Quote:
Originally Posted by martin  I think a lot of my problems, be it relationships or sticking to a goal, stem from a lack of self-worth.
How could I increase my self-worth? |
I'm guessing by "lack of self-worth", you mean that you feel that you are worthless.
Two complementary exercises might be useful, both based on the idea that you control your view of yourself through how you characterise yourself in your inner monologue.
So the first exercise is to try and get a handle on how you are characterising yourself. Make 10 minutes free, and take a piece of paper, and write at the top "Why I am useless", and brainstorm as many different self-recriminations as you can, as quickly as you can, avoiding lengthy descriptions in favour of pithy attacks on yourself. At the end, tell yourself "It is all wrong what I have written, but I want to find some warning words." Glance quickly over your list and look for words that are characteristic of your self-recriminations, that keep on occurring over and over. Try to remember these warning words, as a signal to be aware of your mental state.
The second exercise you can do whenever you notice you are being hard on yourself. When you say "I am so useless, because I did this or failed to do that", stop yourself and rephrase, "I did this thing that I now regret, but I can learn from this failure." Change characterisations of yourself as useless because of mistakes into characteristions of learning and choice in the future.
Remember, just as they say about finance, past history is not a guide to future performance. The key is to be aware of your own power to change.
Steve's podcast on
Solving Frustrating Problems might be helpful, and might complement the exercises I outlined.