Whose Agenda Am I Supporting: Improving Our Self-Worth
Our March Relief Society Council focused on thinking about how we develop a healthy self-worth. The questions we considered included:
- How do we define ourselves and define our worth?
- What does it mean to allow others to define our worth?
- Whose agenda is this supporting?
We first considered some counsel from Elder Jeffrey R. Holland’s recent conference address, “Be Ye Therefore Perfect, Eventually.” Elder Holland said,
Around the Church I hear many who struggle with this issue: “I am just not good enough.” “I fall so far short.” “I will never measure up.” I hear this from teenagers. I hear it from missionaries. I hear it from new converts. I hear it from lifelong members. One insightful Latter-day Saint, Sister Darla Isackson, has observed that Satan has somehow managed to make covenants and commandments seem like curses and condemnations. For some he has turned the ideals and inspiration of the gospel into self-loathing and misery-making.3
What I now say in no way denies or diminishes any commandment God has ever given us. I believe in His perfection, and I know we are His spiritual sons and daughters with divine potential to become as He is. I also know that, as children of God, we should not demean or vilify ourselves, as if beating up on ourselves is somehow going to make us the person God wants us to become. No! With a willingness to repent and a desire for increased righteousness always in our hearts, I would hope we could pursue personal improvement in a way that doesn’t include getting ulcers or anorexia, feeling depressed or demolishing our self-esteem. That is not what the Lord wants for Primary children or anyone else who honestly sings, “I’m trying to be like Jesus.”4
Together, we discussed what it means when we define our personal self-worth based on comparisons with others. When we consider the question, “Will I ever measure up?” we often find ourselves feeling hopelessness or despair. Here are some paraphrased summaries of the comments that were made:
How Do We Define Ourselves and Define Our Worth?
Observation 1: Comparison is the thief of joy
I recently returned from a business trip back to my own home, and as I looked around me, all I noticed was chaos. My home was not in order, I felt discouraged, and I was unhappy. But then I had to take a step back and realize that I had just returned from a situation where everything in my world was perfectly curated for a few days. The decor in the hotel was beautiful, my bed was made for me, my meals were gourmet, even the rental car had that new car smell. I realized that my discouragement hinged on the fact that I was comparing that perfectly curated experience with the reality that at home, I am the one who does the laundry and cleans and makes the meals.
- Question: How did you pull yourself out of that funk?
- Answer: I had to validate my own frustration. First I called a friend and vented. I had to list it out, acknowledge that it was a real situation, and admit that it was OK for me to feel like, “This is rough. I have a lot on my plate and I can’t do it all perfectly.”
Don’t judge yourself sideways against others. Judge yourself based on what you are doing. It’s between you and the Lord.
Observation 2: Serve someone else. It changes everything
- When we serve others, we “lose ourselves” in making someone else feel better and that makes us feel better.
- Serving others helps us with making healthier comparisons. We realize that we probably wouldn’t want to exchange our problems with someone else.
Observation 3: We are all kind of an original
My ethnicity includes ancestors from at least 7 different countries and ethnic groups and as a consequence, I don’t look like the “average” person, ever. People have asked me, “What are you?”
I have had to learn that we are on this earth in order to define what we are. Once I realized I would never “fit in,” I also realized that I might as well carve out my own space. We are all kind of an original. I have focused for much of my life on the idea of “What can I do that’s not what everyone else does.” This has freed me to be true to myself and what Heavenly Father wants me to become.
Observation 4: Let it go
When I was a young mother, I realized very quickly that while many of the mothers around me were experts at styling their daughters’ hair, I was not. Others had beautiful French braids and cute curls and bows. I couldn’t do the braids. I could put a clip in. I had to come to grips with the fact that hair was not my expertise. I had to let it go.
What I didn’t realize was that one of my daughters, in an effort to look like her friends, learned to do her own hair beautifully. My lack created an ability in someone else. I think that’s pretty great.
When we compare our weakness against someone else’s gifts, we are always going to come up short. We need to recognize that comparisons are almost always unfair.
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in
-Leonard Cohen
What Does it Mean To Allow Others To Define Our Worth?
Observation 5: When people treat you poorly, it’s often because they feel poorly themselves.
When I returned from my mission, I met with a lot of animosity from a [loved one]. It hurt, and after a while it started to really bother me. She had made decisions that made her unhappy, and she was trying to make me unhappy too. A friend sent me a quote that helped:
If you are willing to look at another person’s behaviour toward you as a reflection of the state of their relationship with themselves rather than a statement about your value as a person, then you will, over a period of time, cease to react at all.
-Yogi Bhajan
Observation 6: Trust your own intuition, not someone else’s
Recently, I had a conversation with a loved one who is a new Mom. She’s had some difficulty with nursing her new baby and he’s not gaining weight. Everyone she knows, including me, has given her their opinion about what she should do. She should supplement with formula. She should give up and bottle feed. She should keep trying because nursing is best for the baby. Dozens of women she trusts disagree about what is the best course of action. “Bottle shaming” is real, and painful for a mother whose milk supply is inadequate to keep her baby healthy. Her doctor gave her a solution that seemed to bring peace: “You know what is best for your own baby. Make your decision based on that fact and stick to it.”
Observation 7: Don’t “get used” to abuse from others
Sometimes, in an abusive or co-dependent situation, we get caught in the trap of letting someone else define our worth. I had an acquaintance who worked with an abusive boss and it wasn’t until someone else heard him speaking to her inappropriately and warned her not to continue to accept that kind of treatment that she realized it was OK for her to assert her own will. She quit the next day. She said, “I didn’t realize how bad I was because I was used to it.”
Do not allow an abusive person to define you or your self-worth. It’s OK to distance yourself from people who do not treat you appropriately.
Whose Agenda Is This Supporting?
We were asked to ponder the question, “In what ways would my life be different if, before each thought I have or decision I make, I ask myself, ‘If I do this or think this, whose agenda am I supporting?'” We might often realize that the adversary is driving our thought process.
When we carefully evaluate whose voice we are listening to, we may also find that we are our own worst critic. When that is the case, we can readjust our thinking and be kinder to ourselves. We can ask our Heavenly Father to help us see a reflection of what he sees in us.
We closed with the following quote from an address by President James E. Faust, “What it Means to Be a Daughter of God.”
You sisters do not know the full extent of your influence. You sisters enrich all of humanity. All human life begins with you. Each woman brings her own separate, unique strengths to the family and the Church. Being a daughter of God means that if you seek it, you can find your true identity. You will know who you are. This will make you free—not free from restraints, but free from doubts, anxieties, or peer pressure. You will not need to worry, “Do I look all right?” “Do I sound OK?” “What do people think of me?” A conviction that you are a daughter of God gives you a feeling of comfort in your self-worth. It means that you can find strength in the balm of Christ. It will help you meet the heartaches and challenges with faith and serenity.