Are You Hustling Your Worth?

I woke up this morning in a funk.  I hate these days, yet I know it’s all a part of life and if I try to resist or change what I am feeling before listening to why I am feeling the way I am, I’ll just end up spinning my wheels.   I gave myself some space to tune into my inner world and first asked, what am I feeling? The answer sprung up, sadness. I then asked, what is the sadness saying? To which I heard, “I’m tired of trying.  I will never be enough”. Turns out I have been hustling my worth. 

This is a trap many of us get sucked up into.  Looking to others in our success and our results to base our worth on. When you base your worth on how others respond, you will find yourself on a crazy roller coaster of highs and lows. When you get good feedback, that means you are worthy, when you get negative feedback, now you are not. It can be completely and totally exhausting.  The difficult thing here is we really do need to take feedback from our environment to see where we can grow and improve. You don’t want to just state “I’m worthy, F- you all!”  Even though on the days you’re feeling crappy, that might sound great, it isn’t going to get you where you want to be. This is the question to be constantly asking yourself... Where do I want to be and WHY?  If the answers are, I want to be successful so I can feel worthy, you are in for a rough ride. A much better answer is, I want to be successful because I want to experience the joy of being a part of someone’s healing or I want to be a tool in helping find their inner peace and happiness or I want to bring to this world at least one more smile than there was the day before.  Now I can look to my results to see how I am doing on my goals. If all I get is negative feedback to my work, I need to take a good look at what I need to change and learn. But the big difference here is my results are not connected to my worth. I’m not running around hustling my worth. I don’t need the world to give me positive feedback so I can feel good. I only need the feedback to create growth and change.   

So, I remind myself again...I can quit, I can give up and do something safe or easy.  But how will I feel about myself if I do that? What will my thoughts and emotions be when I’m 80 years old looking back on my life?  That’s when I realize, I would much rather look back and know I tried. I never gave up. I did everything I could, even if it means total failure, than quit and have to live with the what if.  As Jim Rohn put it, “We must all suffer from one of two pains: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret. The difference is discipline weighs ounces while regret weighs tons."