A Framework For Self Worth: Values VS Self Concept.

What you were taught.

How you were raised and what you were taught as a child has a big impact on how you see the world and how you see yourself. What was most important growing up? Was it looking the best on the first day of first grade, or being kind to your peers? Performing the best athletically, or being a team player? The ways we are taught to value things as kids are the ways we value ourselves and others as adults.

Let’s say you’re a great basketball player. Perhaps you’re even the BEST basketball player in your high school and you’re told you’re the best basketball player in your state. As a result of your talents on the court, you’re even offered a college scholarship to play basketball, how exciting!

Now let’s say you get to college and it turns out you’re not that great at basketball. Lets even imagine that you’re not even good enough to be on the team….

If your self worth was based on the self concept of “I’m an amazing basketball player” then your world would be crushed… you’d probably be feeling lost, anxious, depressed, unsure what to do with your self now that everything you worked so hard for was not coming to fruition. You’d be in a tough spot.

On the other end of the spectrum… if your self worth was based on your values then this unfortunate setback would be a lot easier to deal with. Let’s say that instead of deriving all your self worth from the “I’m an amazing basketball player” self-concept, you were raised in a way that helped you to derive your self worth from an evenly distributed set of values. Perhaps things like hard work, team work, learning, kindness, health, family and relationships were also things that were important to you and things that you spent time building in your life. Would you still be disappointed because your basketball career was ending? Of course, but your life would still have meaning, direction, and purpose.

Often times things do not work out the way we want/hope/expect in life. But why are some people so much better at handling these setbacks? Because they focus back on value based behaviors as opposed to how they look, what they’ve achieved, or what material possessions they have.

They derive their self-worth from the pride they take in the way they live their life.