Knowing Your Worth

08/10/23

Hello readers,

The phrase "know your worth" has been repeated so frequently that it has been reduced to a cliche. Typically, we use the phrase to suggest that someone has gone so low that we should strive to convince them that they deserve better. Knowing your value extends beyond this idea, even if it could still be true.

Your accomplishments and the things you've been taught to believe make you who you are don't determine your value as a person. No matter how successful or unsuccessful you are, your sense of value remains constant.

I believe some of the most significant lessons we learn in life include finding and losing yourself. You must first be aware of who you are, what you are worth, and what you can contribute to the world in order to provide value to both yourself and those around you. Today I'm going to share with you my own experience of losing myself in someone and then, after a extensive search, finding myself again.

People often tell you that you won't be able to view things clearly until you are no longer in a difficult circumstance. In a long-term relationship, I discovered that I gradually lost myself. I lost sight of who I was because I was so preoccupied with the connection. I felt like I had lost my sense of self and no longer had control over my life. My former marriage is a good illustration of this.

Let's take a quick trip back in time. December 16, 2015: My wedding day. My ex-wife was 21 and I was 22. As the older generation would say, I was "young and dumb," but I believed I was in love and that she would be at my side forever. In making this choice, we faced a lot of opposition. Everyone close to us, including our friends, family, and relatives, lacked trust in our relationship. But we wanted to refute their claims rather than listen to them. They needed to see that these are our lives, and we are in control of them. So, rather than having a lavish wedding, we exchanged vows in front of a Justice of the Peace and a few witnesses. For a time, we were ecstatic, but after a few years, life began to strike us hard. In the marriage, we suffered a lot of hardship, but that's a story for another day, haha.

What I discovered more frequently was that, in my relationship, I had a deep-seated need to be accepted and loved. I gave up pieces of who I was in order to gain the approval I desired or to uphold the ideal of what marriage should be because of this desire. I lost any feeling of who I was outside of my marriage because I didn't realize that I needed to work hard to keep that sense of self apart.

The good news is that we discovered that "losing yourself" is really a necessary component of every relationship that aims to advance our own development. I discovered that it's practically inevitable to lose oneself in a relationship. It was the start of me to myself via personal growth.

Despite the fact that it may currently appear unachievable, there is hope. Finding yourself simply entails developing your inherent and prospective talents, discovering your own sense of self-worth, and being more independent. Surely you're thinking to yourself, "Easier said than done." However, it holds true for everything we go through in life. Finding out how to discover yourself entails discovering who you are, where you can go, and making a conscious effort to begin along the route to getting there. It does not entail comprehending where you are right now.