When I was pursuing my career in medicine, I felt like I was constantly trying to prove myself to others. Whether it was through getting “the best” standardized test scores, achieving “honors” on my clinical evaluations , or getting invited to interview at the top hospitals for residency.
I was continually seeking validation and approval from sources outside of myself.
I was living my life waiting for that pat on the back or that “atta girl”. I was spinning on this endless hamster wheel of striving and hustling trying to show everyone else that I was worthy.
And that was the underlying problem. I didn’t feel worthy on my own. I felt like I had to earn my worthiness. I was operating under the mistaken assumption that my accomplishments were a direct reflection of my worthiness.
I was making the classic human mistake that Abraham- Hicks talks about. “What most people think worthiness is, is me behaving in some way that something outside of me approves and grants me my worth.”
I was acting like my life was being constantly judged against a gold standard. As if there was some Mayor of Worthiness who would one day nod his head at me, and say, “yupp she’s finally done it. She’s finally earned her worthiness badge.”
I’ve realized this is a huge problem with the “over achiever” personality type. We try to achieve or hustle our way to a feeling of worthiness. We never give ourselves enough credit. We are always looking to prove something.
But living like that isn’t sustainable. From my own personal experience and from working with my clients, here are some of the consequences of living our lives chasing after hustling for our worthiness.
We live and die by other people’s validation and approval
When I was living my life from a place of unworthiness, I needed to impress other people to feel worthy. I lived and died by other people’s approval and acceptance of me. I needed others to essentially tell me I was awesome and worthy in order to believe it myself.
When I would meet people at parties or events, I relished when they asked “what do you do?” and I could drop the “I’m in medical school” or “I’m a doctor” line.
Usually, the response would be something along the lines of “wow you’re a doctor? You must be really smart” And that little nugget of acknowledgement gave me this warm, fuzzy feeling of validation. That lasted for all of 60 seconds.
Then, on the other side of the coin, when people didn’t give me that validation I was after, I would get irrationally upset. Because I’m a female from the Southern United States, many times I would say “doctor”, but people would hear “nurse”. So they would say something like “oh, ok so how was nursing school?” or “oh my cousin is a nurse too”. And that lack of acknowledgement would make my blood boil.
But what I didn’t ask myself was, why did it matter? Why did I need strangers at a party to be impressed by me? To think I was smart?
I was giving away all my power to other people. I was putting the status of my emotional state totally in the hands of the reactions and responses of others. I was essentially saying “IF other people are impressed by me, THEN I will feel worthy and then I will be happy”.
When we give our power away like this, we go straight into victim mode and there is no way to maintain our own happiness. We resign ourselves to limited little blips of happiness, totally at the mercy of others.
I don’t know about you, but that is not at ALL what I am here for.
We also live and die by external metrics of success
When we don’t feel worthy on your own, we also look for external trappings to prove our worthiness. Whether that’s the high salary, the promotion, the fancy house, or the designer clothes, we collect these things to prop up our egos and show other people that we are worthy. We cling to these identities and objects as if they define us , because without them… who would we be?
For me, it was the identify of being a high achiever in a prestigious career. I wanted to be the best. Get the highest standardized test grades, interview at the ivy leagues and go to a top ranked residency program at a well renowned hospital. I thought I needed all of these things to prop up my identity and to prove how worthy I was.
We hesitate to make a change and deviate from the status quo or do something different.
For the longest time, I felt this pull from my intuition to quit medicine, but I wouldn’t listen. I was afraid to follow my own path and to define my own version of success because…. what if that meant giving up my sources of external validation and approval?
People wouldn’t be nearly as impressed by a “life coach” as they would be by a bad-ass board certified OBGYN. I felt such an internal conflict, over the path I was being called towards, a life of alignment, inspiration and actual joy and happiness, and the path I already knew (but hated). The well worn path of being a physician.
I wasted years doing work that didn’t align with me, because I didn’t know how to let go of the identity I built up around being a doctor.
Shifting from external to internal worthiness
But hustling, striving, and proving myself was a losing game and didn’t actually result in any sort of lasting happiness. Slowly, I began to realize the flaws in this way of approaching my life.
I was exposed to podcasts, books and motivational thought leaders that began to show me another way of approaching the whole thing.
I watched You-Tube videos of Brene Brown, who talks about how “there are no prerequisites for worthiness”. I listened to podcasts by Rob Bell (more on these later) who continually stresses the fact that we have nothing to prove and that everything we’ve been striving for, has been within us the whole time.
Slowly these messages began to seep into my subconscious, and with it a new found sense of worthiness from within.
Learning how to accept my worthiness, as is, was the missing piece that allowed me to stop trying to prove myself and start following my own path towards happiness.
Its crucial to start accepting our worthiness before we can venture into our own path of aligned living and purpose. Think about it, if you are trying to live your life in a way that proves your own worthiness, you can’t be living your life in a way that is true to your inner purpose. All of your actions and decisions will be tinged with a need to prove and strive instead of a desire to follow your own path.
How to start accepting your worthiness
So with that in mind, here are some of the things that most helped me accept my worthiness.
Recognize that you struggle with worthiness.
Before I could make any changes, I had to acknowledge the problem. I had to get real with myself about what was going on. I asked myself some hard questions:
Why did I feel this desperate need to prove myself or to get compliments or acknowledgement from others? What was that about?
Until I started digging deep and asking myself these questions, I didn’t know or understand the root of the issue. But once I realized that what I was struggling with was a lack of internal worthiness, I was able to start taking steps to change that.
So take the time to do the internal work and get real with yourself.
Are you spending your time chasing after compliments, accolades and external sources of approval? Do you have the sense that you are constantly trying to prove yourself? How is this current method of seeking validation outside of yourself working? Does it actually make you feel worthy?
Because my guess is, its exhausting and unsustainable and only minimally effective in giving you the true sense of internal worthiness you deserve.
Reprogram your subconscious.
So I think I reprogrammed my subconscious mind on accident. I know it sounds weird, but I think this technique I stumbled on had a dramatic impact on my ability to internalize the message of intrinsic worthiness.
I discovered the RobCast by Rob Bell, and he came out with an Alternative Wisdom series that essentially preached the message of “you are already worthy” and “you don’t have to do anything to prove yourself you are worthy and loved just as you are.”
I began listening to these podcast episodes over and over again, purely because the message was so comforting. I listened to them on walks, on road trips and then at some point I began listening to these episodes to help me drift off to sleep every night.
I probably listened to these episodes almost every day for a year and through this process accidentally hypnotized myself into believing that I’m worthy. I think these messages gradually sunk into my subconscious programming and its hard to describe how different I feel now.
Now I just believe that I’m worthy, like in my very core, its just something I know and accept and I think this accidental period of self hypnosis had a huge part to do with this.
So I totally recommend doing the same. Here is a list of the podcast episodes that helped me the most.
- The Robcast Episode 66 Good vs Perfect (Start this one after minute 9)
- The Robcast Episode 204 Menuha!
- The Robcast Episode 146 Alternative Wisdom Part 1 Good News About Nothing
- The Robcast Episode 148 Alternative Wisdom Part 2 Weak is the New Strong
- The Robcast Episode 149 Alternative Wisdom Part 4 How to be in on the Joke
Show yourself you are worthy through your actions
Self care is not just about taking luxurious bubble baths and getting massages. When we do actions that care for ourselves we are expressing love for ourselves. When we act in a loving way towards ourselves, we send a message to our subconscious that we are worthy of love.
Maybe this will be eliminating a bad or destructive habit, setting strong boundaries with someone who drains your energy, or starting an exercise routine. The point is to realize that what we do matters and sends a message to our subconscious about our worth. So ask yourself the questions “what could I do today to show myself love?” or “what is the most loving thing I could do for myself today?” Journal on it and see what comes up for you.
I’ve written a lot about self care, if you’d like to read my other blog posts and get some ideas for yourself.
Seeking validation and approval from sources outside of ourselves is a losing game. And it’s one of the main obstacles that I believe keeps us from living an aligned, inspired live. It keeps us stuck doing work that we think will impress people or win us praise, instead of work that is truly aligned.
When we start to believe and internalize that we are already worthy, then the work we do in the world gets to be work we just want to do. The work that actually lights us up and makes us want to get out of bed in the morning. The work that our intuition is calling us to do.
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Love this! I definitely relate to so much of this with the push to achieve! #wheresmyworthinessbadge
I love all of the strategies you give and how real this post is! Definitely creating a playlist of those podcast episodes ASAP!