Delegating a Sense of Self Worth

Where was I?

As you have (hopefully) realised, this is my first post in over a week.

I decided to take a short break to refresh and reflect, to consider and re-set.

There are several reasons however the dominant motive was an awareness that the content I had been producing lacked an overall of quality and I simply wasn’t happy with it.

Interestingly, the less pleased I became about what I was producing, the greater the growth in reader numbers.

Have you ever attended an important meeting and at its conclusion, accepted praise for your contribution? However, have you ever received such praise while deep down knowing you didn’t prepare properly for the meeting?

Only you knew the lack of effort that went in to the meeting and that the fact you performed well was more good luck than professional effort. As nice as the praise may have been, it didn’t feel deserved or fulfilling.

I was experiencing similar emotions during the previous 10 or so posts. The readership numbers were good and the feedback positive but I knew I was not giving a commensurate effort or taking the time to properly prepare an article.

This reminded me that more than ever, we need to be our own most honest providers of feedback.

We live in a world surrounded by shallowness, where goals are often centred on the short term and where achievement are measured by the number of “likes” or similar means of feedback.

My realisation has been that just as it is very easy to criticise from the safety of the keyboard, it is just as easy to compliment under a cloak of anonymity.

Only we know if the criticism we receive or the praise we receive is relative to the effort and passion that was invested in to what it is we have created or the task we have performed.

We all like praise more than criticism but more importantly, we need to develop the skills, and ability to self-praise and self asses our own activities. We also need to do this knowing the effort and commitment we invested in to what it is we are doing.

To put it really simply, why would we delegate our sense of self-worth to anyone other than ourselves?