Is There Any Chance This One Is Multiple Choice?
We all get asked a lot of hard questions in life:
“Was someone roller skating in the house?”
“Are there going to be parents there?”
“What do you want to major in?”
“What is 17 squared?”
Most of us figure out the answers -- or pretend we do. (Except for that 17 thing – that’s what calculators are for.) Even when we’re plagued with doubt, there’s usually an answer somewhere, or an answer we lean towards.
Last week, while I was visiting my doctor (aka therapist), she asked me a question that absolutely left me floundering: Where does your self-worth come from?
(I like to think of mental health professionals and animals as the animate team that keeps me sane. The inanimate team includes Diet Coke, red wine, Spanx and my newly-acquired Bissell Spot Bot – because there’s nothing like a vacuum that cleans pet stains itself to give a girl a break when she needs it.)
I feel like this question should have been easy – family, friends, education, job, relationship. Anything really, from my knitting prowess to my hair (which when I try, is pretty awesome) would have been an OK start. Instead, I just stared straight ahead for about 20-30 seconds.
(For those of you who haven’t been in therapy, that’s like eons in mental health time. After all, there’s just you and one other person in the office, and the other person is constantly evaluating whether or not you might be about to lose it.)
I don’t bring up this subject because I need lots of comments about what my self-worth should be or how nice/awful I am, I mention it because I don’t think it’s a question I’ve ever really considered, and I was shocked that when it was put to me point blank, I didn’t have anything to say. Eventually, I could provide some answers, but its still been rattling around up there.
“Where does your self-worth come from?”
If it came from a job, 2009 sure put a big dent there. Relationships? For me, that’s a constant learning process and it gives too much power over to others. Family, friends, home improvement projects – none of that is ever going to be perfect, and you can’t control anyone else. So, in theory, self-worth should always come from within, but how does anyone really do that? Maybe I’m not well-adjusted enough, but it’s hard for me to imagine a sense of self-worth that couldn’t be shaken by a bad hair day, a fight with my sister or screwing up a task at work.
I suppose the point is to not only trust yourself, but to like yourself, and when self-doubt creeps in, to cut yourself a break and do the best you can to bounce back. Maybe there is no such thing as rock-solid self-esteem. Maybe if I had it, I wouldn’t be a writer. Who knows? I think I’ll be working on the answer to this one for a bit longer.
Two hundred eighty-nine seems so much easier in comparison.