The secret of worthiness

It takes courage to make more money.

In her book, Overcoming Underearning, Barbara Stanny talks about the way women’s chronic sense of being less worthy – a result of a system which tells us we’re less worthy all day, every day – is a core ingredient in chronic underearning.

She says that “underearning is a self-imposed condition. By focusing on overcoming it, underearners will not only earn what they deserve, but live a richer life.”

She’s absolutely right about that. It is self-imposed.

BUT … there’s a wrinkle to explore here.

In the world of self development, there’s already a strong focus on how important it is for women to feel worthy– worthy of our place in the world, of being treated well, of good money, of equal opportunities.

There are hundreds of tools and techniques, for boosting our own sense of worthiness.

We’ve had decades of self-help, teaching us how to feel worthy.

And yet, as a collective, the vast majority still aren’t feeling it.

What’s going on??

Sometimes, the feelings of worthiness are simply difficult to come by, or difficult to trust, due to traumatic experiences of the past. Working through those can definitely help.

But also - our brains, which have been deeply ingrained with the habits of self-judgement and self-criticism, can find the very quest for worthiness becomes yet another reason to measure ourselves, and find ourselves wanting.

• “I’m not feeling worthy yet - DAMN IT, what’s wrong with me???”

• “Look at her, she can’t even manage to feel worthy – what a loser!“

We can never earn the feeling of worth, through our efforts to become “worthy”, and yet we keep trying.

It’s a big Catch 22.

Until we remember that the feelings of unworthiness are not our fault, and they are not a character flaw.

They are learned - acquired from the culture and the systems within which we grew up, and within which our ancestors were immersed all their lives.

We are not victims here. We’re warriors, ready to liberate ourselves from those toxic old paradigms.

But we must learn how to have compassion for our messy selves - for the pain when we feel unworthy, for the seeming impossibility of feeling worthy.

And having compassion for our own humanity takes an enormous amount of courage.

The habit of judging humans for being flawed and imperfect, for making mistakes, is deeply ingrained in us by our history, and the systems within which we all live.

The habit of judging ourselves is so pervasive, it takes a tonne of courage to shift into self-compassion.

And self-compassion is what opens the door to becoming a champion for our own messy, flawed, imperfect, human self.

Yes, being bold in order to earn more money is required if we want to be more visible, to sell our stuff, or to seek the big promotion.

But we also need to be bold in how we proactively flow compassion to ourselves for our humanity.

That way, we can finally accept that being worthy has nothing to do with being perfect or even ‘good enough’.

You were worthy the day you arrived on the planet, and nothing about that has changed.

You were worthy at the start, and that has not altered as a result of any mistakes you might have made, decisions you might have regretted, or even harm you might have caused.

You are already, always, altogether worthy, just by existing.

Knowing you are worthy is a key to bringing in the money that matches your full potential.

And knowing you are worthy requires nothing extra from you, except to let a little courage and compassion be enough.