3 Practical Ways to Enhance Your Sense of Self-Worth
By Casey Raffle
It’s no secret that social media has changed our world in drastic ways. Social media has its benefits, such as the ability to stay connected with others despite physical limitations. At the same time, the type of connection social media provides can seriously warp our view of ourselves and others. Most people tend to display only their best selves—the selves they want to promote—while hiding their struggles and failures, leading us to make false comparisons with our own lives. Copious research has shown that social media can harm our sense of self-worth, and young women are especially vulnerable.
We commonly equate the idea of self-worth with self-esteem, as they are closely related concepts. Dr. Christina Hibbert, an expert on the subject, explains a critical difference: Self-esteem describes how good or bad we feel about ourselves—particularly in relation to our skills and abilities—while self-worth is the recognition that we are all inherently valuable and worthy of love despite what we look like, how many friends we have, or what we can or cannot achieve.
Building self-esteem involves attempting to improve ourselves: furthering our education, getting in better shape, learning a new skill, etc. While these are all really positive things, tying our sense of worth to our self-esteem can be a trap. Despite our achievements, we can almost always find someone else who has achieved more, and mistakes and failures are an inevitable part of life. Someone who typically gets good grades in school may suddenly feel unworthy if they have a rough patch one semester. Emphasizing self-esteem can also prevent us from connecting deeply with others, as we tend to focus more on comparisons and competition than on the struggles we all share as human beings.
Self-worth, on the other hand, transcends temporary events like successes and failures. When you have a strong sense of self-worth, you know you are good, capable, and worthy regardless of anyone else’s achievements or how successful you feel in the moment. Self-worth offers us a more stable way of viewing ourselves while allowing us to hold more compassion for other people.
Here are three ways you can start to strengthen your sense of self-worth:
Limit time spent on social media. While it’s unrealistic to completely cut out social media, we can restrict the amount of time we spend on it. Aim for capping your time to about one hour per day. You can also curate your feed to avoid interacting with people or accounts that lower your sense of self-worth. Look for accounts that promote authenticity, offer helpful information, or benefit your mental health in any other way.
Practice recovering from failure. When we’re constantly striving to enhance our self-esteem with new achievements, it can feel terrible to fail. Yet, we all experience the pain of failing at various points throughout our lives; no one can succeed at everything. Brené Brown, an expert on vulnerability, explains that hiding things that make us feel ashamed actually increases our suffering. Start by trying something new that won’t have grave consequences if you fail, such as taking up knitting, following a new recipe, or learning to skateboard. Chances are you will not be an expert on the first or second try, and that is okay! Maybe you can share your botched cake or a video of a fall off your skateboard on your social media feed. You may find that in doing so, others will relate and feel more comfortable sharing their failures, too.
Use self-compassion. Talk to yourself with the kindness that you would offer a good friend. Dr. Kristin Neff, a self-compassion expert, has described the profound benefits that self-compassion can have in counteracting feelings of low self-worth. Practice using statements such as, “What I am going through is hard, and I am doing the best I can under the circumstances,” or “Everyone makes mistakes, and I deserve kindness and forgiveness just like anyone else.” When we remind ourselves that we are worthy of love and belonging even in our worst moments, we reinforce our sense of self-worth.
