Why You Have Low Self-Esteem and How to Fix It

What if I told you the quality of every single aspect of your life, your relationships, your bank accounts, your home, your emotional health, boils down to one thing. This one thing. An unwavering understanding of your own value. This understanding is at the core of how you see yourself and how you allow the world to see you. It's what I call self worth. In this episode, I'm going to walk you through the three reasons you struggle with low self worth and exactly what you need to do to stop making these mistakes. Hi there, I'm Meadow devore, helping you with strategies and tools to build self worth. On this channel, I share self development tips and practical ways to change your life. The first reason you struggle with low self esteem is that you lack a sense of self. So self worth requires you to have a sense of self. This means you must have healthy boundaries. The definition of a boundary is a line that marks the limits of an area. It's both a line of containment keeping you in, and a line of protection keeping others out. If you think about this like drawing a circle around yourself, and inside the circle is your mental, emotional, physical and spiritual space. This is the space where you live and it's the space that your whole self occupies. It includes all the aspects of yourself that you love, cherish and celebrate. It also includes all the aspects of yourself that you have forgotten, denied and repressed. No one else belongs in this circle and it can't be shared with others. Boundaries are rules for who, what, how and why you feel comfortable being close to someone else. Boundaries are clear communication of what's true for you, helping others know who you are and how to interact with you. So when you're clear with your boundaries, no one is left guessing. If you want to know more about building self worth, my best selling book, the Worthy Project is available for free on Audible. I shared the link in the description. So the next reason that you have low self worth is that you spend more than you keep. Bear with me, I'm going to talk about money for two seconds. I'll get right back to self worth, but this is a good metaphor and it really helps you understand how you value yourself. So in the realm of money, worth follows a basic supply and demand model. Money is traded for things and so to build financial worth, you must keep more of that value than you spend. If things become too easy to get, value collapses and worth vanishes. And this is also how self worth works. To build self worth, you must keep more value than you spend. Where financial worth is about the accumulation of a thing Called money. Self worth is about the accumulation of a thing called self. So when you spend more resources than you can afford, whether you're spending time, attention, energy or money, you decrease your self esteem and you reinforce a sense of worthlessness and you lower your self worth. So when you're considering giving or spending things like time, your time, your energy and yourself, it's important to know how to determine whether or not you can afford to spend these things or to give this away. So to build self worth, you need to ask yourself, do I have an excess of those resources to give or spend? This is kind of like the flight attendant's advice of putting the oxygen mask on yourself before you help others. So here an excess of resources means that you have extra after you've cared for yourself first. If you have to put yourself into debt emotionally, health wise, energy wise, or time wise, you can't afford to spend the resource. This means that before you give your time, your attention, your energy, or yourself to anyone or anything else, you first have to care for yourself yourself. If you don't have extra to give, it means that you can't afford it. Because to build self esteem, you must keep more resources than you spend. So before we move on to the third reason you have low self esteem, I have a question for you. What area of your life is most affected by low self esteem? Work, Relationships? Money? Something else? Let me know in the comments. Now onto the third reason you have low self esteem. You take action that reinforces low self worth. This one is pure magic. So let me explain how this works. When you take action that reinforces that you're not worth your own time, attention and energy, you reinforce a low self esteem story about yourself. This worthless story leads to worthless behavior and reinforces a sense of worthlessness. The best way to move out of this, what I call the worthless cycle, is to hack your behavior. This means that you take a deliberate action that reinforces the idea that you are worth your time, attention and energy. This doesn't mean that you have to do something big and it doesn't mean that you have to write a book or get a PhD or lose 50 pounds, or run a marathon. It just means that you can take just a tiny action instead of a big dramatic overhaul of the most challenging part of your life. You only need to take this little action that reinforces that you, your life, yourself is worth your own time, attention and energy. Because it's easier to get a new doormat, sweep the floor, or do your laundry, or maybe, you know, sort out your hamper than to quit a mind numbing job or to overhaul your entire financial plan. So these type of little hacks like just by changing that tiny little behavior, instead of trying to overhaul your big big, big problems and go, oh, I'm not going to feel worthy until I do this huge thing, you just do a little thing. And these surprisingly small steps are just as effective as large ones at getting you into the worthy cycle where you start to build self worth. It's the opposite. So by taking small worthy action steps, you immediately stop the downward spiral by placing intentional value on your true self. Any action that cares for your precious true self will help you accumulate more self. More self means more self worth. The worthy cycle builds on itself and gains upward momentum. Worthy behavior creates worthy consequences. And when you see the consequences of this new behavior, like you see the new doormat, or you see the swept floor, or you see the hamper clean, this reinforces a worthy story and it inspires more worthy behavior. And so on. 2. A quick recap. Here are the three reasons you struggle with low self worth and exactly what you need to do to stop making these mistakes. Mistake number one. You lack a sense of self. Self worth requires a self. The only way to have a stable sense of self is by strengthening your boundaries. Mistake number two. You overspend your resources. You need to be more conservative with how you spend your time, energy and attention. So to build self esteem, you must keep meaning. Invest in yourself more resources in yourself than you're spending on anyone else. Mistake number three. Your habitual behavior reinforces low self worth. You need to stop doing things that reinforce the idea that you're not worth it and instead make a daily habit of taking one small action that that reinforces that you are worth your own time, attention and energy.