The Truth About Self-Esteem: You Don’t Have To Earn It

Today, we have a guest post from Giovanni Maccarrone, from Inspire Yourself Life Coaching. A lot of people have benefited from work with a life coach and that is partly because life coaches tend to zero in your who authentic is and help you build self love and acceptance.

In Giovanni’s Words

So often we try to DO something in order to increase our self-esteem.
How many posts have you seen that recommend to increase your self-esteem by:

1.Telling yourself that you’re a good person.

2.Listing your achievements.

3. Convincing yourself that you’re special.

And the list goes on and on.

These recommendations come from the UNtrue belief that we’re not good enough as
we are. When you believe something so untrue, no matter what you tell yourself, you’re
never going to fully feel the self-esteem that’s naturally inside of you. It is true that our biggest fear in life is that we’re not enough and therefore won’t be loved. So we spend so much of our time and energy trying to be “enough.”

In order words, we try to be “significant” in order to earn “love & connection” (6 Human
Needs).

Giovanni Maccarrone from Inspire Yourself Life Coaching:
Email: inspireyourselflc@gmail.com
Phone Number: 647 231 5727
Website: https://www.inspireyourselflc.org/
Instagram: @inspireyourselflc
TikTok: @inspireyourselflc
You can also find Giovanni on YouTube and LinkedIn.

What are the 3 Ways We Try to be Significant?

Playing The Helper: We’ve learned to put everybody first and ourselves last, because
who can’t love someone who does something as significant as that, right?
A lot of times this could happen in our family where the message we get is, “Put your
needs aside to always serve your mother, father, sister, brother, aunt, uncle” and so on.
If you do that you’re a “good little girl” or “good little boy”, and you get a pat on the head.

Now OF COURSE a family or any relationship is in part about helping each other. It
feels so good to be there for the people you care about, and it helps the people you love
the most. Therefore taking care of yourself helps you BETTER help the people you care about.
And self-care is not just about taking a bubble bath or eating your favourite ice cream in
front of the couch.

Self-care is about making sure your needs are met firstly in relation to yourself, and
secondly that the people in your life are there for you too. The first step is to know the truth that you have wants and needs too because you’re human. I know you try to get love & connection by being a good little boy or girl, but if you’re honest with yourself, how much do you actually feel the love & connection when you abandon yourself like that?

Instead of trying to get love & connection by being significant as The Helper, start with
love & connection as your base. The base is that there’s nothing wrong with you, and
you’re just you. From there you get to live OUT OF love & connection as opposed to
trying to GET love & connection. To help because that’s who you are at the core and it feels so good, not because you’re trying to be significant.

Playing The Achiever:
This goes in line with those Instagram posts that say, “think about what you’ve achieved”
or “think about what you’re good at.”

If you base your self-esteem on what you’ve achieved or what you’re good at, then that
guarantees that you will never fully feel the self-esteem that’s naturally inside of you.
Usually both as kids and in society in general, we get praised for getting good grades,
looking a certain way, having a certain job, and making a certain amount of money.
Achieving could obviously increase your chances of surviving and thriving, so it is
important to achieve.

It’s to realize the truth that your achievements have nothing to do with how valuable you
are: your self-esteem. Living from a place of love & connection where your achievements and self-esteem are separate, I find that people tend to achieve MORE, while also feeling good inside.

Being So Special & Unique, Being The Individualist:
You’re so unique, you’re so special, there’s no one else like you out there. We’ve all seen ads like this, right? They do it for a reason. If we believe that we’re not good enough as we are, then we have to feel different, special & unique to EARN our worth. Even if we say we’re doing it for ourselves rather than for other people, it’s the same thing.

Thinking that you’re so special means that you can also not be so special. It’s a scale
again. It’s a comparison again.

You’re just you, the same way a mango is a mango, a banana is a banana, and a peach
is a peach. Each fruit is not more special than the next one. It just is and it provides
what it provides. As funny as it sounds, fruits live and grow naturally, never needing to tell themselves that they’re so special. But we all know mangos taste better, right? haha

To put it simply, living out of love & connection rather than trying to always be significant
is where you get to fully feel the self-esteem that’s already inside of you.

What do you think? Share your thoughts in the comments below!