I want to tell you about the book I’m reading at the moment. It’s called “Worthy” and it’s written by Jamie Kern Lima – a woman who founded a highly successful make-up brand in the US – IT Cosmetics.
Jamie’s story is one of endless rejections from countless beauty stores, simply because she wanted to create make-up for real women with real skin challenges – rather than market her product using photoshopped images of flawless models to do so. One after another, these stores told her that women will only buy makeup from images depicting “unattainable aspiration”.
Yup, that’s right. These companies wanted Jamie to pretend that her cosmetics could create this kind of fake “perfection” – even though they knew that it was unattainable. As insane and toxic idea – and yet, sadly, the “industry standard”.
Eventually, Jamie was able to secure herself a ten-minute slot on a US shopping channel, where, against the advice of her PR consultants, she presented her products using real women, with real skin challenges. At the end of this 10 minutes, the shopping channel had sold out of their entire offering of her product range.
As Jamie herself said at the time – “Real women had spoken!”
Great success followed, but Jamie realised that, despite all her fame and fortune, she still felt empty and unfulfilled. And was determined to find out why.
Digging deeper, she realised that she held an underlying feeling of “not being enough” – and she came to realise that, whilst she had bucketloads of self-confidence (and wouldn’t have been able to create such a successful company if she didn’t), her self-worth was painfully low.
And that self-confidence and self-worth were two completely different things entirely.
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Confusing the two is such a common thing in this world. Both of them are internal traits. But what is the difference?
Jamie sums up self-worth as the internal, deep-rooted belief that we are enough and worthy of love and belonging, just as we are. And self-confidence, whilst also an internal trait, is generally linked to our assessment of how we compare to the outside world.
Self-confidence is linked to external things that can fluctuate often – hence our self-confidence can fluctuate often too. It can rise and fall based on mood, comparisons, circumstances, performance and approval from others.
Self-worth is knowing we are enough, lovable and innately valuable, exactly as we are. Self-worth is our foundation and is unshakeable. Self-confidence is the house we then build on top of that foundation.
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It is SO easy to subscribe to society’s idea of what “success” actually is. But we simply cannot expect sustained fulfillment and happiness from anything external. That’s way too fickle and fragile.
In our romantic relationships, the level and depth of vulnerability, intimacy and love can only be as strong as the level and depth of vulnerable, intimate love we have for ourselves.
And in these relationships in our lives, the level of pain we’ll allow another person to cause us, whether it’s through harmful words or actions, often hovers right around the standards we have for the level and frequency of hurtful thoughts, ways and words we think and say to ourselves too.
(Just a side note here – empathetic, open-hearted people are a narcissist’s dream. Which is a whole subject for another day. And if you have ended up in a relationship – or even a friendship – with one – as I know so many of us have – this does NOT excuse their part in that, of course. So we definitely do not want to take that part of things on. BUT – at the same time, looking at how we allowed that energy to enter our lives in the first place is what we are talking about here. Because that empowers us not to let that happen again. With anyone – ever).
And it’s the same with our bodies – which can feel like a source of shame or a source of wonder, all depending on our relationship with worthiness.
I would suggest that nowhere does low self-worth show itself more clearly than in our relationship with our bodies, with our sexuality and in our intimate relationships. Most of us have taken on far too many BS external ideas as what all of those should look like.
I know that space only too well. Hence me being here now, doing the work that I do. Doing my best to bust those myths for myself – and to provide some suggestions as to how other women can do the same.
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I’m sure you can relate to the experience of thinking that if we focus on the things that help our self-confidence, we will somehow fix our lack of self-worth. But it just doesn’t work that way.
When I started doing this women’s work 10 years’ ago, I initially felt an incredible self-confidence boost at how it was received by so many. I couldn’t keep up with the demand I received for yoni eggs and I was receiving a lot of external validation for what I was bringing to women in South Africa. And, I don’t mind admitting, it felt good (for a moment at least!)
But, as the years have gone on, I’ve come to realise that I was still only at the very start of creating a healthier and more loving relationship with myself – and that I will only ever feel fulfilled to the extent that I have truly shifted that relationship – not by how other women had done so for themselves, regardless of whether I had been the catalyst for that or not.
Being comfortable in our own skin is so liberating – and I’ve certainly come a long way in that over the past 10 years, as this was definitely not my programme growing up. Accepting and stepping into my authentic Self has been a core focus for me – and I look forward to learning some new ideas around this as I continue reading this book.
For me, there’s really nothing sexier and more attractive than someone who is authentically themselves. When someone is authentic, it also extends an invitation for us to be authentically ourselves too – and, in that state, we can truly relax and drop our masks. Which is such a massive relief!
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We will never stop being called to grow and expand. But when we answer that call and take the next steps towards that, we get closer and closer to being who we came here to be. And that is not – as a dear friend pointed out to me many years ago now – to live our lives hiding our light under a bowl.
We need to stop hiding. Any aspect of ourselves. And to start living as the real us, more and more each day. We are not our achievements – we are each our own, unique beings – and we are full and whole and enough. Exactly as we are.
That’s not to say that we shouldn’t still have self-confidence goals too. Quite the opposite in fact. Putting ourselves “out there” is a necessary part of growth and expansion.
But those goals need to be underpinned by the knowing that we are all unique and perfect embodiments of the Divine. And when we really know that – in every cell of our being – then any growth from there starts to become a fun and exciting adventure rather than a scary and impossible mountain to scale. And from that place we can truly and authentically spread our light out into the world.
Until we can truly tap into our authentic Selves and be here exactly as who we are, at the very core of our beings, we will never find the fulfillment and true, profound happiness that we all seek and deserve.
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Reading “Worthy” is proving to be an excellent reminder of that for me. And is pushing me towards the next, very exciting chapter in my work. (About which you will be the first to know once it is ready to share with the world!)
At the time of writing, I’m only about halfway through this book, but really felt to share what I have read so far, because it resonates deeply. It’s well worth a read, even if you have already moved mountains on your own self-love/self-worth journey.
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