We spend so much of our time and lives seeking validation from outside sources. When validation is the most powerful coming from within. It allows us to step into our own power and build our feelings of self worth, self love, and confidence. Self worth and how we feel about ourselves will affect every area of our lives from how we show up for others, how we manifest, and the power of our magic. The importance of looking inward for approval and validation can’t be overstated when it comes to building an intentional life that is meaningful and fulfilling to you. So stop outsourcing your happiness and give this responsibility to the only person who is truly equipped for the job. YOU! Take control of your feelings of worthiness, love and confidence back into your own hands by using this 7 day challenge.
Before we get into the different ways to work on your self-worth, I want to share that I am not a therapist, but I am sharing the work I have personally done when going through cognitive behavioral therapy and Dialectical behavior therapy. These are the tools I’ve used that have helped me work on my own self-worth. Something I have struggled with quite a lot over the years and still sometimes do. Because, I am intimately aware, that many of us are broken people with broken parents from broken homes in a broken world. Trying to make something beautiful and move from a place of just surviving to thriving and being whole. We’re thrust into life without many of the tools for living, and it’s not that those tools don’t exist, but we just don’t have the time, energy, or means always to get access to them. Allow this 7 day challenge to help you bridge the gap and do just that.
What is self worth?
Self-worth is the belief that you are loveable and valuable regardless of how you evaluate your traits. Self-worth is often confused with self-esteem, which relies on external factors such as successes and achievements to define worth and can often be inconsistent leading to someone struggling with feeling worthy. When you think about it, your self-esteem could hit rock bottom, yet you still hold onto the notion that you have innate worth. Self-worth is at the core of our very selves—our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are intimately tied into how we view our worthiness and value as human beings. Self- worth really is a gauge of how much you value, love, and respect yourself.
People with healthy self-worth tend to have greater self-confidence, self-esteem, and self-love. People with high self-worth carry with them a sense of confidence that they will be all right and manage whatever comes their way. They have the ability to live with purpose, intention, and it is much easier to manage their logic and emotions to stay in wise mind. While they are aware of areas in which they can improve, they don’t let their shortcomings or weaknesses define their identity. They are not afraid to pursue opportunities and have reasonable faith in their ability to deliver while pursing their wildest dreams.
What is Self-Validation?
Self-validation involves acknowledging and accepting your strengths, achievements, positive attributes, and emotions. It also involves knowing that having imperfections and making mistakes does not take away from your worth or value. We cant rely on others to make us feel good. When we do, we allow others to dictate our worth. And we don’t trust our own thoughts, feelings, and judgments; we assume others know more than we do and their opinions matter more. Instead, we need to learn how to validate ourselves. Self-validation is a distinctive DBT skill that focuses on accepting the emotions you are experiencing. If you have trouble regulating your emotions, then you probably have a hard time accepting them in the first place as well. Learning to self-validate your emotions will help you cope with the overwhelming emotions we may have, while also allowing you to build up self worth.
Steps for validating yourself
- Notice how you feel and what you need.
- Accept your feelings and needs without judgment.
- Don’t over-identify with your feelings. We want to accept our feelings and also remember that they don’t define us. Notice the subtle, but important, difference when you say I feel angry vs. I am angry or I feel jealous vs. I am jealous. Our feelings are temporary they come and go.
- Remember, practice is an important part of learning self-validation!
Make sure your self validation looks like:
- Encouraging yourself
- Acknowledging your strengths, successes, progress, and effort
- Noticing and accepting your feelings
- Prioritizing your needs
- Treating yourself with kindness
- Saying nice things to yourself
- Accepting your limitations, flaws, and mistakes
7 day challenge to redefine and boost your self worth
There are things you can do to boost your sense of self-worth and ensure that you value yourself like you ought to be valued; as a full, complete, and wonderful human being that is deserving of love and respect, no matter what. Take control of your feelings of worthiness, love and confidence back into your own hands by using this 7 day challenge to help assess, redefine, and boost your self worth.
1.Become aware
The very best thing you can do for yourself is to learn how to become more aware of your thoughts and how they affect your feelings. Our thoughts are incredibly powerful and how we decide to see an event or situation becomes our reality. This is the first step in learning how to validate yourself. You want to start the process of recognizing your thoughts, so you can stop the negativity and reframe how you see a situation, person, or event. Reframing or looking at something differently is what you are doing when you validate yourself. You are asking yourself to stop mentally beating yourself up and start appreciating the things you do well. You are recognizing the ways you are growing as a person and giving yourself the kindness you deserve.
How you can do this today, is by taking a sheet of paper and at the very top writing ” Times I invalidated myself today”. Now, throughout the day keep this paper always by your side and make a tally for each time you invalidate yourself whether out loud or in your mind. If you notice a certain thought pattern, emotion, or phrase coming up repeatedly take note of what it is on the page. Than at the end of the day sit with this page and look at how many times you tore yourself down when you could have built yourself up instead. Give yourself the warmest and most compassionate hug apologizing for forcing your mind to be fixated in place of judgement, pain, and despair. Let yourself know you understand why they may have lashed out or reacted in pain during the day. Than make yourself a promise that you will be more aware of what you think, believe and say to yourself each and every day. Starting by showing up for day two of this challenge tomorrow.
2. Accept that you need acceptance
The next step to building up our self worth through validation, is radically accepting that no matter how much we think we don’t care, we all need to feel accepted and loved. I don’t care who you are, where you are from, or how resilient you think you are. Being accepted and feeling like you belong is incredibly powerful and something we all long for. Essentially, it’s part of our DNA being something we are searching for from the moment of our births. We have to be accepted in order to survive. we need to be accepted and cared for by the people around us. At the same time, we must recognize we won’t always get that acceptance in the way we need it or the way we want it. Which means it’s on each of us to love and accept ourselves. To be the ones that can truly fulfill that need no matter where we end up or how alone we are. In order to start the process of validating yourself, you have to start the process of loving and accepting yourself wholly without judgement. That means all parts of yourself, including your thoughts, emotions, actions, opinions, and values.
How you can do this today, is by spending some time doing some brain dumping and journaling focusing on your strengths and weaknesses. This allows you to spend some time with really getting to look at each part of yourself. When you do this you are able to than validate each part of yourself by reframing your thinking and looking at it from another perspective. Seeing how those things you view as weaknesses have actually been hidden gems of resilience and pieces that make us who we are. So, those things that you have listed in the weaknesses column will be moved to the strength column with acceptance, validation, and love.
3. Do the inner work to assess how you currently view your worth
One of the most crucial steps to working on your self worth, is doing the hard and intentional work of assessing how you actually value yourself right now and what you view is your self worth. Depending on where you are at on your journey of healing, self discovery, and inner work this may be a really uncomfortable day for you. This is when you sit down alone, in a quiet, calm and sacred container where you can go deep within your heart. To really ask yourself how much do you value yourself, what is your worth, and why is it at the place it is at?
How you can do this today, is by doing some shadow work. Self discovery is the ultimate goal of shadow work and shadow work prompts are an ideal way to get to the root of your shadow. You can choose different parts of yourself and your shadow to work with each time you delve into the darkness of your soul with shadow work. So, take some time today to use the prompts below to really assess how you truly value yourself. Doing so will allow you to know how much reframing around your self worth may need to happen and provide you with a path to take to boost it to be as high as it can be.
If you would like guided 1:1 help with this you can book me for private shadow sessions in the shop!
4. Don’t Listen to all of your thoughts
The next step to building up our self worth through validation, is understanding that you don’t need to listen to every single one of your thoughts. A common expression I heard throughout DBT that stuck with me was, “Just because you have a thought, it doesn’t make it true.” We have 30,000 to 50,000 thoughts a day and research has shown that about 80% of our thoughts are either regrets from the past or fears about the future. Making a huge chunk of our thoughts based not in facts but simply assumptions and emotions. Which means our thoughts aren’t always completely reliable or truthful.
When you validate yourself, you’re asking yourself, “What else can be true?” The act of validation is about looking at a situation and thinking, “OK, this didn’t go as planned. I made a mistake and now I have to decide how I’m going to think about this situation to radically accept and move on.” In that moment, you can beat yourself up and break yourself down or you can challenge your thoughts and decide to ask yourself, “What else can be true?” “What else can I see or learn?” ” What am I responding to emotions, assumptions, or facts?”
How you can do this today is, by taking the time to mindfully sit with a situation you’ve recently reacted to in a way of anger, pain, or hurt. Look back on the situation and think about it from a perspective you may have missed in those moments by checking the facts. Doing this allows you to identify what was emotion and what was fact you were reacting you to. Giving you the ability to validate your reactions while also looking for the places where you can change how you reacted.
5. Speak words of validation to yourself out loud
When was the last time you validated yourself? I am referring to positively recognizing your thoughts, emotions or actions. When was the last time you took a moment to stop the negative chatter in your mind? Stop waiting to hear the positive words, praise or encouragement you’re craving. Tell it to yourself because you’re the only person you have complete control over.
How you can do this today, is by literally revamping your self talk and speaking words of validation out loud to yourself. You can do this anywhere you would like and whenever you would like. I find it the most helpful for myself to speak words of validation out loud to myself in the morning when I wake, when I go to bed, and than anytime throughout the day when I catch myself speaking to myself in an unkind way. I’ll even do it before a big conversation, event, or social outing.
6. Stop people pleasing and set boundaries
We are so conditioned to believe that our value is tied up in what we give instead of who we are. Many of us like myself are taught, self-worth is all about whether or not you are making someone else happy, by doing them a service or giving them things they want. This is what determines whether you’re good enough, you matter, and deserve to be loved. But, after living most of my life as a chronic people pleaser, turning that need into anxiety so extreme it became OCD. I have learned that finding your value in other people will always leave you feeling less than what your true worth is really meant to be.
How you can do this today, is by setting boundaries for yourself or saying no to something today. It’s okay to say no, to set boundaries, it doesn’t make you a selfish or bad person. You’re allowed to give what you receive. You’re allowed to form relationships where it’s give-give instead of give-take. You are allowed to say no. You are allowed to say “I can’t right now.” and most shocking of all; you are allowed to form the opinion that some people do not deserve your help
You do not have to give and give until there’s nothing left. Seek the people who fill you up, who reciprocate what you give, and who respect the boundaries that you make. Take all of that endless love and compassion and time and money that you are always giving other people, and turn a little bit toward yourself. See how good that feels. Don’t chase that feeling of worthiness from other people when you are so capable of filling yourself up and finding others who will appreciate you and respect your boundaries.
7.Determine your definition of self worth
Self-worth is a subjective concept that can fluctuate based on many variables, says Sabrina Romanoff, PsyD, a clinical psychologist and professor at Yeshiva University. Which means it’s important for us to determine how we ourselves define our own self worth. According to Dr. Romanoff, these are some of the factors that may influence self-worth:
Core beliefs and values
Thoughts and feelings
Emotions and mental well-being
Experiences and interactions with others
Relationships, both past and present
Health and physical fitness
Career and profession
Activities and hobbies
Community and social status
Financial position
Physical appearance
Childhood experiences
How you can do this today, is by taking the time to sit and mindfully reflect and honestly answer what factors are you using to determine your self worth? Then take the next step to release and let go of things that you are misplacing your value in like what others think of you, the amount of money you have, or your physical appearance.
Wrap Up
It’s important to have self-worth because it impacts everything you do from your relationships, to how you work, how you feel about yourself, and how others view you. Remember, self-worth, is based on your strengths, flaws, and who you truly are at your core when accomplishments, possessions, and acquisitions are stripped away. While it’s fantastic to be proud of your accomplishments and good to be aware of how others perceive you, a sense of self-worth is a vital part of a healthy and thriving existence. Your inherent value as a person does not stem from your accomplishments or what others think of you Ultimately remember You are the only one who determines your self-worth. If you believe you are worthy and valuable, you are worthy and valuable. Even if you don’t believe you are worthy and valuable, guess what—you still are worthy and valuable!