction that you know who you are.
It's a peaceful knowing that you are 100% comfortable with you are, right now.
It's, actually, freedom to be yourself.
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