Three Quick Tips to Enhance Your Self Worth

Here are three quick things you can do in the midst of your busy daily life to find a quick boost to your self worth:

1. There is no quick fix, and anyone who tells you there is, is trying to sell you something.
2. There is no quick fix, and anyone who tells you there is, is trying to sell you something.
3. There is no quick fix, and anyone who tells you there is, is trying to sell you something.

I am very sorry.  But, alas, in all the years I’ve been a therapist (in all the years I’ve been a human being, really), I have found exactly no quick solutions to working towards enhanced self worth.  

Isn’t this the worst?  I really consider this one of the top three most unfair things about life.  Why can I not just get another promotion and then I feel better about who I am?  What if I lose five more pounds – what about then? Maybe if I become an expert in just one more thing?  If I add another 500 square feet to my house? I add a few more credentials at the end of my name? I get just one more A in another class?  I get my kids into just the right colleges? What if I set the table perfectly? Or I meditate just one more time?  

Unfortunately, no.  None of that will help in any lasting way.  Again I say: this is one of the most unfair things about life.  

As my favorite writer Anne Lamott puts it, “it’s an inside job.”  

As a therapist in the Washington, DC metropolitan area, I work with many people who describe themselves as “perfectionists” and yet, each of them has a different idea of what they need to do in order to reach this ever-moving target of perfection.  (By definition, if “perfection” doesn’t exist by one agreed-upon definition, it does not exist at all, right?) We are constantly working towards this illusion, shaming ourselves for falling short of something that wasn’t there to begin with.  And perfectionism runs rampant in DC, with everyone operating under the belief that we have to be “ahead” of others; it gives us the false sense that if we are perfect enough, we “win.”

I think the reason perfectionism is so seductive is that it constantly leaves us feeling like we are just one step away from being okay.  (Another favorite writer of mine, Liz Gilbert, says perfectionism is just fear in high heels. This makes perfect sense to me. We are all terrified, and we are all terrified to admit that we are terrified.)  So perfectionism feels like a way out – we are just one step away from not having to feel afraid anymore. We’ve made it. We’ve got enough letters after our name now to tell that voice in our head to leave us alone – the voice that’s been following us around since we were in the 7th grade and someone said something awful to us.  We’ll show them! And then we get those extra credentials after our names, the ones we thought would totally legitimize us and keep us safe from ever experiencing Imposter Syndrome ever again, and… ugh.  Didn’t work. So again, we are left considering what else we have to do to achieve perfection. Maybe next time. 

As Will Ferrell puts it so simply, and yet so accurately: “You are never not afraid.”  

So, I have no perfect answers for how to work towards enhanced self worth because it is so deeply personal that one blog post cannot possibly give you any answers to your most profound questions.  You’ve got to stop looking here. Or looking anywhere outside yourself. Again, it’s an inside job. The best place to start is perhaps to consider that you are not one step away. You’re, perhaps… already there.  With all the abilities and qualities you’ve ever needed to feel self-worth.