Why is feeling unworthy so epidemic in our society? In the promotional video I created for my upcoming book “All Roads Lead Home- Life, Love, and Forgiveness on the Camino de Santiago” I said:

“Some people might think walking 500 miles across Spain is a big deal. But when you don’t think too much of yourself, you figure that if you can do it, anyone can”.

After I got back and told others what I’d done, many were impressed. I wasn’t. Looking back at my life, for the most part I’ve always I tended to think that no matter what I did, it was no big deal, that it amounted to pretty much nothing.

As opposed to, say, understanding and embracing that every single thing we do means something. Learning this, discovering this within ourselves, waking up to this, may be the ultimate responsibility we have in life.

In my case, a combination of things from my past contributed to my feelings of unworthiness. Therapy, reflection, and meditation have given me a few insights into my unworthiness.

The best I can figure is that my self-loathing was a result of zits, shyness and a propensity to live in my head during my formative teenage years, wonderful parents who provided everything I needed but not much emotional support/positive reinforcement, and a marriage that, in the end, became emotionally derisive.

It’s the same shit we all go through in life

Well, it is and it isn’t. We all go though similar experiences, but we’re all affected differently by those experiences due to the infinite and nuanced nature of our individual souls.I got tired of using those experiences as an excuse. Maybe the whole point of life is to learn from those things that provide us with negative emotional reactions to circumstances in life. If I didn’t think about and learn from the events in my life, I’d still be held hostage by them, a victim of my past, not able to move forward and take responsibility for my actions.

If Love is the Answer, Why do we Hate Ourselves?

Why are we harder on ourselves than all the rest of the world put together? What is at the root of feelings of unworthiness? What keeps getting in the way of us taking responsibility for living our lives? Does Sasquatch really exist?

These are big questions. Here’s a few things to help you start thinking about how you may have come to feel unworthy:

  • You’ve been trained by others whose expectations you didn’t meet- you didn’t make their life complete like they were expecting. So you bend to please them, and in doing so:
  • You train yourself to care more about the approval of others than loving yourself. You refine your behavior so that others will love you.
  • You’ve been told repeatedly by someone you love that you’ll never amount to anything, so your subconscious feels unworthy and will sabotage you, making it harder to achieve goals. Even if you do, you’ll feel you don’t deserve it. Read more here.

What is the Answer?

Good question. Next week I’ll delve into some of the ways you can begin to understand feelings of unworthiness and start to free yourself from them. In the mean time, if you’ve got any information on Sasquatch, post it in the comments section. And make sure to follow me- I’ll be following up on the Sasquatch question in future posts…