What Your Yes and No Says About Your Self-worth

Do you find yourself saying yes all the time to all requests made by those who matter in your world? Are you exhausted physically, mentally and emotionally? Do you find it difficult to say no? When you say no, do you ruminate and worry about what those you have said no to are thinking of you? Then it is very likely that you believe, 
                       “my self-worth = my performance and the opinion of others.”

When this distorted sense of self is accommodated you will do whatever you need to, to try and alleviate the pain and discomfort of being devalued or without value. It is difficult to say “no” when saying yes will bring you the validation, affirmation and recognition you need to feed this inaccurate sense of worth. 

The reality is the more you say yes to gain worth and approval the more you devalue yourself. I have heard countless stories of those who feel “taken advantage of, being unappreciated, invalidated and used”, because they are constantly asked to do things and they constantly agree to help regardless of whether they want to or not. Resentment builds in these individuals as they wait and hang all their efforts on being acknowledged and affirmed hoping to top up their self-worth. 

When you have a healthy sense of self saying no becomes the regulating valve to acknowledging your own value. Saying no to a friend, family member or boss is not an act of withholding but an act of assertion. It is saying yes to yourself to preserve and sustain your mental, emotional and physical health, valuing yourself - so that you can ultimately be of better service.

Saying yes out of obligation for fear of disapproval is different than saying yes because you want to. Saying no because you are self-absorbed and uninterested in helping is different from saying no because you understand your value and “get” how it will be compromised if you said yes. Your yes or no are the regulating valves to asserting and affirming your value. 

Value from without requires excessive amounts of energy to sustain itself. You are pulled into performance mode like a puppet on a string performing to gain worth. Value from within is anchoring. It is easy to assert your value when you know who you are. Who you are is not what you do. It is your innate sense of worth. You have value because you exist. You can’t earn it or perform for it. You just have to realize it.So according to the old adage, "let your yes be yes and your no be no." Know what you are saying yes to and why,  and know what you are saying no to and be unwavering. Be diligent about preserving your self-worth.

When Change Becomes Possible …

If we take a quick glance at the landscape of our lives we see that we typically keep what we love and what we are attached to. I have moved several times in my life and each time is an opportunity to purge the things that are no longer current or of value to me. Some painful memories of loss and heartache seem to inadvertently find their way to my next home. These artifacts lay hidden away in storage out of sight but always present in my world.

The same is true of our internals selves. As we take a panoramic view of our emotions, memories and thoughts we will find that disappointment, hurt, loss, broken dreams, hurtful and destructive thoughts and memories insidiously incubate in the deep sometimes not so deep recesses of ourselves, in boxes tagged “historical evidence” neatly wrapped in many coloured bows of avoidance as we attempt to move forward with our lives. 

 

The ‘drag affect’ in physics is known to be “the forces that act opposite to an object in motion” and is typical of headwind resistance to an airplane in flight, slowing down its speed. Conversely, if a plane has the influence of a tailwind then it increases, “the object's speed and reduces the time required to reach its destination.”

The drag affect is true of what happens for us emotionally. We desire change and sometimes feel the sense of urgency and desperation to break through personal barriers and old familial patterns with little success. Paul Simon captures it well in his song, “Slip slidin’ away, Slip slidin’ away, You know the nearer your destination, The more you’re slip slidin’ away “.

 

As long as our “historical evidence” is allowed to follow us, our desire for change is obstructed. What we avoid we incubate but what we challenge and purge leads to change. Historical evidence is just that – evidence from your past which is used to justify our current state, evidence to support our right to be angry, unforgiving or insulated in our misery. We come to embrace our pain not as a guest but as a permanent resident in our lives. We shape and adjust our lives around it ensuring that it is accommodated in case we need to use it as a visa validating our right to be isolated and withdrawn or to be offended and critical. 

If we don’t love our freedom more than we love our pain then …change will never be possible. Unresolved issues and offenses never die they go dormant waiting for the right set of circumstances to become another injury or offense. They act as headwind in your life limiting you and resisting your progress towards a healthier happier life.

Any path to freedom starts with a decision, is fueled by courage, supported by corresponding action and sustained by intentional living. These ingredients act as the headwind in your life taking you closer to your goals. I encourage you today to look at those boxes of “historical evidence” wrapped with bows of avoidance and begin to forgive others, forgive yourself, let go of years of turmoil and pain, create space to design for yourself the type of life you want to have. It is springtime purging is in order.  

Get Out Of Autopilot Mode

My 18 year old daughter recently secured her new driver’s license. It was a wonderful and stressful experience all at once. Living through her learning journey with her gave me a new appreciation for the rules of the road. If you drive you are aware of the principle, “you steer where you look”.  Since our eyes determine the path our vehicles will follow, new drivers are trained to keep their eyes on the road as a way to ensure safety and develop their skills which cultivates a discipline that help new drivers manage distractions.

Thoughts much like sight pilot us towards a healthy or unhealthy emotional and mental life and determine the direction in which we will go. Life circumstances, genetics and socio-economic influences and our experiences shape well-worn pathways in our thought life. Depressive thoughts, anxious thoughts, victim thinking or hopeful and purposeful thoughts are influenced by our life experiences and what was modeled to us in our home-life.

The challenge many of us experience is how to stop unhelpful thoughts and lay new neural track for different and healthier thoughts to travel on. We tend to get discouraged when we try something new and it does not work or when we try to think positive thoughts and the “feel good” feeling is temporary and fleeting.

Henry David Thoreau aptly writes, “As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.”

Thoughts affect our emotions and pilot our behaviours. For example, if I think I have failed someone close to me, I may feel sadness and shame. If I continue to dwell on how I failed that person and how their opinion of me has changed for the worse, then I start to feel low mood and low energy. I will start to feel depressed and have self-pity. If I continue to think on the event in an unhealthy way, I may become hypersensitive to the fact that I have not heard from this person and may start to feel increased shame, rejection and a sense of unworthiness. My behaviour would be to withdraw and to isolate where I continue to ruminate on this pattern of thought and may become increasingly anxious.

This emotional and mental fact pattern indicates that my negative belief about my self-concept was activated putting me in “autopilot mode”. Staying in autopilot mode can be threatening to your well-being. At some point you have to choose to get out of robotically thinking harmful and depreciating thoughts. You can stop, challenge and change unhelpful thoughts and decide to think the kind of thoughts you “wish to dominate your life”. Continue to think these thoughts and pilot your life to a new destination (responses & behaviours).

Hope goes into your future and issues you an invitation to join it there. If you want a hopeful, fulfilling and joyous life you must choose to stop allowing your life circumstances to put you in autopilot focusing on what’s not working, how you failed, who rejected you and how you can never achieve your goals. Consider this blog an alarm signal going off in the cockpit of your life alerting you to the danger of self-sabotage, isolation, depression and anxiety. Get back to the instrumentation panel of your thought life – reset your coordinates towards happiness, hope, empowerment and freedom and then keep thinking these thoughts over and over and over again until you arrive at your new destination and, once there keep thinking these thoughts over and over and over again so that you stay out of the danger zone.