Is Your Doubt Dormant (Part II)

Learning you’re “worth it” doesn’t come over night, and sometimes enlightenment doesn’t ensue change. When we realize we haven’t 100% valued ourselves that way that we should, it still can be hard to exit our usual ways of thinking, to suddenly stop questioning ourselves, and to not slip into old habits.

Even with the best parents in the world, instilling that in you daily, there will always be a situation we run into that causes us to question ourselves. To reassess where we stand isn’t bad, sometimes examining where we’re at leads to growth. But when we’re constantly second-guessing our ability, our awesomeness, and our gifts that we drain our energy and it becomes a wasteland. This is when doubt and a lack of understanding on your worth, become detrimental.

I once had a man say to me, “You’re such a beautiful girl and you could have whatever you want, but you’re like a winter coat on the rack during summer.” I had just turned 18 at the time and had no clue what he was trying to tell me. It felt like an insult so I treated it as such. I barked (not literally) at him and then attempted to dismiss it. That statement didn’t sink in until quite a bit later in life.

Then it hit me heavily, in a very blunt and obvious way. He was telling me that I had no idea of my own value and approached a lot of things from the wrong end. I was obliviously reacting to things and people around me rather than taking to so weigh on whether certain things deserved my attention or time. It’s funny how that still sticks out to me now. Never the less, he was right. I didn’t know my worth. I thought I did. But thinking you’re great and how you behave can often relay two separate messages.

This is an on-going struggle for many of us, it seems. We think we’re good people, kind, beautiful, funny, worthy but when we feel that others don’t see or treat us that way, the lack of affirmation causes us to question our own beliefs. Then we start to think things like we’re pretty, but not as pretty as… or we’re kind but not as kind as… and so on. This is where we need to stop and take ourselves out of everyone else’s equations. It’s not about other people, it never has been. You cannot be in competition with someone who isn’t even playing the same game on the same field in the same country (read: we’re all in our own lanes dealing with our own things). We have to start investing more thought and consideration into our own strengths and weakness and do the work (the real work). In this, we begin to shine, the doubt progressively becomes dormant and we kick up the market value on our mindset. ∎