Do you find a little voice regularly pop up in your mind whenever you want to go for something new or big. A stretch goal; perhaps a promotion at work, buying a dream home, a health and fitness goal or, whatever it is you want to go for. That little voice pops up, whenever you start planning out your dream and says something like, “you’re not good enough for that” or “what makes you special, you’re not worthy”.
If that rings a bell for you, then it is time to rewrite your worthiness story.
The not worthy story
Worthiness to me is your self-worth, the value you put on yourself in life. What you will stand and accept, what you will tolerate and what you believe about yourself. It really boils down to the level of belief you have in yourself.
Do you believe that you deserve what you want in life? Do you believe that you are ‘good enough’ to have it?
If you answered no to the questions above, you might be wondering why you don’t believe in yourself. So where do we pick of this not worthy story? The constant repetition of a thought in your mind, over a lifetime creates what we call a ‘limiting belief’. Anything repeated often enough, the mind comes to believe and take as true. It might have been an event as a child or teenager, that began a thought in your mind that you were undeserving or not good enough. Then when something didn’t work out later down the track, you repeated the thought again. Over time it becomes a broken record and unconsciously, you’ve created your ‘not worthy’ story and belief about you and your life.
I’ve seen it time and again, in my own life and those around me. When you believe something like, not being worthy or not being good enough, then, sadly, that is exactly where you stay stuck. I stayed stuck for a long time with this belief. Why would I go for something big and new, stretch my comfort zone if I believed I couldn’t have it anyway. Why would you go after something if you believed failure was a fait acomplit? That is why we must learn to rewrite our story. It literally blows the cap you have on your possibility for life.
Why self-worth matters
As far back as I can remember, self-worth was a thing for me. I never stacked up as much as everyone else, I didn’t tick the ‘enough’ boxes I had for life (you know the ones, good enough, thin enough, beautiful enough, talented enough – everyone has their own flavour of not enough). Somewhere along the way, I also picked up a thread of undeservedness, like somehow I’d been “bad” and deserved to be punished. I wasn’t deserving of anything other than ordinary in my life. And so, I settled.
Here’s what I found out over my journey. Settling makes us sad. Settling numbs us out. Settling makes us count down the days of our life until ‘one day’. I spent many years secretly dreaming of the things I wanted in life, only to write them off for me, to then feel sad and then get sucked into the daydream again.
I want you to know, there is no special class of people. We were all born worthy and the only thing currently standing in the way of you going after what you want, is YOU.
How to re-write your worthiness story
As I mentioned above, worthiness really is a limiting belief. Which means really that it’s actually just a thought. A thought that you’ve repeated eno enough that your brain has taken it on as true. A belief can completely be relearnt and reprogrammed.
So let’s look at re-writing the story. I’ll break it out into steps so its easy to follow (and don’t forget to download your free Worthiness Affirmations and stick them up somewhere you see often – toilet door, desk, fridge whatever works).
1. Become aware
Identify whether you have this “I’m not worthy” or “I’m not good enough belief”. Is it something that goes through your mind often? Is it stopping you from taking action?
2. Build evidence of your value
I heard a great quote that the quality of our life is determined by the quality of our questions. Often we ask a negatively framed question and then build evidence to support it. I want you to do the opposite. Ask yourself this, what evidence do I have to show that I am enough, that I am worthy of what I want?
List out all the reasons you can think of. Do it daily for a week and see what you come up with. See how it feels immediately to ask a positively framed question. Get into this habit and get your brain onboard for helping, rather then hindering.
3. Catch the thought
Practice watching the thought play out. As you go about your days, getting on with life, start noticing when this thought comes up. Create a pause to observe what brought the thought up and how it made you feel.
4. Observe the story objectively.
Mindfulness practice is about witnessing your thoughts, here you can say “Oh, I just caught myself in my old story of not being worthy. Thankyou for allowing me to practice, this is a habit that I’m letting go of”. Just practice over and over. This habit takes time to build. Stick at it, it’s important.
5. Reframe (download your reframe printable here too)
The next step, after saying goodbye to the old thought is to repeat powerful, positive and worthiness affirming affirmations to yourself (I’ve created a beautiful printable for you, download it now by clicking here)
As challenging as it is at first, practice repeating this after you go through Catch, Observe, Reframe and also repeat these to yourself multiple other times throughout the day. When you wake up in the morning is a great way to positively start the day.
The powerful steps of Catch, Observe and Reframe can be brought to all your limiting beliefs. It feels clunky and awkward at first but if you stick with it, it will very quickly become a habit and will enable you to rewrite your worthiness story, stop limiting yourself and go after your dreams.
Are you ready to rewrite your worthiness story? Download your free Worthiness Affirmation printable here.