How people treat us

One of the key points I made in my last post was that there are no conditions on our worthiness for being on this earth.

We have value and worth simply because we were born.

Note the full stop at the end of that sentence. The event of our birth gave us the right to be worthy. We need no other reason to believe in ourselves.

And yet, as described in the last post, every day we place conditions on ourselves. Our upbringing, our environment, the things other people say and do, all influence the way we feel about who we are.

When we feel like we don’t deserve the worth we were born with, we treat ourselves abysmally. We put ourselves down, we call ourselves names, we hate ourselves and we judge ourselves.

And in this, we inadvertently teach and allow others to treat us the same way. Whenever we voice our inner hate or call ourselves an idiot or mumble under our breath about how much of a failure we are, we reinforce the belief that we are unworthy.

Have you ever had the experience where someone you love has used you for their own gratification? Maybe your kids refuse to help out around the house. Maybe your brother repeatedly borrows money without paying it back. Maybe your best friend invites herself over all the time, talks about her problems, dumps all her stuff on you, and walks away, leaving you feeling wrung out. Or maybe your sister criticises everything you do.

In any of these situations you may end up feeling unappreciated, taken advantage of and used up and spat out. You may feel resentful and angry, and wonder why anyone would do these things when all you’ve done is given from the depths of your heart to help the people you love. You may have things churning in your mind about what would make these people treat you in such a way. And you could very well feel hurt that your generosity and the heart of your spirit has been abused. You would feel like every thought and emotion you’ve ever had about how unworthy you are has been confirmed.

Which, of course, keeps you in the cycle of allowing others to treat you horribly.

Think about this though …

If you believe that you are worthless, how do you think you’d feel if people treated you with respect, kindness and consideration? Would you believe it? How would you respond?

It’s very likely that you’d minimise it, reject it, dismiss it and walk away from it. You may even attack the person providing it.

But what if you did believe it?

If you believed you deserved love, consideration, respect and gratitude, how would you respond?

As someone who has believed both sides of this coin, I can tell you that your response would be worlds apart. You’d expect that people would show you gratitude and respect. You’d likely appreciate their compliments, accept them gracefully and feel pleased when you hear them.

One thing is certain. You’d never accept it when people treated you disrespectfully.

When you believe in yourself and your worth, you also believe that you deserve to be treated well. And when someone in your life doesn’t do that, you will naturally protect that sense of worth by placing boundaries around yourself that you don’t allow people to cross. Especially the people who say they love you.

So, if you feel like you’re being used, abused and taken advantage of, rather than looking to others for blame and justification for the way you feel, try looking internally to how you feel about yourself. If you can improve that, the way forward will become clearer.

The Self-Esteem Criteria

Most of us know that it’s important for people to feel good about themselves and who they are. It supports us with happiness, contentment and the drive to follow our passions. It helps us to be confident and to develop and maintain successful relationships.

It seems that most of us however, have this seemingly endless list of criteria that need to be met before we can like ourselves. Before we feel like we can feel good about ourselves. And before we can be the person we deserve to be.

We tell ourselves that we have to

• be great parents
• be productive at work
• help friends in need
• have a bigger house/car than other people
• get things done even when we feel sick
• keep a spotlessly clean house
• remain calm in all situations
• have outstanding talents
• be super intelligent
• meet our kids’ every need
• work out every day
• be productive every moment of every day
• visit family regularly
• have amazing fashion sense
• be able to create incredible art/music
• maintain an active social life
• contribute to charities
• be a great cook
• work hard
• play hard
• improve our education and keep our skills up
• be happy
• keep fit
• meet the needs of everyone around us

I’m exhausted just thinking about maintaining these standards! I can’t imagine what it would be like trying to actually do it!

Do you resonate with anything on this list? These are a mere handful of the potential conditions many of us place on ourselves. We may have been sent these kinds of messages during our childhood. We may have watched the adults in our lives live by these very same conditions.

However where do they take us? Very likely to a place of unhappiness, dissatisfaction, sadness or a lack of fulfillment. We may wonder what happened to the joy we used to feel. The excitement or the zest for getting up in the morning to start our day.

At some point all these conditions have taken over our lives. We spend so much time trying to please others that we forget that we are just as important. We forget that we have value.

And we forget (or maybe we never knew in the first place) that there are no conditions on love. EVER.

As parents we would never place conditions on loving our children. Right?

Regardless of the mistakes they make or their tendency to be annoying (aren’t all kids to some extent), we support them and love them and guide them through those errors so they can learn from them and thrive. We loved and valued them from the second they were born. And in most cases, before they were born. They didn’t need to DO anything to earn our love. They didn’t need to BE anything. The fact that they were born is enough.

Enough to be loved. Enough to have value. Enough to be worthy.

And yet for ourselves it seems to be a different story.

Why?

What makes us so different from our loved ones that we require conditions to be placed on our worthiness?

The answer is nothing. We are no different. We deserve love and hold just as much value as the people around us.

We are worthy, simply because we were born. We have value, simply because we breathe the air.

We are enough. As we are. Right here, right now.

No conditions.

We are enough.

You are enough.