Self-worth and Accomplishments

For most of us, self-worth is tied to our perception of our accomplishments. We feel less worthy when we have no accomplishment for the day, for the week, for the month, for the year, or in our entire lifetime. We want to do more, to accomplish more – so that we can prove to ourselves and to others that we are worthy – worthy of others’ attention, affection or love.

There is nothing wrong with reaching out for more. In fact, desire – the summoning of Spirit – is what calls us to move forward in life. And as we move forward, following what makes us tick, following our passion, our joy, we expand our Be-ing. The expansion of our Be-ing is our goal. But then there is no end in our expansion because we are infinite Beings on an eternal journey. So in effect, there is no real destination, no end point. The destination is the journey itself. So why not enjoy the present journey instead of living in an illusory future which is always out of reach?

There is nothing wrong with wanting to accomplish more, and more. It is OK to set a goal and reach for it, because it is in reaching for that goal that the inner life-force – seeking to be expressed externally – is stimulated and summoned. It is OK to accomplish so that we can feed our family, so that we can make our lives comfortable and so we could fully enjoy all that life has to offer.

And there is absolutely nothing wrong with proving our self-worth through our accomplishments and attainments. For a long time, this appeared to be the most natural process and it is the modality society believes in. It is indeed logical that when one is accomplished in something, say for example, one excelled as an artist, scientist, spiritual guru, businessman, scholar, etc, it is almost always that this person is looked-up to as someone worthy of our admiration, respect, and attention. But what if someone is perceived to have no accomplishments, or not accomplished enough? Is he or she not worthy of our respect, attention and affection by virtue of their being a valid expression of the God Source?

Accomplishments are something we use to compare ourselves with others. Once we compare ourselves with another, however, we are unnecessarily making life more difficult for each of us. Nobody is exactly alike. Another’s journey is different from yours – not superior not inferior, just different. Their accomplishments, or lack thereof, is maybe what is relevant to their current journey of self-discovery. You are not necessarily meant to exactly accomplish someone else’s accomplishments nor your accomplishments to be made a standard for everyone else to follow. Remember: what you value is not necessarily the same with what another person values. How you sing a song is not necessarily how another wants to sing the same song.

A sense of self-worth premised on accomplishments is an upstream journey. We believe that we would only feel our best and prove our worth after we finish a big project, or when we have a certain amount of money, or when we are in the relationship that we want, or when we have attained spiritual enlightenment. It is a perpetual struggle because the sense of self-worth we are trying to attain becomes elusive. We are always trying to get somewhere, yet we are never arriving. It is a long, precarious process, until we tire and give-up frustrated.

When we believe in our inherent self-worth regardless of our accomplishments, we are deliberately putting ourselves in an excellent starting position. This is because our full awareness of our self-worth becomes the very stable foundation upon which our confidence to pursue what we want to pursue and accomplish what we want to accomplish, is based on. Believing in our inherent self-worth thus makes our journey of accomplishing, even much easier.

If we come to think of it, accomplishments are actually only an excuse we use to believe in our self-worth. Our hard-to-please reasoning mind tends to fail to acknowledge that regardless of so-called accomplishments, we have always been worthy by virtue of our inherent divinity.