Contrary to our programming, cultural constructs, lineage patterns, religious beliefs, oppression, white supremacy, racism, colonialism, or edicts from empires, human beings are born worthy: flaws and all. Even though you intellectually get this, your self-worth, self-esteem, beliefs, or mental health might not agree.

Learning how to feel worthy is a capacity-building practice for the body-mind. Holistically growing your self-worth skill set will benefit your life, work, leadership, purpose, and relationships and increase your personal power, self-responsibility, self-compassion, self-love, and overall mental health and well-being.

This blog unpacks the double binds of worthiness, the importance of somatic work, and when to use mindfulness tools and belief work to feel worthy. This blog offers support for many kinds of people. If you’re at the beginning of your worthiness, self-acceptance, and self-compassion journey, or if you want more and have BIG dreams, read on.

Why does worthiness matter? It is the foundation of how we show up for the life we came to live. Having a deep sense of our worthiness allows us to want what we want, set boundaries, grow, evolve, and be in right relationship with our personal power confronts much of our programming.

You're worth this!

Photo by LOGAN WEAVER | @LGNWVR of two older women smiling and enjoying a side hug.

Why Feeling Worthy Matters

Worthiness is foundational for the life we came to live. Having a deep sense of our worthiness allows us to want what we want, set boundaries, grow, evolve, and be in right relationship with our personal power confronts much of our programming. Reconciling our relationship with worthiness matters because we matter.

My Introduction to Worthiness 10 Years into My Career

As an early adopter of Brené Brown’s work in 2012 and a facilitator and consultant for her Daring Way™ process, I come by this work with worthiness honestly. At my first training with her, I was a decade into practicing as a psychotherapist and had been “doing the work” in my own therapy. As Brené unpacked the felt-sense experience of shame and unworthiness, it was a mic drop moment for me. I recognized on a deep level that I had high levels of shame, unworthiness, and perfectionism. I was living in a constant double bind of being too much for some and not enough for others. I committed to walking my talk and disentangling my worthiness from my fears, stories, and should.

Photo taken by Antasia Nelen of a woman in a cozy sweater holding a mug looking at a computer screen late night in the dark.

If you’re looking for a starting place to dig into worthiness. I highly recommend listening to or reading The Gifts of Imperfection, by Brené Brown. It is gentle and allows your nervous system to acclimate to a deeper inquiry around worthiness, vulnerability, and living a bigger life. This quote hits home for many.

“If we spend a lifetime trying to distance ourselves from the parts of our lives that don’t fit with who we think we’re supposed to be, we stand outside of our story and have to hustle for our worthiness by constantly performing, perfecting, pleasing, and proving. Our sense of worthiness lives inside of our story.” Brené Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are

Double-bind of Worthiness

In everyday life, most human beings are hustling for our worthiness. We exist in the double bind that says we are too much here and not enough there. This matters because we are hinging our ability to connect, love, belong, and lead from the confusion of I’ll be enough when _________. Our struggles and negative thoughts with self-worth leave the body in a state of overwhelm and distress. We’re searching for stories that match our feelings about being too much or not enough.

For high achievers, self-worth struggles can look like setting goals and never feeling satisfied, joyful, or grateful after we’ve put in hard work. This often leads to a vicious cycle of burnout.

When we feel like we’ll never be good enough, we often hold back. Perfectionism, negative thoughts, negative beliefs, and unworthiness often hang out together. This can often look like Imposter Syndrome or feel like a fraud. We’re terrified of failing or being judged with low self-worth. We hold back our biggest dreams and goals because we feel unworthy. Sometimes, we never even put ourselves out there. This can lead to feeling stuck or stagnant.

We hold the story if I was more of this and less of that, I’d finally find the right partner, leave my job, ask for a pay rise, wear red lipstick, let myself be really happy, share my joy, create massive impact, stop living with regret…I’d finally be the human being I thought I could be.

Photo of a stressed human wearing a black turtleneck and black necklace with their hands holding their seemingly stressed forehead.

The Worthiness, Self-Esteem, Self-Confidence, and The Central Nervous System

Learning how to appreciate and respect that we are enough as we are and that we’re worthy of having goals and dreams is the work of being a wonderful human. The first step of owning our worthiness lives in the central nervous system.

Before Brené Brown’s research on shame and worthiness, the literature and research predominately referred to low self-esteem or low self-confidence. Self-esteem and self-confidence are thinking-based constructs. When you feel worthy, it is a felt-sense or sometimes whole-bodied experience. I share this because many people are led to believe that they need to think their way to be able to feel worthy.

Our bodies hold the pain, hurt, discomfort, and fears of feeling unworthy. The first step of worthiness work is to build your capacity to feel safe in your central nervous system. No matter if your unworthiness stems from cumulative experiences or trauma, I offer two experiential to help reset your nervous system and build your capacity to feel regulated here.

Once you and your nervous system develop trust, belief work and mindfulness practices can be incredible, which can integrate a more whole story of who you are, who you’ve been, and who you are becoming.

Mindfulness, Self-Compassion, Self-Acceptance, Self-Esteem, and Self-WorthTaking Perspective

When we are triggered by our stories or moments of unworthiness, we aren’t present or aware. We lose track of time. We forget about the wholeness of who we are and minimize ourselves to our worst and hold our best against us. After regulating the central nervous system, taking perspective can help us with compassion and acceptance and feeling more worthy. When our nervous system is regulated, we can access mindfulness practices. Zooming out from the story that you’re in, you can use curiosity to notice how many people throughout all of time and history have done, said, believed, avoided, or pushed through this thing. When we mire ourselves with low self-esteem or low self-worth, we think we are terminally unique, the worst of the worst.

Learning to take perspective allows us to see our common humanity and cultivate compassion and acceptance for past mistakes, beliefs, or judgments we’ve made about ourselves and others. We can begin to tap into our humility. With humility, we have the self-worth to recommit and try again after mistakes and failures. We right-size the story and impact. This can improve our self-esteem and self-love. We know we are worthy of trying again and again in life.

Photo by krakenimages of a middle-aged man and woman sitting on a blanket with their dog camping and looking at a map.

Metta Meditation Self-Care and Collective-Care

Another mindfulness tool to increase our self-worth, self-compassion, and self-acceptance is metta meditation. This is an active form of Buddist meditation, where we direct lovingkindness towards ourselves and then sequentially expand towards others, from those we love to those we struggle with.

Photo by Jarad Rice of a woman meditating in an open air space with a thatched roof at golden hour.

What’s lovingkindness?

Lovingkindness is a practice of sending goodwill, kindness, compassion, love, and equanimity to ourselves and others to reduce suffering. Metta meditation is a self-care practice, as well as a collective-care practice. This is an example of a gentle metta meditation series that you can repeat to yourself for yourself and others.

May you be safe and protected in the body you dwell in and the land you live on.
May you be healthy and strong.
May you be kind to your discomfort, vulnerability, and suffering.
May you be grateful for honoring your joy and aliveness.
May you be guided safely and openly to connect with others freely.

After experimenting with this practice, you may notice your heartbeat and breath slowing and coming more deeply into your body and the present moment. You may feel a sense of your personal power that you can choose how to connect to yourself, others, and life itself. This can be a meaningful self-care practice and collective-care practice as often as you desire.

Being in Right Relationship Between Personal Power and Worthiness

As we cultivate our solid sense of self-worth and learn to co-create the life we came to live, we begin to grow and trust our personal power. Our mental health and self-esteem may be unrecognizable to our past selves. We shift from being on the effect side of life to being on the cause side of life.

When we feel unworthy, we often hold confusion around power, love, and boundaries and live in the Drama Triangle personally and/or professionally. We don’t have access to our true power. We don’t trust being vulnerable or others' vulnerabilities. Learning how to be in right relationship with our personal power is essential in our personal and professional relationships.

Reconciling our own worthiness is foundational to being in right relationship with our personal power.

We’re able to use our agency, self-responsibility, dignity, and self-respect to show up powerfully and powerfully choose in alignment with our values or ourselves and The Collective. We prioritize what matters most from the inside out. We let go of living in should. Our word is impeccable, and we also know it is safe to change our minds if something is out of alignment. Choices become clearer. We begin to have the life, work, and relationships we’ve dreamed of.

Photo by Miguel Bautista of two men hugging in Times Square, New York.

Feel Worthy of Big Dreams, Big Happiness, Big Love, and Big Impact

Many clients come to work with me because they want more than they have. Their lives are good on paper or from the outside looking in. They often come with a dilemma of wanting more while worrying about The Collective. At this stage of worthiness work, it is going back to the nervous system and clarifying it is safe to be worthy of having it all in a new way. Having it all doesn’t mean living in ignorant bliss.

Photo by Tallie Robinson of two women with dark brown curly hair kissing.

Holding Duality As Your Life Expands

I coach clients on discovering their way of holding the duality. They discover that they’re worthy of their deepest dreams and desires and how to work towards them while simultaneously showing up for what is happening in their life and/or The Collective with integrity.

Along the way, they often work through fears, beliefs, and lineage agreements of who will be my people, if:

I’m this happy that my energy is contagious!
I’m this in love that people wonder what’s in the water I’m drinking?!
I’m this successful that I’ve created a massive impact or ripple effect!
I’m this wealthy that I can give to causes that matter most, from reparations to donating my skills!

Coaching these wonderful humans, who want more, has blown my mind for over a decade. Who they are when they show up is already amazing. I can’t begin to tell them how good it can get when they start this work. When we’re complete, they can’t believe how far they’ve come and how worthy they feel of the life they’ve come to life.

A Black woman making a wish blowing on a dandelion.

Permission to Want What You Want

Tell me what your big dreams are. Not the dreams that you thought that you should have. If you don’t know what your big dreams are, you can remember that you were born worthy. Our dreams and desires come from our True Self. Can you give yourself permission to want what you truly want? This is about finding your way, which is truly yours. Tell me what gets in the way of allowing yourself to go for it or try again. Whatever is holding you back, know that you are worth finding your way to show up and live the BIG life you came to live. You deserve to feel proud of who you are and how you are living, loving, and leading. I’d love to hear from you in the comments.

Love,

Amy

PS If you know another wonderful human who would like support to feel worthy or tap into more of their personal power, share this blog with them. If you would are a human being who would like support with this, I invite you to explore private coaching with me. I imagine you have lived a successful life to date, even with the struggles that come with navigating worthiness. Just imagine how good it could get when you feel worthy. Apply to coach with me here.

How to Feel Worthy: A Holistic Approach That Works!