Episode Summary
In today’s episode I share an insight I gained from an interview with Melissa Hartwig of Whole30 fame on Tom Bilyeu’s Impact Theory show on YouTube. She was talking about how she defines her self worth. It was stunning in both its simplicity and its power. I share what it is and my thoughts on it.
Episode Transcript (Edited)
Hi and welcome to today’s episode of Hope, Help, Happiness.
Today’s episode is about defining your self worth. One of my challenges is I define my self worth, my self image and my self esteem by my work and the things I do.
I’ve spoken in previous episodes about how I was a trophy child and how I needed to prove myself and feel valued and valuable through the things that I did rather than who I was.
I’m not so much driven by material things, so I don’t define myself by my possessions, but I certainly define myself by my work. Or more accurately, I have done and I’m working on that now.
Today I was watching another impact theory video from Tom Bilyeu and he was interviewing Melissa Hartwig, the founder of Whole30. She’s an amazing woman and was talking about how she’s becoming more aware and allowing herself to be more vulnerable as well as the whole personal growth journey she’s gone through.
One of the things she talked about was her growth mindset and how she’s developed the approach of evolving herself. She made some really powerful statements but at 13:20 in the video she starts talking about the growth mindset.
Then at 13:30 she makes this statement about her characteristics and that she was defining her self worth by her natural traits and tendencies. She used the example of compassion as something that can’t be taken away from her.
And that’s what she uses now to define herself worth.
When I heard that it had a profound effect on me because I currently define myself by my work.
So if work goes wrong or if I lose clients or if I was in a job and I lost the job, then I would define that as my evidence of self worth.
Of course that would be a negative way of looking at it.
So when I suddenly realised I have an opportunity now to shift how I define my value from what I do or what I have to who I am and what can’t be taken away from me, I was taken aback.
So I questioned what is it that I value about myself that can’t be taken away from me?
I came up with these:
- My sense of humour.
- My compassion for others.
- My love of learning.
- My desire to serve others.
I’m sure there are others, but those are the ones that came to mind straight away.
Now I realise if I define my value by those things, it doesn’t matter what happens to me then I still have self worth. It won’t be affected by anything outside of me. It will be driven by what’s inside of me and what no one can take away.
I’m sharing that with you because it had a profound effect on me.
And so my question to you is, what can’t be taken away from you that you can use to help put a value on your self worth?
Until tomorrow.
