Why Do We Undervalue Ourselves?
“I constantly undermine my own skills. If I have a skill, it’s no big deal everyone else should have it. If someone else has a skill, it’s amazing and without parallel. I am completely blind to my own value.”
Most of us have lived a situation where they felt like what they are doing isn’t valuable. It might be a skill or just a reflection, but we all went through a moment where we weren’t confident about ourselves enough to recognize our talent and our ideas.
This could have started in our childhood. We find ourselves under the social pressure of succeeding from an early stage of life, which begins within the families. When we don’t, we could get shamed. From the very beginning, we settle for the idea of living up to the expectations, hoping that society will feel inclined to reward our efforts in the process of doing so.
The more we act under this pressure, the more we are susceptible to undermine our achievements. When you have been doing something for so long it starts to become like second nature, then you either take it for granted or start to see flaws in it more than others. This is what happens when you have developed a skill throughout your life. There will always be someone better at something, but that doesn’t mean we are not good at it and that we don’t deserve the recognition.
While developing ourselves, we discover many things that we didn’t know before, and we might start thinking that all we did before was a waste of time.
Of course, some people seem to have it easy, especially when a certain skill was granted to them from their early childhood. Yet, it’s nothing but unfair to compare someone else’s finish line to one’s start line. It sure is disappointing to the child within us that we are not special, but that doesn’t mean that our ordinary lacks worth.
While some succeeded in a specific area of their lives, you might have been learning about various things and picked multiple skills. You might have not done everything right, but certainly, you did and are doing enough things right.
And as you grow older, you begin to see that success isn’t just the destination, it’s also the difficulties of the journey and you are your only partner throughout this whole path. Therefore, you must be kinder to yourself. Negative self-talk blinds you to your own value, and it could also extend to your social circle as well.
When you know that you are undervaluing ourselves in some way and so as a result, someone else is getting to undervalue you as part of that interaction or process, all it does is reinforce your unworthiness because you perceive their actions or lack of them as an indicator of our worth, creating a vicious cycle that just might begin to convince you that this is as good as it gets (it isn’t).
You find yourself then trapped between the fear of missing out on things and the fear of being seen as average. The more you appear unconfident with others, the more you start believing it. The only way to break free is to admit that there are certain things you won’t learn, or you won’t succeed at, or simply they are just not you. Accept this truth and embrace yourself for who you are and what you have.
You must keep on putting yourself out there and trust that you are more than just a set of skills. It’s challenging work to overcome the negative self-talk, but remember:
You are making a path for yourself in a world that claims to be extraordinary.
Celebrate your ordinary.
