“I am worthy!”
We’ve heard this statement declared, discussed, dissected, and given as advice to anyone who:
- feels insecure,
- is unable to trust themselves,
- is sad because they are not getting what they truly desire or love they want in their lives,
- feels frustrated because they are not yet able to rise above making ends meet – just barely.
Why do we do it? And what do we hope to get from it?
And most importantly, how is “I’m worthy” keeping you stuck in your life? And what do you need to adopt as a perspective to replace it?
We’ve learned to say it to a colleague after they were turned down for that promotion.
We’ve been taught to use those words to console a friend after she called us crying because her boyfriend of 2 years just broke up with her.
We’ve been told to affirm those words to ourselves, because the phrase: “I am worthy” holds the key to our ability to attract anything and everything we desire into our lives.
But where did we get this idea from?
THE INCEPTION OF “I’M WORTHY”
In the personal development and new age spiritual communities,
“I am worthy” was created as a tool for the purpose of helping us rewrite some faulty and dangerous subconscious code.
Code #1 – When People Don’t Meet My Needs, There is Something Wrong with Me.
When we were children, we
- believed that the whole world revolved around us.
- depended on the adults in our life who were tasked with caring for us to meet our needs.
Therefore, whenever our needs were not met, because our caregivers were incapable or unwilling to meet them, we believed that this must have something to do with us.
This must be because “we are bad”; “we are not good enough”.
And since:
- childhood is when the first rough draft of our “worldview” is being coded into our subconscious.
- we were too young to proofread our code for bugs.
Everytime we had a need that was not met, it was saved into the “reasons and proof” that “I’m not good enough” code category in our subconscious program.
That code is flawed.
It is faulty and false.
It is also dangerous because when this program is running:
- how we feel sucks, and
- the results we have in our life suck.
AND, this brings us to…
Code #2 – By Default, My Past Dictates My Future with EXPONENTIAL Accuracy
As if believing that “because people in my life are not meeting my needs, this must mean that I suck” is not bad enough…
the more we play our life by that code, the more reasons and proof we accumulate in support of that belief.
We fill our mental-emotional library with supporting evidence that we are in fact unworthy.
Our only way to escape this feedback loop from hell is through changing how we feel before we have evidence that supports this change.
This is called living from a vision of the future vs. living from the memories of the past.
“Instead of living by cause and effect, we are now beginning to cause an effect.”
– Dr. Joe Dispenza
In that sense, training ourselves to feel and believe that “I am worthy” is a way of snapping out of living from memory, and recreating the pains and limitations of our past.
WHERE WE WENT WRONG… VERY WRONG
Remember, “I am worthy” was originally conceived of as a tool to help us:
- Break our childhood programming: “when people don’t meet my needs, there is something wrong with me.”
- Break the vicious cycle: where we are stuck recreating all the crappy things we have done, been and received in the past because our minds keep dredging up past proof that this is who we are.
It was created to free us.
“I am worthy” was intended to help us let go of “what has happened” and “who we’ve been” so that we may, over a lifetime,
Become the best of who we can be.
Obtain the best life has to offer.
While finding ease and joy in the process”
The affirmation “I am worthy” is a tool.
And if it is not used intentionally, and ONLY for the purpose it was designed for, it will do us more harm than good.
Somewhere along the way, something very interesting happened.
On the one hand, this tool that was designed to help us also became the excuse we use to justify not putting an effort (the legit way):
- I don’t wanna change. Get off my back. I wanna stay the way I am. I am worthy just as I am.
- You did nothing wrong. You have nothing to learn.
There isn’t any useful feedback you can take from the shitty situation you’re finding yourself in that can help you take more empowered actions in the future. - If you criticize me, you are attacking my God-given worth!
- My innate potential IS my worth, regardless of whether I do something with it or not. So I’m good!
It became a go-to in helping us project our feelings and expectations on other people in our life.
- You gotta treat me this way, do and say what I want you to do and say, coz I’m worthy.
It became the mantra we use to stay stuck in the hussle and work ourselves to the bone and burn out:
- I am worthy of an extraordinary life so I gotta achieve this, perform this, do that, win this award.
What we are forgetting is this…
“I am worthy” was created to help you overcome a generalized, persistent, and pervasive feeling of being “wrong”.
“I am worthy” was created to help us take “our personal worth” off the table
To drop the beliefs and excuses in our way…
So we can be free to create the value we want in ourselves and our life.
It was not created for us to use as a crutch to:
- Stay lazy: Talk ourselves out of looking ourselves straight in the eye, identify where we need some tough love, and where we need to grow and grow up.
- Create Codependency: Continue creating codependency in our relationships.
- Create from Chronic Dissatisfaction: Run ourselves to the ground in an effort to obtain the most “extraordinary” things and traits in life as fast as we can with no regard for ourselves in the process.
THE REVISED TOOL – BECAUSE I’M WORTHY
Our innate or inherent worth is never something we need to have on the table.
It is not a question of: Am I worthy?
The real question we should be asking is: because I’m worthy, then what?
If we do feel a lack of confidence or worth because the results of our life have not matched up with what we hoped to achieve or be, then a mixture of:
- Appreciation and gratitude
- Loving kindness
- Future-visioning
Can help us tune our perspective and our mental-emotional state in a way that can open us up to accessing our life force and vitality.
So if you are stuck in lethargy and unable to commit to your goals and progression, then begin asking yourself daily:
Because I am worthy,
- What do I want to create in my life?
- Who do I want to be?
- What right effort do I need to put in?
- What is the best worth that the external world has to offer that I would like to bring into my world?
It is then that “because I am worthy” becomes a tool for developing your future vision.
If you are driving yourself like one possessed to obtain all the best things that life has to offer, then perhaps ask yourself:
- If I am disregarding my health and wellbeing to obtain external value, then am I treating myself as someone of value? (hint – no)
- Is abusing myself in the process a way to show myself appreciation?
And in this way, because I am worthy becomes a perspective-check to help you work towards what you value while valuing and honoring yourself in the process.
If you are feeling unusually bothered by internal or external judgements and expectations..
Ask yourself, what would happen if I didn’t have accomplishments? Why am I so possessed towards obtaining all these wins or changing all these things within myself?
Perhaps you will uncover how much of the relentless pursuit of “worth” in life in the name of “I’m worthy” hides a deeper insecurity we all have around how we are being perceived by people.
Through the lens of insecurity, our appearance is something we constantly tweak to receive social praise or approval.
And from that perspective, when we don’t receive social adoration, we feel that we have to change – YESTERDAY!
OR they have to change. And we have to DICTATE how others perceive and treat us.
From a secure place however, our appearance is the natural extension of where and how we are at this moment.
When people criticize us, they show us what we are not seeing, or not addressing.
This empowers us to correct an imbalance and therefore free ourselves from a burden or a pain, and expand our competence and ability to attract worth into our lives – because we are worthy!
In this way we don’t grow for the sake of others. We grow as an act of self love and through the feedback of others.
From a place of self-love, because I am worthy looks like this:
- We continuously aim up. We are attracting and creating worth in our lives, and refuse to succumb to laziness.
- We do not rush our process. We are not belligerent or impatient with ourselves as we grow.
- We only take the feedback that will expand our life and protect ourselves against judgment, expectations, and negative emotions of others.
From a place of self-love,
We grow
Slowly, steadily
Towards our inner freedom
And outer success
Until next time,
Much love,
Mike & Lulwa
Other content that might interest you:
- Understanding Stress and Reactivity – Part 1 of 2
- The Counter-Instinctive Way To Manifest Wealth & Wellbeing – Part 1
- The Counter-Instinctive Way To Manifest Wealth & Wellbeing – Part 2
- The Counter Instinctive Principle to Achieving Audacious Goals & Building Habits that Stick
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Blog collaboration: Mike Popovici & Lulwa Saffarini, Blog written by: Lulwa Saffarini
Photo Credits:
- Main photo licensed form Adobe Stock
