How Much Are You Worth?

I'm a reject. At least I am this week and it's gotten me down.

Granted, I have put myself in a position with ample opportunities to fail. I am an academic, a writer, and single. This is a lethal combination when it comes to rejection because it is so relentless. It comes daily.

Each of these markets is highly competitive and have become even more brutal because of the economy. I submit an abstract to a conference and am told that while it is of the "highest quality," there isn't enough room this year. I hand in a scholarly manuscript and am told to "revise and resubmit" to be considered for publication. I pitch a story to a magazine, and the editor says that while I will "surely sell this," I am not the writer for them. I ask the new neighbor out on a date and he says he is "not ready to be in a relationship right now."

Don't get me wrong. There are successes too. I get some grants I apply for. I have published in scholarly journals and in mass-market papers. I have gone on more than one date. I am a fairly content and emotionally even person. Most of the time I am filled with a general sense of well-being and immense gratitude for the good things in my life. But. There are ten rejections for each success and it's hard.

When one of these rejections happen, I get irritated, angry, and exasperated. "Again?!" I ask myself. I think about quitting. I think about moving to a desert island with my books, my journal, and my Raggedy Anne Doll. I think that life sucks. I stomp around my apartment, eat ice cream, and watch reruns of Gossip Girl to feel better.

It seems unreasonable that external factors completely outside of my control can make me feel this bad. But they do, and it got me thinking about our cultural emphasis on self-esteem and what it means to truly feel good about oneself.

For years psychologists have been focusing on self-esteem. We talk about enhancing the self-esteem of children and about watching how we speak to our colleagues, our subordinates, our students, and our spouses so as to maintain their positive sense of self. We take self-esteem workshops and rationalize other people's bad behaviors as being a result of low, or absent self-esteem.

This theory makes sense when things are going well. If we have self-esteem we feel good about ourselves. Nothing wrong with that. The problem is what happens when the things we base our esteem on don't go our way? I feel great as an academic and a writer as long as I am getting published and people like my work. But one rejection can throw me off and can ruin the whole week.

Self-esteem, after all, is based on achievement. We feel proud when we have accomplished something meaningful to us. What that is will change depending on who you are and what you value, but the principle is the same. We feel good when we have done good.

Having self-worth, however, is a different story. Self worth is feeling like you have value as a human being simply by virtue of existing. It means that you believe in your own inherent goodness and worthiness as a person regardless of how much you weigh, who you are dating, what you have published, what kind of job you have, or how much money you make. It is about being loved for who you are, because you are, and not for what you can do, represent, or achieve.

This is a hard concept to understand in our capitalistic society where self worth is based on achievement and being productive as markers of success, but it is not impossible to imagine. We need to shift our emphasis from self-esteem to self worth and that means going back to basics.

Corny as it may sound, the only way to develop true self worth is by being loved unconditionally and by loving others this way.

I know this is true because I was once loved like this and it made all the difference in the world. I was lucky enough to have one of those moms who not only loved unconditionally but would tell us we were wonderful just because we were hers. She died four years ago, and while I got rejected then just as often as I do now, things were different when she was alive. I still felt the sting of failure, but it never penetrated my belief that I was a good, worthy, and valuable person simply because I existed. My mother's love was a buffer against the big, bad world out there and in many ways, it still is.

The feeling of self-worth she instilled in me is still present. It is why I can write this post and remember that even though rejection feels bad in the moment, it is not who I am, but only what I do. This makes me feel better. Much better. And it motivates me to try again. My mother didn't go to college. She was happy being a mom and working at a local store. She read a lot, but only fiction. She didn't like to travel much and stuck mostly to what she knew. Nonetheless, I think she was onto something important, even something genius, when she insisted on nurturing a sense of worthiness in us instead of a sense of self-esteem.

Comments

[apple54]

Dr Granek, yet another post that truly speaks to me. However, for those of us who were not lucky enough to have someone in our life like your mother what can we do to acquire self-worth?

[Arithrianos]

How much am i worth? the joke is the question is meaningless out of context. From the ego perpective i am worth what the world tells me in am worth in terms of accompishments and possessions. In terms of reality though, there is no way at all to put boundries on my worth, i am worth the same as all other sentient beings, which is unmeasurable. The problem is not recognizing that this is a journey, we are all mearly passing through. The forms that arise out of emptiness are not our personal acomplishment nor failure, it is all the blanket as Dustin Hoffman might say, they are just waystones along the journey not to be taken too seriously.

[Athena24]

I agree with Dr. Granek's insightful comments regarding self-esteem and self-worth in our overly competetive culture. What is missing is that deep acceptance and love for simply being - this is considered suspect in a society where what you wear, what you own, how much you weigh, what you earn, etc. are the touchstones for feeling good and being treated with respect. It is when we probe the deeper psychological and spiritual roots of our lives that we begin to understand and embrace our inherent right to love ourselves, and be loved, unconditionally. Arguably, this is one of the hardest things in the world to do. In fact, loving and being loved unconditionally may be our single greatest achievement. Dr. Granek's mother, in this regard, was truly genius.

[Chicagoan2]

Wery good article. As a parent it is so important to realize that the best thing to do for a child is to love them. Just as important it is to realize what is the sorse of the things that happen to us. What are you supposed to do when you are given a lemon in life " the best thing to do is to make lemonade.

What is generealy concived in sosiety as regectionism and so on, they also happen for a reason. These are tests that are there for our pursanal growth. It is a whole different perspective. It elliminates so many questions like why me, why does it always happen to me, why so much, etc.

This could be a whole diffent topic to explore.

[JRS48]

An important and noteworthy post. Thank you Dr.

Though I'm wondering where ego and entitlement fit in... When my self-esteem is boosted because my work has been recognized, a pitch accepted or a stranger flirts with me, it is fitting to be proud and happy. When I feel self-worth simply for being, isn't that also arrogance?

[Scripto-paloozo]

From my perspective, the author has hit the nail on the head with her differentiation of "worth" from "esteem" and her perceptions that unconditional love is the key to developing self-worth. "Love is the buffer" - a truly beautiful sentiment. HRN, I think you may be tripping up on the issue of subjectivity/objectivity. If a so-called "not inherently good and worthy person" (oh, let's say, Hitler) was under the false impression that they were being given unconditional love, they too would develop the sense of self-worth that a so-called "inherently good and worthy person" would. Perhaps it might even make them channel that self-worth into less destructive pursuits. And secondly, I think unconditional love is not easily mistaken for anything else. It is a such a rare and delicate thing.....

[HRN]

That's an interesting distinction between self-esteem and self-worth-- and I guess to my untrained ear it sounds like a matter of symantics. So your self-worth cannot be harmed if you feel you have not done, accomplished or represented yourself well? Somehow I think that perhaps the two might merge at some point-- if your self-esteem is so down, for so long, I think you can lose your feelings of self-worth too........... is this possible? or is my thinking just a product of our capitalistic society? :)

I'm especially perplexed by the author's comment that "Self worth is feeling like you have value as a human being simply by virtue of existing. It means that you believe in your own inherent goodness and worthiness as a person" But we know from history (our own and the world's) that not everyone is inherently good and worthy-- so then someone's unconditional love might just be their subjective view, and if you don't accept it as legitimate, then you still cannot cultivate self-worth........ hmm... i might be getting tripped up in semantics now :)

[MJSGK]

Dr. Granek's article is articulate and accurate. We must develop a tough outer skin to realize that rejection is part of success. If we do not try, we will not only not succeed, we will not face rejection. How glad we are that Dr. Granek has chosen to continue to try, to write, to date, to participate in life, as then we can share her insight and her wisdom.

[tcagle]

Dr. Granek, they are not rejecting you, just rejecting your offers. We still love ya.