Wellness Wednesday: {Sense of Worth}

Happy Wellness Wednesday! For myself personally, I love doing these Wednesday posts, as they are a good check and reminder for myself as well. If you've missed any of the posts, here are the previous posts for Wellness Wednesday:

Wellness Wednesday: {An Introduction}
Wellness Wednesday: {An Introduction pt. 2}
Wellness Wednesday: {The Wheel of Wellness Part 1}
Wellness Wednesday: {The Wheel of Wellness Part 2}
Wellness Wednesday: {Life Task 1: Spirituality}
Wellness Wednesday: {Life Task 2: Self Direction}

For those of you who have read some of the posts, you might recall that I'm using the idea of the Wheel of Wellness to visually represent wellness for the individual.

Source

Last week I introduced the second life task, which is Self Direction. Within the second life task there are 12 subtasks. Right now I'm planning to start at the top and work my way around the circle clock wise. 

Today, I'm discussing the first subtask: Sense of Worth.

Myers, Sweeney, and Witmer define this subtask the following way:

Satisfaction with self, acceptance of self with one’s imperfections, acceptance of one’s physical appearance, valuing oneself as a unique, worthwhile person.

The term sense of worth could also be interchanged here with "self esteem". 

When I think of self-esteem I naturally think "can you be ok with you and love yourself for who you are?" I believe that's what self esteem boils down to. Unfortunately, there are a lot of things that chip away at our self-esteem: being bullied, harsh or abusive words and actions by a family member, or unrealistic expectations of self to name a few. We can easily become a mangled piece of who we originally were, and it can take a lot of energy and strength to remain strong in who we are in the hot fire of the world. 

I've been a lot of posts throughout this blog on various things that help to increase ones sense of worth in life. Here are some of the links:

Boundaries: Establishing healthy boundaries helps define what is me, and what is not me, what is my responsibility, and what things are the responsibility of others. A lack of boundaries can lead to a confusion of one's identity, so to have a strong sense of worth, healthy boundaries are important to implement. (Click here to find the boundaries category of posts)

Cognitive Distortions: When we distort ourselves, the world around us, or even others in our life, we can easily confuse things. These distortions can distort our identity and sense of self. To have a healthy sense of worth, it's important to try to decrease the cognitive distortions used in every day life. (Click here to find the cognitive distortions category of posts)

Perfectionism: As the definition above says, sense of worth involves acceptance of one's imperfections. If a person holds to perfectionistic standards, they will constantly be a failure to one's self, which obviously will decrease a sense of worth. (Click here to find the perfectionism category of posts)

Affirmations: Awhile back I wrote about using affirmations as a way to increase self esteem. I've seen this help a large number of clients, and believe that this is a very helpful component. You can click here to read about it!

Accepting Your Physical Appearance: I wrote a post on developing a healthy body image, which is part of having a healthy sense of worth. You can click to read it here.

Each of these posts that I've linked to includes steps that you can take to help with your journey. Remember that health is a never ending process, so give yourself time to work on changes! Self esteem doesn't happen overnight!

What is one thing that helps you have a strong sense of worth in life?

What makes you a unique, individual person?