| "At work, every time I have to speak at meetings, I get | | | | your own worth, you are making others responsible for |
| so stressed." | | | | this. |
| "I'm taking a class and I'm always afraid to raise my | | | | This is a very hard way to live. You have to constantly |
| hand and ask a question." | | | | try to figure out what someone else wants of you to |
| "I'm fine one to one, but as soon as I get into a group, | | | | get approval and avoid disapproval. Your good and |
| I'm so tense I can hardly stand it." | | | | bad feelings are dependent upon how you look and |
| "I'm totally relaxed with my women friends, but as soon | | | | how you perform, so you have to be constantly on |
| as I'm with a guy I like, I can't be myself." | | | | your toes. |
| Each of these people are anxious and stressed | | | | What if you were to take on the responsibility of |
| because they want to get approval and avoid | | | | defining your own worth? How would you go about |
| disapproval. What are they telling themselves that is | | | | doing this? |
| causing their anxiety? | | | | One of the problems in defining your own worth is that |
| "Oh God, I better not forget what I want to say and | | | | you may have been programmed to see yourself |
| make a fool of myself." | | | | through the eyes of your parents, teachers, siblings |
| "The teacher might think the question I want to ask is a | | | | and peers. If, when you were growing up, you got |
| dumb one." | | | | judged, criticized, rejected or ridiculed, you may have |
| "If I say the wrong thing no one will like me." | | | | incorporated others' images of you into your own mind. |
| "I better not say something completely stupid." | | | | So you can't define your own worth and lovability from |
| Each of these people are telling themselves things that | | | | your wounded self - your programmed ego mind. You |
| are causing anxiety, and underneath these | | | | need to define yourself through the eyes of love, not |
| self-judgmental statements is a deeper belief: | | | | the eyes of judgment. |
| "If I say or do something wrong or stupid, they won't | | | | Start with imagining an older, wiser part of you, or |
| like me and that means I am not okay." | | | | imagine a person from your childhood who really loved |
| The need for approval and the fear of disapproval | | | | you. Imagine that you can see yourself as a child |
| comes from the belief that others are responsible for | | | | through the eyes of this other person or through the |
| your worth. If they like you, you are okay, and if they | | | | older part of you. What do you see? Can you see |
| don't like you, you are not okay. | | | | your innocence, your lovingness, your sense of |
| If you are a person who seeks others' approval, then | | | | wonder, your creativity, your aliveness? Open to |
| you have made others responsible for sense of worth. | | | | seeing who you are in your essence - your true Self. |
| Imagine that you have a child, and instead of loving this | | | | If you were to practice seeing who you really are - not |
| child, you keep giving the child away to others to | | | | who you are in your wounded programmed self, but |
| define. You keep saying to this child, "You better do it | | | | who you are in your essence Self - you would start to |
| right because you if they don't like you, then you are | | | | value your own beautiful essence. As you value your |
| not okay." The result would be that the child would feel | | | | essence, you would start to treat yourself in kinder, |
| very insecure and unlovable, because you kept giving | | | | more loving ways. |
| him or her away to others for approval. | | | | The more you practice doing this, the better you will |
| When you make others responsible for your sense of | | | | feel about yourself and the less you will seek approval |
| worth, you are doing the same thing on the inner level - | | | | from others. In time and with practice, you will find |
| giving away your own inner child. Instead of defining | | | | yourself feeling so much happier and more peaceful! |