How to Find Self-Worth and Value Yourself More

Following my post on Tuesday, people have been asking me “What does Healthy Self Worth Look Like?”

Well, you too might be thinking, “Okay, I know what does and doesn’t (and shouldn’t) determine self-worth, but what does healthy self-worth really look like?”

Given what we know about the determinants of self-worth, let’s read through a few examples.

One of my boys is not a great student. He got mostly Cs, even when he would spend a great deal of time studying. He didn’t get a great score on his exams, and he’s an average reader, a struggling writer, and nobody’s idea of a mathematician.

Even though he wished he had better grades, he still felt pretty good about himself. He understood that grades aren’t everything and that he’s just as valuable a person as his straight-A friends.

He has a high sense of self-worth and a realistic view of himself and his abilities.

Next, let’s consider a friend of mine. This friend has a wide variety of interests, including marathons, attending book club, playing regular trivia with her friends, and meeting new people.

She’s not particularly good at running and has never placed in a marathon. She’s a slow reader and frequently misses the symbolism and themes that her fellow book club members pick up on.

She only answers about 10% of the trivia questions correctly and leans on her friends’ knowledge quite often.

Finally, she loves to talk to new people but sometimes she gets blown off and ignored.

Despite all of this, she still believes that she is worthy and valuable.

She knows that her worth as a human is not dependent on her ability to run, read, play trivia, or make new friends.

Whether she is great, terrible, or somewhere in between at each of her vast range of chosen activities, she knows she is still worthy of happiness, fulfillment, and love.

My son and my friend both have healthy levels of self-worth.

They have varying levels of abilities and talents, and they get a wide range of results from their efforts, but they all understand that what they do is not who they are.

No matter whether they win awards or garner accolades for their performance or not, they still have the same high opinion of their value as a person.

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.

How to build self-worth in adolescents

As with most lifelong traits, it’s best to start early. If you know any adolescents, be sure to encourage them to understand and accept their own self-worth.

Reinforce their value as a being rather than a “doing,” as some say—in other words, make sure they know that they are valuable for who they are, not what they do.

1. Provide unconditional love, respect, and positive regard;

2. Give adolescents opportunities to experience success (Clark-Jones, 2012).

Showing a teen unconditional love (if you’re a parent, family member, or very close friend) or unconditional respect and positive regard (if you’re a teacher, mentor, etc.) is the best way to teach them self-worth.

If you show a teenager that you love and appreciate them for exactly who and what they are, they will then learn that it’s okay to love themself for exactly who and what they are.

If you demonstrate that they don’t need to achieve anything to earn your love and respect, they’ll be much less likely to put unnecessary parameters on their own self-love and self-respect.

Further, one way in which we gain a healthy sense of self-worth is through early and frequent experiences of success.

Successful experiences boost our sense of competency and mastery and make us feel just plain good about ourselves.

Successful experiences also open the door for taking healthy risks and the success that often follows.

Don’t just tell a teen that they are worthy and valuable, help them believe it by giving them every opportunity to succeed.

Just be sure that these opportunities are truly opportunities for them to succeed on their own—a helping hand is fine, but we need to figure out how to do some things on our own to build a healthy sense of self-worth (Clark-Jones, 2012).

How about adults?

It’s a bit trickier to increase self-worth and self-value in adults, but we’re no lost cause.

Remind yourself that your bank account, job title, attractiveness, and social media following have nothing to do with how valuable or worthy a person you are.

It’s easy to get caught up in chasing money, status, and popularity—especially when these things are highly valued by those around us and by society in general—but make an effort to take a step back and think about what truly matters when determining people’s worth: their kindness, compassion, empathy, respect for others, and how well they treat those around them.

Second, work on identifying, challenging, and externalising your critical inner voice.

We all have an inner critic that loves to nit-pick and point out our flaws.

It’s natural to let this inner critic get the best of us sometimes, but if we let it win too often it starts to think that it’s right!

Whenever you notice your inner critic start to fire up with the criticisms, make it pause for a moment.

Ask yourself whether there is any basis in fact, whether it’s being kind or not, and whether what you are being told is something you need to know.

If none of those things are true, feel free to tell it to get back in its box!

Challenge yourself on the things your inner critic whispers in your ear and remind it that no matter what you do or don’t do, you are worthy and valuable all the same!