By Tori 
Imagine this: you go somewhere today and they tell you to introduce yourself but do not mention your achievements, career, titles, academics, physical appearance/ condition, wealth, hobbies, or talents. How will you introduce yourself? What will you say? Will you be speechless? I saw this question a while back on social media and I was honestly taken aback. I had quite the time coming up with things to say and in the end, I wondered, do I really know myself beyond the things listed above?
Hold that thought; imagine that you were at an event and someone went to the stage and introduced themselves without any of the above. For example, they say, Hello, my name is… I am a kind soul, a generous person, a bit stubborn and I have a good sense of humor. Then after that, they went back to their seat. Most people will probably be confused because they expect that person to drop a list of titles to define themselves. However, in all honesty, that person did introduce themselves—their inner self. A good number of people think that listing our accomplishments, careers and more defines us but the person you truly are in the eye of the hurricane is the person under all of those things listed above.
Don’t get me wrong; living a life and acquiring an identity in the things listed in the first paragraph is not bad. On the contrary, it is good that we get ourselves out there and live a life. However, for me, I think the problem comes in when we start tying our self-worth and value to them. As much as we love our external identities, that is, our jobs, hobbies, accomplishments, and the rest listed above, they should not define who we are and carry our self-worth.
This is because, all of these external identities, as much as we cherish them, are not permanent. By ‘not permanent’ this means that we do not have absolute control over them and we are not promised of them forever. Living having tied your self-worth to these temporary external identities makes your self-worth fragile. One of these identities can be lost at any time, unfortunately, and if you have tied your self-worth to it, it goes with your self-worth. You may have built a sense of security around them and ensured that they can push through challenges but at the end of the day, anything can happen out of your control. This is crucial to understand because most of us tend to tie our self-worth around these temporary identities. We use these things to make us feel worthy. We work so hard on them so that they remain relevant, impressive, and valuable to us because that is what makes us feel worthy.
Unfortunately, these identities remain temporary, so what happens if we lose them? Of course, I hope that doesn’t happen but in the event it does, what then? What happens when we no longer have them? For example, you tied your self-worth to being an exemplary academic scholar, what happens when you can’t pursue that anymore? You tied your self-worth to always fitting the beauty standards, what happens when the standards change or your body changes? Does this mean you are no longer worthy?
When we lose what we have tied our self-worth to, we feel empty and lost. We lose our sense of worth and our self-esteem is chipped. You only have yourself. But that’s the thing, you have yourself! Again, as I said before, we invest a lot of resources in improving what we tie our self-worth to, so why not tie it to something more permanent? To something we can’t lose? That something is YOU; the real, authentic, internal you exclusive of all these external identities. Tap into your strengths, beliefs, and values and invest your time in working on them. Learn and build yourself, to a point where if you lose any of your external identities, your sense of self-worth remains intact because your self-worth is tied to something you can’t lose; yourself.
I want to add that when you have it all, it may feel easy to shift your self-worth to yourself. You may think that you have rooted your self-worth in yourself but you can truly find out that is true if you lose one of these identities. I do hope for the best for all of us but IF you lose an aspect of your life, one that carried your self-worth, it may be difficult. It’s like what you valued yourself for, or what you think people valued you for is no longer there and it may take a toll on your self-esteem. This just speaks to my point of not tying our self-worth to these temporary identities that we have no total control over and may lose one way or another.
Have your career, achievements, academics, wealth, titles, physical appearances, hobbies, and talents. Work hard on them and build on them, they are good and I encourage you all to have these things if you can. They make up a part of your identity. They complement you. Just don’t chain your self-worth to them. You were worthy before all of these, you are worthy with them and you are worthy without them.
Think of an infant or a toddler. They don’t have most of the things listed above and yet they are still worthy. Why should it be different for you? You were a child once and you were worthy then without all of these identities listed above. Why should that change now that you have grown and gained these external identities? It shouldn’t and truthfully that did not change because you are still worthy. What you tie your self-worth to is what makes the difference. All you have to do is shift the focus on where you place your worth.
Lastly, I hope this opens us up to how we view our self-worth. I hope this post provoked some thoughts and has moved you to reflect on your life. Understand who you are beyond your external identities. Cherish those identities but do not let them define you or carry your self-worth. Shift the focus of your self-worth towards yourself and work towards building on that. During that journey, remember to give yourself time and grace to know and affirm yourself that YOU ARE WORTHY!
-Tori
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