Coming to Understand the Meaning of Self-Worth

As I’ve come to better understand the meaning of self-worth, I’ve realized that the main part of it is “self.” Meaning it comes from yourself, and no matter how hard you try, that worth cannot come from anyone else. I have had an uphill battle with self-worth since around the time of middle school I would say, and it just worsened as I got older. Although there were other reasons behind this low self-esteem, I want to focus on one part, and that was trying to find that self-worth from the wrong place. I had a hard time loving and accepting myself, I didn’t think there was anything good about myself because all I could see or focus on was the negative things about myself and my flaws. I never thought I was beautiful or pretty or even OK looking, I honestly believed that I was ugly, and the main reason for these thoughts was no boys liked me. I thought  that was one of the main determinations of beauty and being worth something. I was trying to let those high school boys define my self-worth. This continued into my freshman year of college where I was sure I would meet my first boyfriend right away, and then I would be pretty and desirable and worthy. When I did not indeed find a boyfriend right away, or even get any more than one date for that matter, I felt even more ugly and undesirable than ever. 

It was during my first semester of college that how I saw and felt about myself started to change for the better, thanks to my older and wiser roommate, who had dealt with self-esteem issues earlier in her life. Sara could tell that I struggled with self-worth because of how I held myself and the way I treated myself. I didn’t realize how bad my self-esteem was until coming to college and seeing myself in a new light through the eyes of others. Sara pulled me aside and bluntly told me that I had to knock it off, I couldn’t keep beating myself up all the time because that is no way to live. The first step she gave me towards improvement was accepting compliments with nothing more than a “thank you.” Nothing else, especially not contradicting the compliment, because it was hard for me to accept compliments because I didn’t think I was worthy of them or the person was just over exaggerating or something. 

That was just the beginning of my ongoing journey. I slowly came to realize that an improvement in confidence and self-worth had to come from me, no guy was going to change that even if he did like or date me. I have learned that you have to love yourself before you can love someone else, and sometimes I have to make a conscious effort to love myself because I am more aware of my flaws, shortcomings, and mistakes than anyone. While I do realize I am not perfect and need to continue trying to change myself for the better every day, that doesn’t give me any right to beat myself up or yell at myself or think I’m not pretty or worthy of love. I need to realize that there are good things about me and I have so many talents. I am beautiful inside and out and I do deserve to be loved, especially by myself. 

Guest Blogger, Emily Jones