Hello, my beautiful brave hearts. How are you doing? And the answer to that is, "It's wonderful. I'm doing great," right? Sometimes life isn't always treating us well, and it doesn't matter. Doesn't matter how life treats us. What matters is how we decide and choose to show up, what we wanna do with what's going on around us, and we have the power to make those choices.

Hey, it's Dawn Damon, your brave heart coach, spending some more time with you, encouraging you to be brave-hearted, to be bold visionaries, to dream your dreams, and then to be goal-getters, not just goal setters. Today, we're gonna talk about your worth. This whole month of September, I wanna focus on hope and healing and a heart full of brave. That's our theme. It's shifting September, if you will. We're gonna be stepping out of the mindset of a victim, stepping out of "I don't have enough. I'm not enough," stepping into hope and healing and this heart full of brave.

And I have a question. Is your heart full of brave? What is going on in your heart? Is your heart full of courage, or is it full of fear, or maybe anxiety? Maybe there's some grief going on or some sadness. Maybe there's fear and dread of the unknown. Maybe your heart is full of all kinds of things, and you're just confused about what your next step is. You're confused about where your life should go. Well, we're gonna be talking about that the whole month of September. We're gonna add clarity and some focus for you, and it all starts with our program today: knowing your worth.

Do you know your worth? Well, if you're not sure what's full in your heart, what's going on in your heart, take a minute. Stop by my website, thebraveheartedwoman.com. I have a new quiz out there. It's "What kind of brave-hearted woman are you?" I'd love for you to take that. It's gonna give you insight into the condition of your heart. And then I have a prescription for you. How can you take that heart and grow it, expand it, unleash it, whatever it needs to be? So stop by. I would love for you to take that quiz.

But today, I wanna tell you, brave hearts, you do not have to prove your worth. A lot of women are running around proving, striving, pushing to show that they're valuable, they're worthy, they're important. You don't have to do that. You don't have to prove your worth. But you do need to recognize your worth. Own it. Believe it. Breathe it in. Accept it. You are worth it. Now, I'm gonna say that one more time, but before I do, I wanna take a BIHI. Oh, you don't know what that is? Well, if you've been around The Bravehearted Woman at all or have read my book, B-I-H-I, brave inner heart inspection. Let's just take a minute and do a BIHI.

Do you believe you are worth it? Do you believe you are worth the inconvenience? You are worth the time; you are worth the love. Do you believe that you are worth taking up space? You are worth it. A lot of women are so great at taking care of everyone else, making sure everyone else is good: our kids, our grandkids, our spouses if we have them, our best friends, our church people, making sure everybody else is good. We're really great at that, but we are really often bad at taking care of ourselves and remembering that we matter. You matter. I wanna tell you that today. You matter. And, you know, your worth isn't something that you need to earn or prove or perform for. Do you believe that? Because actually, what happens if that's what you do? If you believe that your worth is something that you have to earn, then what happens if you have to stop proving or stop earning for whatever reason?

Well, today I'm gonna give you four points on how you can make sure that you know you are worth it, and I've kind of already given one of them away.

Number one, I just wanna tell you, don't confuse your usefulness with your worth. As long as we feel useful, we feel like we're worthy. It’s being needed; that feels good, doesn't it? Somebody needs me. That feels so good. I'm somebody's heroine. I rushed in, I saved the day, I helped someone. I'll confess I love that. I love feeling important at times, that me and I did something really useful today. But being needed is not the same thing as being valued because, like I said, what if you stop doing the thing that's earning you the points? What if you stopped doing it? Your value is truly in your being, just being. And as one brilliant person said, we're not human doings; we're human beings, and that out of knowing who I am, I serve out of the freedom that I have and the confidence that I have of knowing who I am and what I bring and my value and my worth, then I can minister, or I can bless. I can do things for others, but I don't need to do it to feel good about myself. I feel good about myself, if I can say it that way, because God loves me, because God's redeemed me, because God tells me that I'm valuable. And my security and my confidence come from knowing him, not pleasing you, not pleasing others, not being a people pleaser, but a God pleaser.

So the second thing that I wanna tell you today, bringing hope and healing for you, and hopefully a heart full of brave, is that your age doesn't diminish your worth. And this is where I think so many of us in midlife start to get trapped. There is no expiration date on your dream. Midlife isn't some bridge that you cross over, and then you just have to golf or be done. You can play bingo or whatever. You can do those things if you want to, but you have an opportunity to bring decades of wisdom and experience, and decades of mistakes, let's be honest, decades of disappointment, and then resilience. How did you get back up? What did you do? How did you overcome that issue? You get to bring all of that perspective to the table. And if ever there was a generation underneath us that needs that perspective, it's today. I heard a statistic once recently that young women today are searching and seeking; they're hungry for role models. Your age does not diminish your worth. In truth, I believe it increases your worth. You were valuable before; you're valuable now, but maybe, like aged wine, we could say that the longer you are steeped in God's wisdom and his purpose for your life, the more you have to offer, the more you can tell others about. You have an area of expertise in your life. You have a gift that's valuable. Don't let it go dormant. Don't let what's inside of you just begin to drift away into oblivion. Don't bring in emotional hospice to help you navigate the next season of your life in grief and sadness, just saying goodbye to the woman you once were. Don't do that. Love the future you. Love the woman that's yet to come because if she could secretly whisper something to you, your future you would say, "Stay vibrant. You matter. Your wisdom counts. Be confident." A confident woman in her next phase of life is a glorious thing. It's beautiful. It's sexy. You stay vibrant. That's what your future self would say. She would say, "Continue to invest in yourself. Believe in yourself. Trust God. Do great things. Get out on a limb with your faith, but whatever you do, don't idle. Don't sit by and watch others go after their dreams and pursue their callings while you just fade to black or stage left." A heart full of brave says, "I am courageous. I'm gonna wake up every morning. I'm gonna say today I'm gonna live my best life. I choose the purpose that God has for me. Today, I choose to live my vision every morning. All right?

The third thing that I wanna share with you today is to stop letting other people's opinions become your identity. Everybody has an opinion. Everybody has an opinion about what they think you should be doing. Everybody has a thought about how you dress or how you wear your hair, and that doesn't mean that we can't take advice, for sure. I hope that we're always growing and willing to change. But someone's rejection doesn't make you less valuable. This is something I had to learn when I went through a divorce after 28 years of marriage. For some reason, I thought that my ex-husband had the power to define me and my worth. He had the power to tell me that I was no longer valuable, I was no longer worthy, until the day that I woke up and said, "Wait a minute. You don't get to define my worth. You don't get to define my value. God has already told me who I am. Your criticism doesn't get to rewrite what God says about me." And that's true for you, too. No person- that boss that let you go, that spouse that left you, that child that has no contact with you, other people, that crazy driver that, you know, waved at you in a very special kinda way nobody gets to define your value. They don't get to rewrite what God has already said about you. They're not sitting at the keyboard writing the master story for your life. So don't give other people your power. Don't let other people define you and get to tell you, "If you would just do this or if you would just do that, you would be more useful. You would be more valuable." I think that we have the discernment at this age to know that when someone's trying to do that versus when somebody's willingly, with a good heart, just trying to help us and encourage us.

Number four, worth changes how you show up. We talk about this a lot. I've seen insecurity show up in someone. I've seen fear show up. I've seen pride show up. I've seen hostility and anger show up. I've seen victim show up. But what a glorious and amazing thing when worth shows up. Because when you know that you're valuable, you stop begging for seats at the table where you're not respected. You stop begging and making apologies for your presence in rooms where people don't respect you. Worth changes how you show up. You say, "You know what? I don't need to be in a room where my value has not been discerned. I don't need to cling to others for the value that they are mistreating me." Sometimes goodbye is God bless you. I found that to be true in my life. It's not always true. Sometimes relationships are worth fighting for, but sometimes you have to know when you say, "Mm, I'm gonna change what I do here. If I don't bring joy, if I'm not being respected, if I'm not being valued here, maybe God's telling me my season is done here, and I need to move on."

And you then dare to show up in other circles where you're not the smartest person in the room, you're not the brightest person, you're not the most talented person in the room, but you are so blessed to be in the room because now you have an opportunity to grow. Here's what I mean by that. When I was learning as a writer, and I'm still learning, but as a writer, I went to writers' conferences, and it was the most intimidating thing ever, y'all. Sitting in these conferences, I would be like, "She's written 10, she's written 50, she's written 20 books. Well, now I've written six books. Woo-hoo." But I cared enough and had just enough security, even though there were moments when I would go back to my hotel room and cry, "What am I doing in here?" But I wanted to be among their number. I wanted to grow from them. I wanted to learn from writers who were doing what I had dreamt of doing, what I dreamed of doing. And so I had to put myself in that space. Knowing your worth changes what circles you're willing to show up in. It changes what you will, what circles you're willing to say goodbye to.

So here's the bravehearted challenge for you. Where have you been acting like you need permission to matter? Where have you been shrinking? Where have you been apologizing? Where have you been people-pleasing or overdoing it because you think that your usefulness equals your value, and if I stop doing this, then they won't want me around? Where's that going on in your life? And what's full in your heart? Anxiety? Unworthiness? Love? Take the quiz and find out: braveheartedwoman.com.

But I wanna let you know, you don't need to be more valuable. You need to just become more convinced of the value that already exists within you. God created you. He calls you valuable. He calls you loved. He calls you 100% acceptable. In God's eyes, that's who you are. So the bravehearted challenge: line up with truth. Line up with what God says is true about you. All right, brave hearts. And so once again, I just wanna tell you, stop by braveheartedwoman.com. Hit me up for that free quiz- that quiz that I wanna help you see what kind of brave heart you have. Don't forget to review this podcast and follow me, and I will see you soon. It's time for you, brave heart. Find your brave and live your dreams!