We can be our own worst critic. We cut ourselves down, and often one of the most insidious things we tell ourselves is that we are not worthy.

This can mean many different things:

Not worthy of love, not worthy of friendship, of a career they love, of happiness. Not worthy of marriage, or motherhood/fatherhood, not worthy of success, happiness, abundance, and so on.

These thoughts, emotions and feelings running through the mind leads us to believe at our core that we are not good enough.

This core belief of “not being good enough” impacts at the soul of who we are. It cracks our foundation and no matter what we do…it will never be enough.

Some of us feel like we are unworthy of happiness or success. It is an underlying feeling that we do not deserve good things in life. Thoughts of not being deserving or worth the effort. Feeling undeserving comes from past life experiences and circumstances.

Changing the Story

Sometimes the pain we feel doesn’t allow us to see clearly of our full potential or that we are indeed worthy of success, happiness and all the things I listed above.

We have lost trust in ourselves and our strengths and abilities. You have all that is needed within you to be successful, worthy, and just be you. You have unique gifts to share with the world.

Unintentional self-sabotage can be a common theme associated with feeling unworthy.

Your worth and how you feel about yourself ultimately needs to come from you.  It is wonderful to receive and give compliments to others but it’s most important for you to feel worthy about yourself, and for it to most importantly come from you.  Worthiness of self cannot be found and felt from others. It is something that you must feel within yourself.

There is an energy connected to feeling unworthy.  If we put out into the world that we feel worthless, hiding, like no one cares and we don’t matter – then what will we get in return?  What we put out we get back, and this is a negative cycle. Our minds can be very polluted with negative thoughts and feelings that are often not our true reality. Don’t believe everything your mind is telling you.

When you have thoughts of feeling unworthy it can be related to low self-esteem. This can be a pattern that we are not aware we do.  These thoughts are something we need to acknowledge and reframe, or reword in our minds. Otherwise it can quickly spiral into many thoughts of being unworthy without recognizing or realizing how it got this far.

Don’t apologize for being who you are.

Where do these thoughts come from?

• Inner Voice – telling us where/how we screwed up, mistakes we have made, regrets we feel.
• Shame – this can be a paralyzing feeling and stop us in our tracks. It often adds to feelings of being unworthy.
• Voice of Others – parents, teachers, ex-relationships
• Childhood – this can be a trauma or experience that is a part of our memory and can affect both our physical bodies and our emotions.

Practical Exercises:

• Ask others what they love about you. What qualities do they appreciate?
• Create a collage with all of your positive qualities you love about yourself.  This can be on a big poster board, framed, or sticky notes on your bathroom mirror. Be creative, make it fun and place where you know you will see it.
• Make a commitment to yourself to be kind, loving, compassionate and understanding.