I have had several conversations recently about ‘worth’. With fellow therapists, often the conversation is around charges reflecting worth.
With clients, sadly the conversations all too often are about beliefs that they have no worth.
Humans love to be able to measure things, to have a fixed number, or a framework to work within. Without doubt, these can be very helpful for some things – have you ever tried to bake a cake without measuring the ingredients? I can tell you from experience it doesn’t always end well!
Certainty and surety somehow give a human mind comfort. We use guides to try to measure our worth, like education, job, financial status, where we live and even the car we drive. Minds apply meaning to who and how we are based on so many external factors.
These measurements we use are all created by beliefs and learnings we collect through life. But the very nature of thought created measurements, means they are transient; they will change and are not fixed. They are simply a story of worth we believe in a moment.
So, what DOES give us worth? Do we even need to measure it?
Being human, my mind wants to offer all sorts of reasons and explanations to define worth. It’s what minds do. Minds are great at justifications and explanations.
Beyond our humanness, in that space which is not limited by thoughts and a need to define or understand, comes an answer for me which feels different, easy, simple.
Our worth is not measurable, because it does not need to be measured! Worth is not something which needs to be earned or justified or held on to. Worth is innate, intrinsic. We all have worth.
Let’s take our 3 little terriers, for example. They don’t own a car or a house. They don’t have a job, and they certainly don’t pay for their food or toys. They have never been to school or university, (well that’s not strictly true, Doug went to 6 classes of puppy school, the first of which he was sent to the naughty corner!) and still, they have enormous worth. They are, alongside Brian, the most valued things in my life.
We are born with worth, we live with worth, and we end our lives with just as much worth as ever. Or worth is constant, unchanging and unchangeable. Of course, sometimes our own worth and that of others looks like it is variable. That’s just thought clouding our view temporarily.
What a relief! We don’t have to DO anything to have worth, other than, perhaps, look to a space beyond thoughts. Rest easy. Your worth is real and cannot be removed.
