What Are You Worth? Your greatest asset isn’t in the bank. ~ Kate Northrup CREATING MORE VALUE in your life, financially and otherwise, starts with valuing yourself. We’re going to take a moment right now to recognize how incredible you are. Research from the School of Positive Psychology, which I read about in The Happiness Advantage by Shawn Achor, tells us that it takes 21 days of doing something new for it to become a habit. Let today be day one of your new habit of valuing yourself. Grab your journal and write down three specific things you value about yourself. Writing down “I’m healthy” as something you value about yourself is great, but it doesn’t stir the same emotional response as if you’re really specific. For example, I could write that “I have strong, toned legs that get me from place to place” as something I value about myself. Yes, it’s related to my health and it’s part of that, but it’s more specific and immediately makes me feel more valuable than simply writing “my health.” When you’re, done get out your calendar. Create a repeating event for every morning just when you wake up or every evening just before you go to bed (this works best if you use something digital like Google Calendar that will text you or pop up on your computer with a reminder). Then when you see that event on your calendar or the reminder pops up, grab your journal and write down three new things you value about yourself. It doesn’t have to take long. Just do it. No excuses. Make sure to be specific. Don’t repeat something from the day before. I promise, there’s an infinite supply of reasons you’re amazing and truly valuable, so finding three new ones each day is not only possible, it will also become fun and easy as you form the habit. This exercise will take less than five minutes a day but the return on the time spent will pay you very prettily, financially and otherwise. If you do this for 21 days, you’ll have formed a solid foundation for valuing yourself. Notice what happens. Notice how you feel. Notice how the people in your life respond. Your time and energy spent valuing yourself will not only positively impact your own financial life, it will actually make everyone else’s life around you better, too. Continue this practice daily beyond the 21 days to really see the investment begin to pay off. As I was addressing my own lack of self-love, I started to realize a number of important things, including how closed off I was from receiving value. Being open to receiving value is actually a form of self-love—and one that many of us have problems with. Here’s a classic scenario: You go out for coffee with a girlfriend, and she tells you that today it’s on her, but you refuse to let her pay. You argue with her. You put your foot down. You won’t let her buy that $3.50 latte. You’re not allowing yourself to receive the value she’s trying to give you. Or perhaps at work you deflect a compliment from your co-worker: “This dress? Oh, it was on sale. It’s no big deal.” Maybe you refuse to let someone open the door for you or pull out your chair. You don’t say a genuine thank you when someone tells you they appreciate something. You push it away. You make excuses. You diffuse it with self-deprecation. Once I realized that I was doing this, I also realized it had to stop. My attitude wasn’t good for me. I was devaluing myself, telling myself I wasn’t worth these offers. And by doing this, I was blocking the flow of abundance—remember, if you can’t see your value, the world doesn’t give value back. So I began expanding my capacity to receive. When I got a compliment, I would pause, look the person in the eye, breathe deeply into my belly, and say “Thank you.” That’s really all you have to do. Once you master this, you can start doing other receiving—accepting a dinner invitation, saying thank you, and enjoying the full gift; answering the question of what you want for your birthday with a thank you and some ideas; taking a friend up on their offer of help that will truly make your life better. By doing this, you’re making it easy for the world to bestow the riches of love, acknowledgment, gifts, and even money upon you by fully receiving it—and you’re showing yourself love. Take a moment and recall a compliment that someone gave you recently. Perhaps you shrugged it off in the moment or deflected it. Now, remember the compliment and open your arms wide to physically receive it. It doesn’t matter if you didn’t fully receive it when it was given. Now is your chance. Take a deep breath and really take in what that other person took the time to point out that they value about you. Feel how good that feels, even if it’s a little uncomfortable. The next time someone pays you a compliment (and I chose the word pays on purpose), pause, take a deep breath, and give them a sincere thank you. Fully receive their compliment so you can allow yourself and them to be in the flow of abundance.
Posted on: Thu, 12 Sep 2013 05:33:01 +0000
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