A question that comes up a lot in weight loss and healthy eating is, “Am I worthy enough to weigh that?”
I hear people ask this question very often, and in fact it has come up several times in the questions from my recent workshop on weight loss and consistency. I wanted to take a moment to explain what worthiness is, so you can start to roll this around in your mind and work to make it a part of your being.
The idea of worthiness can be pretty slippery.
So when we start to think of it, we are coming at it with so many different judgments and opinions from others, from society, and from our own perspectives that we can often turn it into something it is not.
I think the main issue is that the actual definition of worthiness doesn’t do us any favors.
“The quality of being good enough.”
“The quality of deserving attention or respect.”
When we look at the definition in this way, it begs the idea that you must have to do something in order to be worthy. And for instance, in our society, we have it set up so that children learn from a very young age that they are worthy of something if they do another thing.
You can have that snack if you act nicely.
So worthiness becomes conditional in our minds.
But that is not the truth about worthiness.
The truth of the matter is that we are all born worthy, we go through our lives worthy, and we will always be worthy no matter what we do.
Worthiness has nothing to do with what we did or didn’t do. Mother Teresa is not more worthy than Charles Manson. Worthiness has nothing to do with actions or intent.
\Worthiness is more like a human prerequisite, it’s something that we are all born with.
Brene Brown calls us, “As is” when referring to worthiness. I love that idea because it illustrates the truth: that it doesn’t matter what you do or don’t do or will do or won’t do, none of that has any bearing on your worthiness.
We are worthy As Is.
But the issue arises when we see what actually happens in our lives when we are thinking that we are not worthy.
When we start thinking thoughts about how we are not worthy, we start feeling more negatively. When we feel negatively, we take actions that are also negative, which then makes it seem as if we’re not worthy.
When worthiness really had nothing to do with the actions we did or didn’t take. We were already worthy and always will be.
The issue was just that we thought we weren’t worthy. And that made us act negatively.
We are all worthy simply because we are human. We all have equal value and equal worthiness, no matter what we do or don’t do in life.
Worthiness is just the human condition.
This is the part that is slippery to hold onto, but if we realized that worthiness is just a given, and everyone has it, we don’t have to compare ourselves to anyone else anymore.
And we can start to act from a place of confidence and security, rather than lack and scarcity.
When we take actions from a place of confidence, we often will take more useful and helpful actions, which will give us better results in time.
It is not that these better results create any worthiness either, because worthiness was never in question.
Whether we lose weight or not, whether we get that promotion or not, whether we make this amount of money or not, whether we watch Netflix or build a business, we are still equally as valuable and worthy as anyone else on the planet.
We all have the same value.
So if we realize that we are just as worthy as the person who is already at our desired goal weight, it takes worthiness out of the question.
It is then our job to fill in new thoughts that create feelings of confidence, peace, calm, and eternal worthiness.
How we think about ourselves is actually the force that creates our positive or negative feelings or thoughts, and in turn our positive or negative actions.
And most importantly, again, it doesn’t matter whether or not we reach the goal. What matters is how we feel about our life while we’re living it — no matter what outcome we’re working to achieve…or not.
