How to Increase Your Sense of Self-Worth

It’s one of the jobs of a parent to instill a child with a sense of their own worth. This happens naturally if there is enough love, support, connection, and empathy available. If this didn’t happen for you, you may have a shaky connection with your self-worth. You might have a belief that sounds something like this:

If someone doesn’t treat me well, it must mean I’m not worth treating well.

This belief can stop us from creating boundaries that support our wellbeing. And even if we do establish them, it can still leave us suffering. Because after all, if we were really “worth it”, we would have been treated well automatically, and not need the boundaries, right? This kind of faulty logic leads to a lot of suffering.

What do you rest your self-worth on?

Here’s are some questions you can explore in your journal.

1. What story do I tell myself about what I am worth and why?

2. Where does this story come from? What was my world like then?

3. How is this story affecting my life now?

4. How might I act differently without this story? What would it feel like?

Are your comparisons fair?

Sometimes it can seem like everyone has things better figured out than you. This comes from comparing our insides to other people’s outsides, and assuming they have no problems that they struggle with.

Here is a set of journal prompts to explore this:

1. Describe something you dislike about yourself or a recurring critical voice.

2. Think of people you know who might struggle with the same thing. Write their names down.

3. Imagine one of them comes to you and starts telling you how much they disliked that thing about themselves. What would you tell them?

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