Self Worth: How Valuing You Improves Your Love Life

Our relationship to our self worth directly impacts the way we experience and metabolize our life and the relationships in it. The presence or absence of it, within our own personal consciousness, dictates how many risks we will take, and therefore how many successes we may have. Our embodiment of self worth also determines how openly available we are to loving and being loved. Interestingly, many people don’t realize how they genuinely hold their own self worth. Only when they embark on a personal growth or spiritual journey in hopes of moving beyond some stumbling block or internal limitation, do they discover that they don’t feel as worthy as they might have thought, 

Ironically, when we look at the impact of having low self worth, we find that it costs us greatly – limiting us emotionally, physically, mentally, spiritually, relationally, and professionally. When it comes to explaining the joy or misery of our life, only our capacity for self love carries as much weight as our relationship to our self worth. Let’s begin the process of undoing any damage that’s been done to the way you value you.

We’ll do that initially by exploring the answer to the question, what is self worth? We’ll continue with a deep dive into how you can improve and build self worth. Then, to further support our understanding, we will compare and contrast self love and self worth so we can see how they support one another. Through this exploration, we trust that you will integrate a deeper and more profound knowing of your own value. Let’s dive in…

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What is self worth?

What does self-worth mean? We must understand this in order to evolve and expand our relationship with it. Self worth is the personal internal perspective we hold about ourselves that encompasses all the ways we value or devalue our existence. The sum total of those perspectives adds up to our self worth. While we would never put a numerical value on our self worth, how we experience it internally surely has an emotional and energetic impact on how we go about life. In other words, our level of self worth and our corresponding approach to life depends on whether we hold a positive or negative viewpoint in our self perception. Self worth, as such, represents our view on how much we believe we matter. 

We often evaluate self worth based on how much difference, or what contribution, we feel we make to those around us, or even to the world. Yet true self worth has nothing to do with how smart we feel, what we do, or what we contribute. You will see as we continue our exploration that we all have not finite, but infinite self worth. Said another way, we all have unquantifiable intrinsic value regardless of what we do or don’t do in the world. 

Unfortunately, we start to formulate our perception of our self worth based on other people’s reactions to, and reflections of, us. If we grew up in, or spent significant time in, an environment where we were criticized or judged, or where people or parents held unrealistic expectations of our behavior and performance, this would most often contribute to a lower internal perception of ourself. Even spending time in spaces where we didn’t experience acknowledgement and celebration of not just our achievements, but of our mere existence and presence, we might feel lower self worth. 

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Self worth is not arrogance

Many families confuse self worth with arrogance or conceit. Genuine self worth has nothing to do with conceit or arrogance, quite the opposite in fact. True arrogance or conceit commonly arises from a lack of perceived personal value. When someone doesn’t feel worthy or valued they may unconsciously take on behaviors in an attempt to prove their worth, value, and lovability to others. Simultaneously they try to convince themselves that they really matter. These attempts almost always fail. As observers of the proving-style behaviors, we perceive them as arrogance because, whether we can name it or not, we sense a performative rather than authentic quality in the way the person presents themself. 

Healthy self worth enables us to stand confidently, yet imperfectly, to meet life’s opportunities and challenges. It allows us to approach love, relationships, and intimacy from a place of trust and inner security that leads to happier and healthier relationships. 

“Your uniqueness, your irreplacability, makes you priceless. It makes you a treasure to hold with the utmost care.” ~Joanna Shakti

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How to build self worth

When it comes to how to improve self worth, we have good news. You do not need to go find self worth. You don’t even need to build it. Complete, total, high self worth actually exists inside of you right now, it just might be hidden. You may have forgotten or lost sight of its existence. How does that happen you might ask? We alluded to it earlier. 

Since self worth stems from a perception or a set of beliefs we hold about ourselves, we need to consider how our view of ourselves originally formed. Some people were told in not so many words that they weren’t worthy. Others decided on their own, as a result of what they perceived as mistakes, that they weren’t worthy. Still others falsely blamed themselves, and their goodness/badness as a person, for unfortunate and painful events in their lives, and hence believed that meant they held less self worth.

Since we lower our self worth with false beliefs, if you want to increase or build your self worth, you want to decrease or subtract everything in your consciousness that reduces or counters it. The path to strong and solid self worth begins with uncovering and identifying any negative concepts you hold about yourself. When all the negative perceptions fall away, only high self worth remains. For the doubting readers, we can confidently assure you that no matter what you have done or not done in life, no matter what you have experienced, you are in fact completely worthy. 

So what are the specific steps to improve self worth?

1. Begin proactively noticing beliefs, perceptions, stories about yourself, as well as habituated voices in your head that try to tell you that you are anything less than worthy. Realize that everyone of these judgmental aspects of your consciousness resulted from repeatedly shared opinions about you – whether they were your opinions of yourself or someone else’s perspective on you. The key word here is opinion. These statements and stories about you, were made up by you or someone else. They are not the absolute truth in any way, shape, or form. Yes, you made mistakes. Yes, you got answers wrong on tests. Yes, you spilled things. Yes, you misbehaved. We all did. That does not make you any less worthy. Seeing this old consciousness as opinion not fact, circumstantial not eternal, allows it to dissolve. In turn your true value will reveal itself. 

2. Begin to admit, acknowledge, and validate all of the great things about you. It doesn’t matter who you are, what your education or lot in life is, you have many gifts to give those around you, and even the world. In our Activating Soul Love program, participants go through an exercise that invites them to identify all the “assets” they bring within them into every room they enter. They come up with at least 20 ways that they have the capacity to contribute to every space they walk into. When you start to truly see the assets of your soul – that live through you as a human being – the self insight helps to counter the negative perceptions you need to release. 

3. Recognize that you are completely unique from any other individual that has ever, or will ever, exist. You are literally and truly irreplaceable. You have unique soul gifts to offer that no one else has. Your uniqueness, your irreplacability, makes you priceless. Yes, priceless. That means you are a treasure of the highest value and that you deserve true reverence. Every single person holds that immense value and deserves that reverence – but no more so than any other human being. No one is better or more worthy than you. You are no better or more worthy than another. When it comes to self worth, comparison is irrelevant. You are priceless. Your partner is priceless. Your child, your parents, your siblings, your neighbors, even your enemies are priceless. 

As you walk through the steps to recover your own self worth, you might consider what the world could look and feel like if everyone stopped trying to figure out how worthy they were. What if every person  just saw themselves, and each other, through the brilliant light of their unique soul existence? 

“You are a treasure of the highest value and that you deserve true reverence” ~Joanna Shakti

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How it differs from self love

Self worth and self love, while distinctly different, go hand in hand. When we deepen our self love we expand our self worth. As our self worth increases our self love grows even more. These two aspects of our relationship to ourselves effectively amplify one another. Similarly to loving someone in a relationship, self love focuses on how we relate to, care for, and honor ourselves. Self worth relates to how much we value ourselves, just as we might consider how much we value a partner in a romantic relationship, or how valued we feel by our partner. 

Diving deeper to fully understand more than the superficial, but nuanced answers to the questions both what is self love and what is self worth will serve you well. What we know from years of experience is that any individual who struggles with feeling self love and self worth will inevitably struggle to feel and receive love from another. They will struggle to maintain a solid happy relationship. 

When we don’t have self worth we tend to settle for things in relationships that don’t truly feel right or align for us. That settling only serves to cause more pain and perpetuate eventual breakups. We usually then mistakenly perceive those breakups as more validation for our low self worth. As you can see, this painful cycle very much exemplifies why it’s so important to have both self love and self worth, along with a good dose of self trust. 

With that in mind, due to the common conditioning in our world to not be too much, not pat ourselves on the back, and not get too big for our britches, almost every single one of us could up our internal dosages of healthy self worth and self love.  

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As we conclude, it feels important to remind you that the journey back to self worth, even though self worth rests inherently within each of us, can feel daunting to many. Depending on the level of negative conditioning you might have received, depending on how hard you are on yourself, or whether you have any perfectionist tendencies, you may find it difficult to unravel the old opinionated conditioning. 

If you find yourself struggling, please know you are not alone. You are encouraged to find help through a therapist, counselor, relationship or dating coach, mentor, or community dedicated to self love, self worth – and the self honor that accompanies it. Sometimes we need someone else to help us recognize and acknowledge the opinions and false beliefs we have bought into. We may need support in admitting the truth of our greatness beyond those lies. A professional guide can help us move beyond the natural “yeah buts” and resistances that often arise as we meet the “negative” concepts we’ve held towards ourselves and try to release them. 

Each one of us who realizes, and steps into, our sacred soul self strengthens the foundation and bedrock of every relationship, every organization, every family system within which we exist. That changes the world moment by moment. 

Yes, your realization of your own self worth is world changing. 

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Since 2006, one person, one couple at a time, Ecstatic Intimacy has committed to a world where everyone knows and honors the value of existence – our own and each other’s. Those with a desire for  extraordinary love, have chosen Ecstatic Intimacy to cultivate both self relationships and romantic relationships coveted by all. 

You too, are invited…

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