Category: Self worth

What is self- worth?
The dictionary defines self-worth as “the sense of one’s own value or worth as a person.”

Self-worth is the most critical component of our ability to truly believe in ourselves and live our life aligned with our best qualities. Without a healthy sense of self- worth, doubts and fears can overwhelm our true potential, greatly impacting the quality of our life experience, as well as sabotaging our life’s dreams, vision and purpose.

Although some of us may not be consciously aware that what is keeping us up at night is a sense of self-worth that needs improvement, I am here to tell you that if you and I can focus on one issue with the highest return on your investment, it is self-worth.

The story of how we develop or do not develop self- worth can be a long and painful one.

Join me as I make every effort to organize where your story of self-worth begins, and how we can make the ending the happiest one possible!

What to Do About Not Doing What We Say We Want to Do

self compassion

Last week I wrote about the reasons why sometimes our very own habitual responses become the biggest obstacles to getting what we really want!

I can think of so many examples of this, but the easiest one that comes to mind is giving in to junk food when stressed, even though we committed to shedding unwanted weight. Our nervous systems have developed to try to ease discomfort by activating our reward system during challenging moments and past responses, such as eating junk food, have become automatic and occur without our permission.

If you identify with this challenge in your own life, I have some great science-based tips you can use to activate the superpowers that I know you have to actually get what you want in life.

Research is clearly showing an untapped area that is extremely effective in helping to align our internal states and external actions to get exactly what we want in life: It is called Self-Compassion.

Compassion is defined as “concern and desire to alleviate the suffering of another.” The part we are missing, which is clearly below the realm of our awareness, is that we cannot alleviate anyone’s suffering until we alleviate our own!

As a toxicologist who understands the toxic effect of chemicals on our body, like the stress hormone cortisol, and as a human sufferer who did not really understand how to love myself until I became ill, here are some practical ways to become better at cultivating self-compassion.

  1. Choose to let your distress become your motivation.

Many of the emotional states that drive our actions occur below the realm of our awareness. One common, unhealthy manifestation of underlying, wounded self- worth is playing the martyr and the rescuer of others. Although it is important to be kind and loving to others, pay close attention to any relationships that take up a big chunk of your energy without providing an equal reciprocity of love and support.

The reason we are wiling to give so much of ourselves in exchange for so little is personal and different for every one of us but, regardless of the reason, it is extremely toxic for our health and can make us very sick in the long run.

It pains me to remember the part of my life when I chose to play the martyr. In hindsight and after scrupulous inner work, I can tell you that the reason I made that choice was to alleviate my deep, hidden fears of abandonment. Each and every one of us is equally worthy of love and belonging and we should not be taking care of others at the expense of our own health to feel loved and to belong.

The world-renowned medical intuitive and best-selling author Carolyn Myss has taught me much about this common trap and how sick one can get by negotiating away parts of our self in exchange for safety and security.

We can use the distress of emotional or physical malaise that results from playing the martyr to challenge ourselves to nip in the bud this very unhealthy, unconscious tendency. Ask yourself: Am I creating a deficit of time, effort, love, or something else for myself by playing the rescuer or martyr for another? Answering and addressing that question in one of the most profound ways to cultivate and put to work your superpowers to get all that you want and deserve in this life.

  1. Practice the power of reframing. – Transform triggers to breakthroughs.

When we fail to stick to our New Year’s resolutions, we often get critical and intolerant of ourselves. What if instead of calling those situations a “failure,” we call the fact that we noticed our self criticism a breakthrough? Every time a person or life situation triggers a state of anxiety within, and you catch yourself reaching out for an unhealthy way to self-soothe it is indeed a fabulous breakthrough, because this moment of awareness is the magic moment when you have the opportunity to do something different. By identifying the subtle opportunities for change, we can use every stressor as an opportunity for transformation. We can create a whole new narrative to our story by “choosing the lyrics to the song our heart sings.” So instead of punishing yourself for any slipups during stressful times, reframe them as mini-breakthroughs and ask yourself: What does being caring, kind, and supportive to myself look like right in this moment? What is it that I need right now? I promise you it is not a chocolate muffin!

  1. Instead of self-judgment, learn to embrace and own how powerful you are!

 Are you sometimes shocked at how hard you can be on yourself? Why do we have so much empathy for our friends when they make mistakes, yet are so unkind and harsh to ourselves? The answer to that question is hidden inside our physiology. The truth is that our conditioned way of being self-critical when we mess up is a result of the activation of our stress response, which is activated just as it would be if we were being chased by someone dangerous. The key to breaking through this limitation is to understand it better. You see, self-criticism does not actually present a physical threat like being chased by a criminal does. The threat a mistake or a failure presents to us is a threat to our self-concept. When we fail in some way or we hear news that challenges our perception of self we attack ourselves because, unbeknownst to us, our thoughts threaten our self-concept!

When our friend fails, we have plenty of encouraging words of affirmation because our friend’s failure does not threaten our self-worth. Dr. Brene Brown has done some amazing work that links shame with our fight or flight response. She has spent the best part of the last two decades studying courage, vulnerability, shame, and empathy and is the author of four #1 New York Times bestsellers—The Gifts of Imperfection, Daring Greatly, Rising Strong, and Braving the Wilderness: The Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone. So, the next time you feel your harsh inner critic surfacing, place your hand on your heart and instead of being harsh think or say some encouraging words to yourself. For example, you can say: “I am just human; it’s okay if I make mistakes.” Then ask yourself: What is within my control about this situation that I can change to get a different result?

  1. Connect, touch, and be touched.

When we feel less than, get a bad diagnosis, or fail at a regimen of self-improvement, our fear circuitry in the brain’s amygdala gets triggered and we shift to an older, non-relational part of our brain, which leads to us operating from our fight, flight, or freeze state. However, we have another system available to us, our attachment system, which provides a different and very effective way of dealing with dangers in the environment—connection and human touch. Although our reptilian, conditioned, unrefined way of responding to stress is to withdraw and isolate to keep our feelings of “not being good enough” to ourselves, we can choose to do something different. We can choose to connect, share our stories and our stressors, hold someone’s hand, and enjoy the myriad benefits of the “feel good” hormone, oxytocin. Next time you feel threatened, ask yourself: How did I get so lucky that I have the love, kindness, and support of (name a person who loves you here) in my life? And instead of an unhealthy alternative, reach out to them instead!

  1. Embrace pain, and practice being comfortable with discomfort.

We are hard-wired to avoid pain and to look for anything that alleviates it, even if that something is killing us. We will even excuse and allow in our lives people who treat us unkindly, hurt, or betray us. This leads us to a tendency to numb our pain with a story we make up, like excuses for the reasons why we let people off the hook that hurt and betray us. Forgiveness is absolutely necessary and vital to our health and healing. But so is being able to set healthy boundaries and cut the cord from people that treat us unkindly and cause us continuous pain.

The truth is that the ultimate gift and act of love to ourselves is to train our brain to be okay with the undeniable part of life that involves a significant amount of suffering. What if instead of investing our energy in hurt people that hurt us, we choose to acknowledge and be with the pain of the situation without resistance? There is no need to cover up and perpetuate any source of pain in your life. We can instead befriend it and ask: What is this painful experience here to teach me? What can I choose to do differently because of the pearls of wisdom this painful experience has bestowed on me?

You are so incredibly complex, powerful, and beautiful!

It took me many years to see that one of the reasons we don’t do what we know will get us what we want is because we have not yet come to terms with just how amazing we are.

Science has come to the side of ancient, contemplative wisdom to form a beacon of light for our liberation.

And thankfully, we don’t have to study science to leverage its power to become the “master of our domain.”

We can accept not just the undeniable beauty but also the pain of human existence.

We can choose to cut the lifeline to excuses and live by the truth that we cannot love anyone any more than we love ourselves.

We can choose to see our human connectedness and how we all go through our fair share of ups and downs, often not so graciously.

You are powerful beyond comprehension, and you can cease playing small and let your light shine by learning how to truly love yourself.

After all, as our dear Dr. Brene Brown has uncovered through her research: “We can only love others as much as we love ourselves.”

Five Simple Science Based Pathways to Happiness

Do you feel happy?

If your answer to that question is “yes but…,” I would like to invite you to consider some unconventional pathways to happiness. After all, among all the things we search for in this life, you could say that happiness is the one pursuit that is universal! In addition, scientific research clearly substantiates that happiness is linked to unimpeded well-being, peak performance, and professional success.

If you would like to experience more happiness, here are five practices based on secrets from the neuroscience of happy people that you can use:

  1. Question and redefine the important elements of your life.

Our beliefs, definitions, and values come from our familial, societal, and cultural history. These become our models of the world, and they affect our patterns of behavior and habits. For example, maybe we were raised with the belief that “to be successful in the corporate world you have to pay your dues and sacrifice your personal life.” That belief can lead to us working late evenings and weekends, which will eventually lead to complete imbalance between work and life. We can free ourselves from our history and create the future we want by carefully redefining the important terms in our life. For example, we could redefine success as “having a healthy work/life balance.” And what about our definition of happiness? Have you considered that the way we define happiness may determine whether or not we will be able to attain it? If we define happiness in an all or nothing way, for example, “I will be happy when I am a millionaire,” that sets us up for being unhappy until or if we reach that goal.

The practice: To identify definitions that inadvertently take you out of balance, a good practice is to dedicate time to observe and change beliefs that we have adopted from our environment that affect us in a negative way. Take a moment to create a list of your top three causes of stress. Then, in a second column, list the beliefs and values that are related to those elements being stressors. What terms do you need to redefine so that you can get closer to wholeness and balance? When I was a starving student in a Northern England university, I was one of the people who thought happiness was “having a million dollars.” Today I define happiness as “the ratio between expectation and outcome.” That way, I have an ongoing list of variables I can adjust to improve my sense of happiness, which lowers my level of stress.

  1. Quiet your mind.

Does mindfulness seem like a mystical practice that you are not sure you are capable of performing? What if we look at mindfulness in a way that takes the mysticism and mystery out of it? Mindfulness is simply the practice of directing our attention to the present moment. Although simple, this practice is the most robust and scientific evidence-based practice for health, productivity, and happiness. Several decades of studies show tremendous structural and functional benefits in the brains of fellow humans who have a regular mindfulness practice.

The practice: Find a small slot every day (5-10 minutes) to keep your attention only on your breath. When you notice your attention wandering off (to a negative interaction with your spouse, what you will cook for dinner, or anything else), simply notice it and bring your attention back to your breath. Little by little, you will be happy to realize that after all these years, much of your suffering was a byproduct of your thoughts and emotions. You can find my favorite guided meditation here to help you get started: https://myndzen.com/the-solution/quiet-your-mind/

  1. Nurture your body.

We have decades of data reflecting the incredible benefits of healthy foods and exercise on our cardiovascular health. But did you know that exercise has been proven to have another significant effect? It can make you happier! Exercise has been studied as a treatment for depression for the last thirty years, ever since Professor James Blumenthal (Dept. of Psychology and Neuroscience, Duke University) noticed the inadvertent benefit of exercise on reducing symptoms of depression. A more recent review (2013) by the non-profit Colchrane, a leader in gathering and sharing evidence-based medicine resources, concluded that exercise is as effective a treatment for depression as pharmaceutical treatments.

The practice: Take a few moments to plan out your week so you can slowly, but surely, add regular intervals of exercise into your busy schedule. Can you listen to a conference call, your favorite Podcast, or a TED talk while you are taking a walk instead of sitting at your desk? Although at first it may seem like a challenge to fit one more thing into your busy life, I can promise you that if you stick to it for at least three weeks, you can create a new habit for life. The positive impact on your mood of “feel good” chemicals (like glutamate and GABA) released in your brain through exercise will make you so happy you did!

  1. Turn toward what matters.

Whether we turn to neuroscience, psychology, or human experience, the evidence is clear that strong social connections are one of the most important predictors for longevity, health, and happiness! I hear sometimes that we “don’t have time for relationships” in our busy world. As it turns out, having strong relationships that act as a safety net makes us so much happier. Social connections not only flood our system with oxytocin, which reduces fear in our brain, but also create the solid core from which we can conquer the ups and downs of life with increased well-being.

The practice: Add taking the time EVERY DAY to connect with the important people in your life to your to-do list. Ask yourself what you appreciate about them and take the time to let them know. Maybe you can even put a love note in their briefcase.

  1. Cultivate the positive perspective.

Depression is the most common mental disorder in the world affecting more than 300 million people. Prominent scientists around the world have invested a significant amount of time and effort in understanding it. Today, with the insights we have gathered from the way depression affects the brain, we know exactly which parts of our brain we need to affect to build a happy brain that is resilient against depression and anxiety and we know how to do it. For example, we know positive thoughts can build the part of our brains that reduce depression and increase happiness. Best yet, we don’t have to be neuroscientists to benefit from this knowledge.

The practice: Whenever something happens to you that elicits negative emotions, acknowledge the validity of those feelings and redirect your attention to uncovering five positive elements of that experience. For example, if you were just laid off, recognize the legitimate concern about this event. Then focus your attention on how this unforeseen circumstance could perhaps provide you with a much-needed reset space to reconsider your next career move, or with time with your family, and so on and so forth.

FINAL THOUGHTS Beyond the euphoric emotions that we all associate with being happy, there are also many evidence-based benefits to our well-being when we are feeling happy. Being happier not only makes us more open, approachable, hopeful, and optimistic, but also increases our immune function and our ability to calm down in the midst of chaos.There has never been a better time to employ self-compassion and accountability toward nurturing the real sources of happiness in our life.

After all, scientific research has proven that the conventional things we historically go after, fail to make us happier. For example, a relatively recent Princeton University study by Nobel-prize winning economist, Angus Deaton, and psychologist, Daniel Kahneman showed that once one’s income level reaches $75,000 per year, no matter how much more we make, it makes no difference to our degree of happiness!

It appears that beyond the short bursts of primal happiness from having nice material possessions, enjoying a lovely meal, or making love, there is one type of happiness that is internal—one that we carry with us always regardless of the size of our bank account or the type of car we drive.

That kind of happiness hinges upon our ability to maintain a calm nervous system, even when experiences we are having are not pleasant.

Almost six decades of scientific data are illuminating significant clues on how to accomplish having a calm nervous system. We can free ourselves from past limiting beliefs that hold us hostage, redefine the important elements of our life, quiet our minds and nurture our bodies, connect with our loved ones, and focus on the positive, thereby harnessing our incredible nervous system for our health and well-being.

When we establish this sense of internal safety, we will be able to perceive the world and our life as a positive experience.

And that kind of happiness, my friend, is 100% within your control!

Three Simple “Antidotes” to Prevent Feeling Overwhelmed

The dictionary defines “to overwhelm” as: “to drown beneath a huge mass.” Do you find yourself having more to do than time to do it? Do you find yourself feeling overwhelmed, and yet you cannot stop taking on more and more responsibility?

If this sounds like you, you are not alone!

Ample scientific evidence is ringing an alarm bell about how much feeling overwhelmed and experiencing high levels of stress impact our health and performance. But we don’t have time to read those studies or the peace of mind to come up with solutions. Luckily, you have a scientist at your disposal, who suffered great health consequences from chronic stress and is passionate about developing practical, science-based solutions just for you.

Next time you find yourself at the tipping point where healthy motivation or positive stress (called eustress) is turning into distress, and you are feeling overwhelmed, I invite you to try out three simple hacks that are supported by science and, although simple, are very effective at nipping feeling overwhelmed in the bud.

1.   Take a break!

If you are anything like I used to be, when responsibilities became overwhelming, I would steal more hours from my personal life to try and complete all my tasks. I hoped that once I got caught up, I would be able to get back to a healthy work/life balance. Research, however, is showing that one of the most effective things we can do to meet life’s demands better is to get off the rollercoaster, even if it is just for a few minutes. Despite how busy you may be, shut your devices down, and create some space to do something that gives you pleasure. Research is showing that one of the biggest factors as to whether stress will be a friend or a foe to our well-being hinges upon whether our stress levels are intermittent or constant.

By taking an active stance to infuse breaks, so that your nervous system has the opportunity to reset and restore, you are actually intercepting the chemical reactions in your body that result in a myriad of consequences, including but not limited to depression, insomnia, hypertension, GI problems, higher incidence of infection, and even memory impairment.

2.    Practice the one-minute rule.

When I found myself so incredibly overwhelmed and hiding my debilitating anxiety behind my awards and my outward success, I came across Gretchen Rubin’s incredible work and her “one-minute rule.” Gretchen Rubin, one of the most influential observers of happiness and human nature, is the author of three New York Times best sellers: The Four Tendencies, Better Than Before and The Happiness Project. The one-minute rule involves completing any and all tasks that can be completed in one minute or less before tackling larger projects. These tasks could be hanging up our coat, making our bed, confirming an appointment, sending a quick follow-up email, depositing a check, and so on and so forth. Although completing these small tasks may seem like nothing in the larger scheme of the “huge mass we are drowning under,” I have found Gretchen Rubin’s one-minute rule to be extremely impactful. It helps me take some weight off my overwhelmingly-full plate so I can focus on the bigger and more energy-demanding priorities. Try it out and see for yourself!

3.    Plan Ahead.

Planning ahead can minimize unnecessary stress. Can you remember a time when you had a million things happening at the same time, and you were late for an appointment, and you could not find your car keys? I can!

Although in isolation, not remembering where you put your keys is not that big of a deal, it can be the “straw that breaks the camel’s back” in the midst of a crazy day. What if we could take the necessary steps proactively to eliminate those extra stressors, or at least plan ahead and develop back-up plans that control their negative impact? I have found so much calm in the midst of chaos from something as simple as having a specific spot for my keys and the mail and the stamps and all the little things that, although not great stressors in isolation, can tip us off the optimal performance zone when we are already dealing with an overwhelming number of things to do. Take a minute to look back at a time when some small things tipped you off your optimal performance. Determine which of those things are within your control and plan ahead for them, so that the next time you have a million things happening at once, you can feel less overwhelmed.

In conclusion

In this information-overloaded, fast-paced world, it is very normal to feel overwhelmed and stressed out.

Our immaculate brain has naturally evolved with the propensity to focus more on negative aspects of experience, inadvertently activating our fight or flight response, temporarily shutting down the thinking part of our brain, and slowing down the optimal performance of our important functions like our immune system.

We all know there are many things we have absolutely no control over. However, increasing our knowledge and embracing the amazing power of our brain and nervous system is within our control. We can learn how our brain and nervous system can turn against us when untamed, and learn how to tame them. Working with our incredible nervous system and not against it, is one of the most impactful avenues we can take to lead us to changing anything that is not working for us, reunite us with our best self, and reinstate that lovely balance of home and work life.