Most of us think we’ve already found our purpose and our own self worth. However, the truth is that still have yet to really find our own self worth. Most of us define our self worth and who we are by following religion, spouse, family, friends, community, or career. The fact is that none of these things truly contains your true self worth, and are actually very dangerous to wrap your self up in too closely.

When you wrap up your self worth and personal identity into something external (think religion, spouse, community, career, family, friends, or something else) then you are balancing the weight of who you are on something you do not control. Ultimately, you need to ask yourself, “What happens if I lose this thing I’ve invested my entire, or most of my, self worth and being into?” When you lose it, and inevitably you will lose it, you will find yourself lost.

Once you’re lost, you will likely fall into a deep depression and/or confusion state. These states are extremely dangerous when you’re lost because you will not be thinking clearly, logically, or even rationally. When you lose who you are due to losing something external you were so incredibly invested in, then your self worth and identity are ripped away too. What happens when you no longer know who you are anymore? It’s a scary place to be!

When you build up your self worth and identity, it’s important that you look inside yourself only. You can only truly control you. You can control how you react to events in life and whether you see things as either good or bad. You can choose how you react to life. You can not choose how other people or organizations react to events that happen. It’s important to center yourself in something that you can personally control.

Many people invest heavily in religion, and they are able to “find themselves” within their faith. While this seems to work for many people, it’s still dangerous. Religious views and beliefs even change over time as society changes. If you change with it, then you will either choose to change with it or you will be forced. This will inevitably lead to certain things you don’t personally agree with forcing you to follow along, or you will lose your belief system as it’s too wrapped up in other people. If you do choose to follow this route, please be sure to anchor your religious beliefs internally instead of externally in others that follow your faith. Finding your faith and beliefs internally is an extremely important path to follow in life.

As you find your beliefs, faith, self worth, and identity internally, you will find yourself much more free of being controlled by other people. This is not to say you don’t care about others, but rather you are much more in touch with your own internal truths. Doing this will keep you grounded in your own identity being self defined in a way that will make you a much healthier human being and hopefully more mentally stable as you move through life.

I’ve had my own troubles, self reflection, and truth finding to be done (and am still working on) to define my own personal self worth and identity in life. I’ve had some changes to life happen these last couple years that have pushed me to make hard choices and actions that I wouldn’t have dreamed of only a couple years ago. With this, I’ve chosen to hold on to life, to myself, and be guided by my own inner truths. In a way I’ve found a parts of myself that I haven’t seen in myself since I was a teenager. And, in other ways I’ve discovered parts of myself that I though were there for a long time, but never truly realized and felt the power of.

Finding and grounding your personal self worth and identity internally, is an extremely powerful things. To wrap this up, here’s a quote that I recently posted on social media that is something I’ve been thinking about for quite some time:

I am alive today because of me. Not because of God. Because of ME! I refused to give up on me. I do not belittle myself, call my self worthless, and claim that only God has kept me in this life. I’ve done this my mother fucking self! An invisible, never present God never did anything for me. I did this! I am doing this! I am my own God.

Never give up on yourself! You will find your self worth, greatness, and drive for life within yourself. You can not find your self worth in anything external; be it a spouse, friend, parent, children, or a god.

If you wrap up your self identity in something external, then when it inevitably fails you then you will be lost. It’s important to find your truth and meaning from within. Your strength is within; go find it!

Go on, find your own personal truths within yourself, and be the best person you could possibly be!