How to assess your self-worth

Dr. Cheryl Saban spent the first 30 years of her life doubting her own value, due largely to some terrible experiences — rape, two failed marriages, and for a time, she was a single mother who couldn’t afford health care. But once she learned how to believe in herself, these obstacles had no power over her, and she was able to make dramatic and positive life changes. In her book “What Is Your Self-Worth?” Saban offers a road map to help other women recognize their innate value, connect to their unique, authentic selves and validate their contributions to the world. An excerpt.

Chapter one
Taking inventory: Recognition and responsibility
What is your personal currency? What do you feel you have to offer to the world at large — and is that offering given the value, validity, and respect it deserves? Are you happy to be a female? When you judge yourself, as we all do, how do you measure up? Are you an equally treasured part of society? Are you predictable? Does being a woman ever make you feel compromised in any way? When you consider your worth as a woman, what comes to mind? This subject may expose emotions and responses that surprise you.

For example, what are the rulers or measuring tools you use? Do you think of:

• Your marriage?
• Your ability to provide for your children?
• Your success in the workplace?
• Your friendships and family relationships?
• Your hobbies and avocations?
• Your sense of well-being and fulfillment?
• Your dedication to helping others?
• Your faith?

Do you even consider your worth at all? Perhaps not in so many words, but the subject of worthiness or validity probably comes up for you time and again, and it’s manifested by behaviors and gender stereotypes that don’t serve you well. Does the idea of objectification conjure up significant images for you? (Think sexual plaything, object, and so on.) How about gender stereotypes? Have you ever found yourself automatically identifying with words such as weak, frail, or defenseless? Such adjectives are often used to describe women.

We live in an era when we’re obsessed with obsession — a psychological disorder in which individuals become fixated on a perceived or imaginary defect in the way they look, so eating disorders, obesity, obsessive-compulsive disorders, and body dysmorphic disorders all fall into this category. Are we making the grave mistake of using such disordered thinking to regulate our overall perception of self-worth? Do we associate thinness with perfection or consider variations in body type as flaws? When we take into consideration that nearly ten million females in the United States are struggling with eating disorders, we may begin to wonder. . . .

Are we incapable of setting our own standards? Misconceptions and maladaptations to outside and inside influences can infantilize us into a state of helplessness. The “Cinderella complex” (a theory first described by Colette Dowling in her 1981 book of the same name) suggests that women actually fear independence and have an unconscious desire to be taken care of.

While it’s possible that some of us have been preprogrammed with this particular mind-set, helpless is not the word I’d use to describe most women I know, nor should you be willing to attach that descriptor to yourself. However, do be aware that such an unconscious desire may indeed have been included in the bag of tricks you were given as a youngster, and it could invade your behavior when you least expect it. Here’s an important note for you to jot down in your personal journal or diary: resist it. Play to your strengths, not your weaknesses. Confidence is your best asset, but it’s also your most attractive fashion lure, if that’s a consideration for you.

Why is it important to understand your true value or personal currency? I’m going to be bold and say that not only is it important to recognize your innate worth, it’s critical that you do. Your survival and sense of well-being virtually depend upon it.

Discovering the meaning of worth
What does worth mean to you? How do you define or assess it? Is there a general measurement of it that holds true for everyone? Most likely, you’ve formed a conception of what self-worth and self-esteem are, but for the sake of clarity, it might be helpful to analyze these terms. We use them so often that their meaning may have lost potency.

According to the highly regarded Oxford American Dictionary, worth means “sufficiently good, important, or interesting to justify a specified action.” The thesaurus includes these synonyms: merit, value, excellence, caliber, quality, stature, eminence, importance, significance, and distinction. Such words help synthesize what can be tricky to define in a finite way.

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The following list of terms may help illuminate the concept even further:

• Self-esteem: the value, respect, and honor you have for yourself
• Conditions of worth: the do’s and don’ts, shoulds and shouldn’ts, that you live by in order to feel appreciated and accepted by others
• Self-concept: the organized set of perceptions and ideas you have for yourself
• Self-actualization: a principle of human behavior stating that you strive to develop your capacities and talents to the fullest — that is, growing and enhancing the basic self
• Self-efficacy: your expectation that you can effectively cope with and master situations, as well as bring about desired outcomes through personal efforts
• Social stratification: the ranking of individuals into groups within a culture
• Resilience: being able to withstand, or recover quickly from, difficult conditions

So how do you feel about yourself? Are you your number one fan? Do you flounder along in blind acceptance of other people’s rules?

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