Every child arrives in the world with a fundamental sense of their own value.
When you watch a very young child.
You see that they don't question whether they deserve to be loved.
They don't wonder whether they are worthy of attention or care or delight.
They simply are.
Fully present,
Fully themselves,
Fully convinced of their own importance in the world.
That unselfconscious aliveness,
That unquestioned sense of mattering is every child's birthright.
And then slowly.
Things start to happen.
Words are said.
Messages are absorbed.
Experiences occur that teach a different lesson.
Not always.
Through cruelty.
Sometimes through well-meaning people who were themselves wounded.
Doing the best they knew how.
And sometimes through environments that were simply created.
Well equipped to reflect back to a child the truth of who they were.
Sometimes.
Through a thousand small little moments of feeling invisible.
Or not enough or the contrary too much.
And the child draws a conclusion.
And quiet.
Daddy?
Yet devastating conclusion that lives below the level of conscious thought.
A conclusion that says,
I am not quite as valuable as other people,
I think.
My needs are less important than others.
My voice matters less.
My presence is somehow more of a problem than a gift.
That conclusion is not the truth.
About you.
It never was.
Low self-worth is not a fixed trait.
It's not who you are.
It's a story that was written about you or absorbed by you before you had the maturity or the information to question it.
And stories however long they have been running.
Can be rewritten.
The rewriting doesn't happen all at once.
Soft words that was slowly eroded by a thousand moments.
Is rebuilt the same way.
Thousand small moments of choosing to treat yourself as if you matter.
Not because you feel like you do at first,
Especially at first.
But because you choose to act as if it is true.
Until the feeling catches up with you.
To internalize this,
I have a practice that I hope you will find helpful.
I call it True Think.
Now close your eyes if you can and take one slow breath with me.
Inhale.
And exhale out.
Now,
I would like to invite you to find three things that are true about you.
Not about what you have achieved.
Not about your usefulness to others.
Not about how you look or how much you earn or what anyone has said about you.
But three things that are simply impossible.
And undeniably true about who you are.
You know,
This could be maybe your capacity for love.
Maybe the way you notice things others miss.
Maybe your particular kind of humor.
The fact that you keep showing up even when it's hard.
The care you put into small things.
Whatever is.
Genuinely,
Simply true about you as a person.
I will stay quiet while you think about it.
If you could come up with three things.
Let those be enough.
Just three true things.
Held gently.
And now it's time to open your eyes.
I would like you to listen to me,
Please.
Your worth was never something you needed to earn.
It arrived with you.
It has been here the whole time.
The work is not to create it.
Clear away everything.
That has been piled on top of it.
And remember.
Made this message.
Stay with you.
May my voice Stay with you.
And every time you face doubt about yourself.
May you remember.
This moment.
Namaste.
