Monday, May 23, 2011

Self Worth

The following question was submitted anonymously using the form on the right.

Q: How does one deal with very frustrating feelings that the Yetzer Hara tries to make a person feel? It can make a person feel worthless! When a person is very upset, they feel like just giving up and they aren't worth anything... How do you get those thoughts out of your head?

A: Thank you for asking this question. It is a very important one since we all feel, at one point or another, that we messed up and it's hard to get back up again and keep trying.

These thoughts are coming from your Yetzer Hara trying to make you feel worthless so you won't even try again. People make mistakes. That's part of life. The important thing is to get up again and not to let anything stand in your way by making you feel like you don't have value.

Every person is important.

Proof?

"The day you were born was the day Hashem decided that the world cannot exist without you!"
Isn't that powerful?
And the fact that He wakes you up each morning shows that you have something to accomplish today and you are an important person in the world Hashem created!

So don't let these little voices in your head get in the way of your personal growth because in truth, there's so much you can do!

When you start feeling down and are not in the mood of trying, it's hard to know what to do next. One thing you can try is to talk to yourself. These days, with people walking around with tiny bluetooth devices in their ears, you wont even look strange if you walk down the street talking to yourself lol! Kidding! You don't have to literally talk to yourself with your mouth but you can talk to yourself in your head. Tell yourself that you are important. Repeat that quote to yourself - because it's 100% true! Think of the times someone made you feel important about what you did - a thank you, a compliment, a kind word, a smile...and then go do that back to someone else. When you make someone else feel valued, you start to realize how important you are - because you have the power to lift someone's spirits and make their day!!

Remind yourself again and again that you are important and do something every day that leaves an impression on someone else so that at the end of the day you can look back and say, I did something today that made a difference. Then, you'll start to feel that you really are important, even if you didn't feel that way before.

When you impact someone's life, even by brightening someone's day, you are showing them that they are important to you - and then you will feel that you are important to someone else!

I'm not sure if this fully answers your question. Please let me know what you think of what I wrote and if it helps at all and if you still have questions about this.

Does anyone else have advice for the person who asked this? What things do you do to get yourself out of that mood of worthlessness and feeling down? How do you show yourself that you are important?

4 comments:

  1. Whoever asked this, thanks for bringing it up cuz it’s a normal feeling that we sometimes get stuck with, but the more we speak to ourselves positive and remind ourself of how special we are, the less we will feel like this. It is only normal to feel like this, because sometimes we do stuff or say stuff that we wish we should’nt have or sometimes we didn't do something that we wish we should’ve done. But in the end whatever did happen, happend already. If you can fix it great!!! But if not, hopefully next time you won’t make that same mistake.
    Devoiry once wrote a few posts back, a post about mistakes and said that – "Mistakes are only bad if you don't learn from them. Mistakes are actually good - if you take a lesson from whatever you did and use it to change or grow in the future or to make sure that specific situation doesn't happen again." And it's sooo true!
    And Hashem gave us the most unbelievable gift of teshuvah! So if we did something wrong, we can always return to him! He's always waiting to listen to us!!! He is the best listener in the whole entire world!!!
    But the Yetzer Hara comes along and tries to make a person get all down just cuz they did something wrong- but really we can come out as a much stronger person if we learned from what we did, did something about it, and made a change! And as long as you are alive, it's never too late :)
    Hope that horrible feeling goes away real quickly and hope that it gets replaced with a super positive feeling about yourself that you are sooo special and worth sooo much. And remember- You have a piece of Hashem in you! That alone should make you feel sooo good about yourself!

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  2. Great answer! Thanks!
    But wahat if because of what you did or said, people will judge you from now on in a certain way, and eventhough u move on and learn from what u did, u still don't want these ppl thinking about you like that! How do deal with that?

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  3. When you made a change and you know that you corrected yourself, YOU KNOW AND HASHEM KNOWS!!! and it doesn't matter what everyone else thinks because, you made a change and Hashem knows EVERYTHING from beggining to end! He created you, he knows you're thoughts, he knows you're actions and he knows how much you try. So what really matters is what Hashem knows, not ppl.!! If you could try to explain to these ppl that you learned from what you did, and they understand you, it's great. But always remember, HASHEM KNOWS WHAT YOU DO AND HE ALWAYS ACCEPTS YOU WITH OPEN HANDS WHENEVER A PERSON WANTS TO RETURN TO HIM!!!

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  4. Just want to add a few words:

    If you are a certain way for a long time and then you change, after a while people will only remember you as the person that changed and they will forget about the past. The present is what counts!!!

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