Today’s article was written by Change Coach Lindsey Elliott
My son and I went for a walk recently, and he asked if he could to listen to some music wearing the new headphones his Dad had given him. Whilst I wanted to say no…it felt far too much like he is a teenager and not 7 (!!)… I ended up saying yes.
Anyway, as we walked I could feel my son’s feelings of pride at feeling ‘cool’ and ‘grown up’. It was rather cute to see. However it got me thinking. When we are young it can really look like it’s the clothes we wear, the things we own, the friends we have, and how we look that make us ‘cool’ or ‘worthy’, or helps us to fit in. And it seems we spend a lot of our adult lives undoing this misunderstanding…that our worth comes from what we achieve in life, what job we have, our level of education, the money we earn, how we look etc, etc.
The trouble with trying to fit in and attach our worth to things outside of us is, it’s all so subjective. What is ‘good enough’ for one of us, isn’t for another. It’s an endless game the mind loves to play, that rarely reaches the point of “OK, you’re good enough now”.
And to compound this if our job, or money, relationship or beauty disappears then so does our sense of being good enough. It’s all build on such shaky ground.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if our children knew that their self-esteem doesn’t come from outside of them? If they could play in the world of clothes, gadgets, devices and ‘stuff’ but know deep down it means nothing about them? They are simply enough just as they are.
Wouldn’t it also be wonderful if all adults also knew their self-esteem and worth isn’t ever up for grabs? That it has never been tied to those things outside of us. When we know that our worthiness is built in, innate and can’t be taken away from us, people feel better about themselves. And when people feel better about themselves, they tend to show up differently in life, and often are less critical, bullying and judgmental of others.
Imagine what this could do for our world if more and more people knew this? I imagine it would bring greater levels of peace, and less division and separation for us all.
Learn more about Lindsey here: https://www.lindseyelliott.co.uk/
