Often, people see their lack of self worth as the reason they’re not going after their dreams. That can include anything from going on a trip, going for a big goal, making a big decision, or even the way we own our identity. 

In this episode, I’m going to talk about self worth in a way that you’ve probably never heard from a mindset coach before. When you don’t believe in your humanity, you don’t allow yourself to show up fully for the human experience. The usual solution is to build self-worth by doing exercises, indulging in things we’ve been conditioned to believe are helpful, and going on a pampering binge. 

What’s conspicuously missing from this cycle is actually doing the thing you want to do when you’ve attained the self worth you’ve been missing.

What if your sense of self-worth doesn’t really matter? What if lack of self worth is an invented problem? Is it true that you have to have an unflappable sense of self-worth to get what you want? Will you be doing the busy work trying to pump yourself up or will you be showing up to do the work?

Ke Huy Quan NYT Article

Ready to start making art, making, money, and making an impact? Visit makingartistspodcast.com or connect with me on IG @thenancysun.

Music credit: Positive Experience by Sunny Tones

A Podcast Launch Bestie production

Hey artists, how are you doing?

I have some breaking news.

This is the second to last episode of this first season

of the Making Artist's Podcast.

What it dawned on me that I didn't share in my trailer or in earlier

episodes, that I had always planned to release weekly episodes of the Making

Artist Podcast for a season ending with the Winter Holidays and New Year.

So I am clearing that up now and sharing it with you so that you can

really savor these final two episode.

. And while we're talking about the podcast, let me also share that

I'm currently weighing when and or how to resume this audio adventure

with you in the new year 2023.

Since I've received a lot of positive feedback on how supportive this

podcast is to you as an audience of artists, I want to keep hearing from.

So in the event you haven't had the opportunity to share about what an

impact this podcast has made, what you want to see more of here on making

artists, or I should say, hear more of on making artists, less of, or

sharing any areas of improvement.

I am here for it.

You can always message me via Instagram at the Nancy Sun link available in the

show notes, or you can help get the word out about this podcast to other fellow

creatives by rating and reviewing, making artists on Apple podcasts and iTunes.

And today we have a spicy episode.

You may have a lot of things to say about whether it be to me or other.

So let's get right to it.

We are going to talk about self worth.

This is a topic that my audience has been craving to hear more about.

It's something that so many humans and not just artists, come to coaching

for, whether it be me or someone else.

So many humans see lack of self-worth as the reason why

they aren't going after their.

More broadly, this can include dreams like going on a vacation, getting a

dog, going after a job, maybe moving to another city, country, et cetera.

Pursuing a relationship or just changing your relationship status in general.

For instance, you may be staying in a relationship because you feel

like you may not be worthy without.

Or that this relationship is all that you're worth.

It can also impact whether or not, or how you own your sexuality, your

racial or ethnic identity, maybe even your gender identity, any of your.

identities, in fact, and these are dreams that are impacted in addition to

creative dreams my clients might have, like making a book, a play, a film, a TV

pilot, a series, a podcast, a multimedia installation, or a piece of fine.

As an artist, author, director, playwright, filmmaker,

showrunner, resident artist, creative fellow actor, et cetera.

Now, today we are going to talk about self-worth in a way you

might not have heard before from a mindset coach, probably in a way

you haven't even heard before, from.

If you want another perspective of mine that might be more familiar, you

can listen to episode seven, enough Belief in Case You haven't already.

That episode touches on self-worth in its discussion of self-belief, and

as a preview of that episode, it's one where I as a coach, share the

benefits of starting really small and cultivating your belief in yourself.

This episode, however, is when your brain wants to or automatically

starts really, really big and you just cannot shake it after all.

The question of self-worth is a really big existential question.

And just to be sure, I looked up the definition of self-worth for this podcast.

And the first internet definition Google sent me of self-worth is an

internal sense of being good enough and being worthy of love and belonging.

And another definition it sent was the sense of one's own

value and worth as a person.

So when we start talking about whether or not we think ourselves

worthy, what we're really asking is do we think we deserve to be?

Do we think we deserve to call ourselves a person, a human being?

Do we think we deserve to live commune, be among other persons, other human beings?

And I want you to observe that these are yes or no questions.

And I find that when we ask them of ourselves, the answer is usually no.

Because how you do one thing is how you do everything.

This no answer to these big, big questions starts to trickle down and ultimately

impact how you show up for your smaller, daily, weekly, monthly, even yearly

chunks of time making up for your life.

This big no becomes several little, no.

Because when you don't believe in your humanity, you don't give

yourself permission to show up fully to the human experience and do the

full range of things on a human menu, living through your dreams and

creating things that only humans can.

now, when I talk to artists who feel like they don't deserve to be a human

being, living a human experience, aka they don't believe in their own

self-worth, I joke with them that they're acting like they've got the poop touch.

So the poop touch is like if you were being king, except unlike him, where

everything he touches turns to gold.

I e, the golden touch.

You treat yourself like everything you touch, you turn into poop, the poop touch.

Now what usually happens next in coaching when a person comes

in with this lack of self-worth problem is we solve the problem.

By building self-worth, building self-worth becomes the solution.

I have done this as a coach and as a coaching client, as a coachee, I

have received coaching like this, and with a coach or without a coach.

What usually happens next is you might start to engage in some

activities to build or reinforce self.

and they might include activities like reciting or writing affirmations,

power posing, consuming, feel good, self-development content.

Maybe that's even why you are listening to this podcast.

In addition to books, audio books, meditations, you might even hire

a coach with the specific intent of them being your hype person.

So you might be looking for a yes and coach, or maybe even a yes and therapist.

Some darker activities of building self-worth might include, I would

call conspicuous consumption, whether that be shopping binges

or eating binges or whatever.

Fill the blank binges, you might do.

It could even be, for instance, a time binge where you spend a lot

of time doing a specific activity.

Netflix and chilling because you feel like you deserve this and the thought

that you might be having as you do this shopping, this eating, or this pampering

self-care binge is you treat yourself.

As you would imagine, a rich person who thinks they're worthy would treat

themselves, and often this is going to be an image that has been marketed

to you to encourage you to buy things.

So I'm providing this list of common self-worth building activit.

So that you can identify whether or not, or how you fall into this self-worth

trap, and I want you to notice what is conspicuously absent from this building.

Self-worth list is doing the thing that you actually want to do once your

self worth has been sufficiently built.

So when you have a lack of self-worth problem and you believe the solution

is building your self-worth, what happens is you actually put yourself

and your life in a holding pattern.

As you wait, prove, cultivate self-worth, and try to change your no to these

big existential questions into a yes.

Alternatively, here is now the perspective I wanna offer you in

this podcast that is bigger than an outside of the lack of self-worth

problem build, self-worth solution.

And that is what if your sense of self-worth doesn't really.

What if lack of self-worth is an invented problem?

I'm gonna say this again.

What if self-worth doesn't matter and what if lack of

self-worth is an invented problem?

So to investigate these assertions, I wanna invite you to use Byron

Katie's four questions known as the.

Byron Katie is a grand dame of coaching, and she invites anyone mining their

brain for limiting beliefs to ask themselves four questions about it.

And that is, is it true?

Is it absolutely true?

How do you react when you believe that thought?

And who would you be if it weren't?

In this case, we can think, is it true that you need to have a sense of

self-worth to get the things you want?

Is it absolutely true that you need to have a sense of self-worth

in order to get what you want?

And how do you react when you believe that this sense of self-worth

is necessary and a prerequisite.

, who would you be if you didn't believe that?

A sense of self-worth were absolutely necessary and the bare

minimum to get what it is you want.

Now I'm going to use the example of Key Hui quo.

When I answer these questions, so Kiwan is an actor who previously

was in two very popular 1980s films, a child actor in the Goonies and

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Deal.

Since those blockbuster films, he had a fallow period in which

he did not get hired as an actor.

Until recently for the film, everything Everywhere, all at Once,

directed by the Daniels, for which he recently won a Gotham Award.

So the Gotham Awards are one of the Critic Circle awards that leads up

to, uh, the Academy Award season.

Now while doing press for everything everywhere, all at once, he gave

an interview to the New York Times that I will link in the show notes

in which he recounts his sense of himself as he auditioned for these

childhood films, and as he booked the gig for everything everywhere, all at.

And the bottom line takeaway I got from this New York Times article is

ultimately he did not really have a high opinion of himself or his auditions.

He didn't believe he could actually book the role i e.

He didn't believe that he was worthy of booking these jobs, and yet this

lack of sense of worthiness did not actually stop him from being the actor

who booked these gigs is currently up for a lot of critically acclaimed.

And currently has a lot of Oscar talk around his performance in

everything everywhere, all at once.

In the New York Times article, for instance, he says, I.

Walked out.

I saw another agent actor waiting to read for the same role.

He was taller, better looking.

He looked like he just walked out of GQ Magazine.

I drove home, called my agent and said, listen man, I tried so hard, but I

don't think I'm going to get that role.

He was so good looking, so I didn't think I was going to get it.

This example to me illustrates that it is not true and it is absolutely not true.

That you need to have a huge, big, infinite sense of self-worth in

order to get what it is you want.

And then on the flip side, we can even look at the biblical

tale of David and Goliath.

Goliath is somebody who everybody thought would win, probably Goliath,

even thought he would win by sheer size, sheer strength, et cetera.

A lot of people believed he was the most worthy opponent winning against David, and

yet David is the one who won that battle.

Small but mighty.

So here are two examples that it isn't true and it is not absolutely true.

That you need to have an unflappable sense of self-worth in order to

get what you want out of life.

Now, for the final two questions, which are, how do you react when

you believe that thought, and who would you be if it weren't?

. So we already know how you would react when you believe a sense

of self-worth is necessary.

You do a lot of busy work trying to pump yourself up before you actually

let yourself get to the task at hand.

And who would you be if it weren't true?

You probably would just be the person who shows up and gets to work.

I'm gonna use myself as an example, which is.

As a person who grew up the daughter of immigrants and for whom English

is a second language, I am sure that I had self-worth problems.

However, I knew that that reason or excuse wouldn't fly with my parents.

And how I knew it wouldn't fly is I literally don't know how to.

Self worth in Mandarin Chinese.

That is not to say that the word doesn't exist, it probably does, but just I

couldn't use it as shorthand for the reason why I couldn't do something.

What changes when you believe that there are other people in the world,

other cultures, other civilizations?

That don't grapple with this question of self-worth as a reason or excuse to not go

after what they want, and I want to invite you to consider that I do think that it

is a culturally conditioned problem and it's not an essential part of the human.

And I'm just gonna give you a few examples of how I believe that to be true.

So one is just from witnessing my son learn how to hit all the developmental

milestones that he has been hitting.

And I know that right now he does not really have like a fully developed

brain, and that is no knock on him.

That is just where he is in his development as a.

. So we know the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for emotional regulation and

logical reasoning, is something that does not fully develop until the age of 25.

That's what recent science shows us, and we know that when you are born,

the thing that is really intact is your limbic system or your lizard brain.

So he literally right now, does not have a sense of.

Or a sense of self-worth, or at least he was not born with

it and he gets shit done.

He doesn't wonder or have this existential crisis on whether or not he is worthy

of crawling, army, crawling, standing, walking, with support, or walking.

Who he is without the thought that he needs.

Self-worth is he just does it.

He just follows through on his impulses.

I've also done, for my own curiosity, a cursory glance at.

Other eras or other cultures philosophy of self to see if all of

them have this fundamental question about whether or not I am worthy.

And it seems to be uniquely in 18 hundreds and beyond Western industrialized nation.

The ancient Greeks don't really inquire as to whether or not they

think of themselves as worthy.

They do have instructions and suggestions about self-love, but not self-worth.

So here is where I'm going to make some spicy assertions on where

this self worth question comes.

and fundamentally, I think it comes from colonization, from white supremacy, from

capitalism because if we get everyone to believe that they need to believe

in themselves perfectly first before they do anything else with their life.

Then you will have people consumed and distracted with cultivating a hundred

percent perfect self-worth, a hundred percent perfect belief in their value

as a human being and their worthiness of love before they allow themselves to

do anything else, which means that the people in power get to stay in power.

I am reminded of this delicious Tony Morrison.

in which she talks about racism and she says, the function, the very serious

function of racism is distraction.

It keeps you from doing your work.

It keeps you explaining over and over again your reason for being.

Someone says you have no language and you spend 20 years proving that you.

Somebody says your head isn't shaped properly, so you have scientists working

on the fact that it is, somebody says you have no art, so you dredge that up.

Somebody says You have no kingdoms, so you dredge that up.

None of this is necessary.

There will always be one more thing.

So who will you be?

Artist.

when you believe, you do not have to keep explaining over and over again your

reason for being, your value of being.

What will you be doing instead?

What if you believed this conversation around self-worth, like racism?

Is simply a social construct made real.

And because you now can see that it is a social construct,

who do you wanna be about it?

What do you wanna do with it?

Do you want to agree with them and then spend your time proving and

explaining yourself over and over?

Or do you simply just want to get to.

My invitation for you as coach is to simply to show up and do

the work so that we can see more.

Inspiring, creative juicy perspectives that are currently

not being shared because of all of the reasons I said above.

So consider this conversation one more, offering another side of the elephant

of those self-worth conversation that you can look at and decide,

do I really want to be engaged?

To have and have not, and how to have conversation regarding self-worth,

or do I simply want to skip over this question entirely and just not let the

fact that it's a problem for everyone else, or it's a problem that everyone

has jumped into the pool with mean that I have to make it a problem.

So I'll write my artists.

I hope that this conversation helped you swim upstream and provided you

another way to tackle this sticky problem of self-worth, and in the event

that it doesn't serve you, that's okay.

Just take what did and leave the.

as coach, I'm not trying to be right or wrong about my perspective.

My job is just to present you a different perspective, one that might

shake you out of where you currently are so that it is a choice if you wanna

keep on believing what it is you are believing, or now you can start to get

unhooked and shop for other thoughts.

This perhaps being one of.

in the event that you found this meaningful and impactful for you and you

know somebody who might be able to benefit from receiving the same message, feel

free to share this particular episode even with people who are not artists,

because I find this to be a fundamental inquiry that a lot of western educated,

industrialized rich citizens of countries.

Until next time, wishing you well and that you are showing up for life, trusting the

process, doing the work, and becoming the creative you want to and deserve to be.