Each of the three skills is easier to implement if your sense of self-worth is positive. Specifically, Not Keeping Score is intended to, at least, maintain and perhaps, reinforce a positive self-image. And intimacy is easier to nurture if your sense of worth is stable (it’s easier to be vulnerable with a foundation of feeling worthy). It’s even easier to Master Acceptance if your fears are supported by a robust sense that you’ll be okay because you are essentially worthy.
In contrast, if you’re struggling to implement or practice any of the three skills perhaps your sense of worthiness is low. Certainly, it’s challenging to get a benefit from not keeping score if you don’t feel better or get some relief from not judging yourself harshly. In other words, Not Keeping Score will not do much for your sense of worth if it’s so low you remain stuck in a feeling of unworthiness despite a tamed inner critic. Likewise, if you don’t feel worthy, intimacy is harder because it’s impossible to really trust that someone cares for you.
Since a basic sense of worthiness is such a good foundation for the three skills, let’s explore how to build it if it is lacking.
Time for the disclaimer. A basic sense of worth is something some people have or can easily construct while others struggle to build and keep it. What follows is not a universal cure or panacea. If you receive help from the ideas expressed below, great. If not, perhaps consulting a professional therapist will help you develop an improved sense of self-worth.
The bottom line is that a robust sense of worthiness is a powerful foundation to build overall well-being on and you will be well served by the effort to build and support it, on your own or with the help of a professional, if indicated.
With that out of the way, what can you do to feel a powerful sense of self-worth?
If you’re lucky enough to have a hint that you’re inherently or essentially worthy all you may have to do is attend to that thought and the associated feeling to start to grow it. You might think of the thought as a seedling that you need to water (by reminding yourself of it – by savoring the feeling associated with it) so that it grows to be a healthy plant. A little TLC helps this process. Think of the practice as meditating on who you are in the world.
You can also consider your intentions and use them as evidence of your worthiness. Assuming MOST of your intentions are neutral or positive (not necessarily all1), you are worthy in my view. It’s important to point out that I’m referring to what might be labeled, final intentions. I’m not talking about the knee jerk or immediate reaction intentions that might be negative at first because of fear or anger. I am talking about the intentions that are felt once any fear or anger has been resolved, opening the door to neutral or positive intentions. For example, if you were to swoop in and get in the check-out line in front of me, I might initially have negative intentions but after pausing for a moment, let those go and console myself with the thought that I lost the competition for a place in line and you should be congratulated not condemned. In this example, my intentions don’t have to turn positive to be okay.
Again, to restate, it’s my view that mostly positive intentions toward self and others are unambiguous evidence of worthiness. Note that I am not talking about outcomes. Positive outcomes are great but not always realized. It’s “final” intentions that matter in judging worthiness.
It’s your job to connect your mostly positive intentions to a sense of worthiness by meditating on who you are in the world. For me, caring for others and self, thru positive intentions make someone inherently worthwhile and the world a better place with them in it.
Now, let’s say you have mostly neutral or positive intentions but doubt your worthiness. I know many people who are caught in this state of being. Sometimes people in this state have more positive intentions than most but are haunted by a belief that they are unworthy because of a past event – sometimes a single past event. This belief robs them of feeling worthy even though the evidence is overwhelming that they are worthy based upon a lifetime of treating others with overwhelmingly positive intentions.
In part, this self-assessment can be viewed as a form of creeping perfectionism with the bar of worthiness being impossible to reach. Or perhaps the perfectionism is based on a failure to accept the universal phenomena of a shadow self – a dark side? So that any negative intention, no matter how fleeting is considered evidence of unworthiness. In either case, the expectations of self are out of balance thru a kind of perfectionism and therefore interfere with a reasonable assessment of worthiness.
Also, in many cases I have seen, people with doubt about their own worthiness can trace their self-assessment of worth back to an early belief. Perhaps they were adopted or told they were “worthless” by a critical parent. Perhaps they acted in a way that others shamed them about and they are still carrying the shame. In each of these cases, it’s important to examine the belief from a current perspective and tell a different story about its meaning — in this way editing the belief about worthiness.
For example, an adopted child might feel unloved and abandoned. The easy conclusion for a child to come to is that he or she is unlovable and not worthy of someone’s love. This is a child’s perspective. It creates a narrative that backs a belief of unworthiness that can be as strong as a fact. The trick is to critically assess the belief from a current perspective.
Hopefully, it is obvious that no healthy adult abandons a child thinking it’s the child’s fault. There are lots of reasons children are given up for adoption, but virtually all are based on the adult’s feeling, one way or another, that the child is better off being raised by someone else. This is a completely different perspective on the worthiness of the child and the grown child, now adult, must CHANGE THE NARRATIVE and, more importantly, their sense of worth. They must recalibrate their sense of worthiness.
When the sense of worthiness is lacking because of intense criticism from a parent or others or because of shame about some act, it’s again important to REVISE THE NARRATIVE. In these cases, the adult or current perspective is hopefully more tolerant of mistakes and compassionate about acts that might be shameful.
Before closing, you might ask, do I think everyone is worthy? My answer is that I choose to believe that everyone is worthy, but I also know that for some individuals a sense of worth is so damaged that it’s hard for them to act with positive or even neutral final intentions toward others. They are consumed with a drive to get what they want even at the expense of others. These are the conmen and sociopaths among us. They are perhaps the most dangerous members of our “tribe” because of their negative intentions toward others. They often can hide their negative intentions and can seem to have high self-worth because they have learned to appear confident and lie fluidly to get what they want. These behaviors make it easier for them to manipulate others — contributing to their dangerousness. I remain an optimist about their potential to rehabilitate themselves but, in the meantime, recommend taking a careful look beneath the surface to detect their true intentions.
So, consider your sense of self-worth and reinforce it before employing The Three Skills. You’ll be glad you did.
1We all have a shadow self that contains our less positive and even negative thoughts and feelings.