Self worth is a feeling of care, respect, and love for yourself. Let’s talk about why self worth matters, and how you can use these affirmations for self worth to work on developing your self worth. Plus, I’ll show you a couple other resources including a free printable, for improving your self worth!

I once felt confused about what self worth is and wondered why it didn’t seem confusing to other people. I remember learning about self worth in elementary school and being absolutely perplexed; we sang a song with lyrics that said, “I’m special, you’re special, too,” and I just remember thinking, “How does that even make sense?” In hindsight, I understand that my childhood experiences taught me that self worth was a bad thing to have. I also now understand that plenty of other people also find self worth to be a confusing topic.

So what is self worth? Self worth is a feeling (a felt connection) to yourself as a person deserving of care, respect, and love. One of the reasons self worth was so confusing to me was because I would have intellectually agreed that I deserved care, respect, and love, but I couldn’t feel any of that. In fact, I couldn’t feel much of anything because I was pretty disassociated and didn’t know it. There was also a whole subconscious part of me that didn’t believe I was worthy of care, respect, and love, because I didn’t experience much of that as a child. Until I could learn to connect with that part o me, the feeling of self worth was pretty elusive.

Struggling with perfectionism can be rough. Appearing “perfect” is rewarded in school, the workplace, and in plenty of other facets of life. Perfectionism provides us with the illusion that we can gain acceptance, love, belonging, and safety with hard work. But in the end, perfectionism takes a heavy toll on the body, mind, and soul, and it robs us of an authentic connection with ourselves and others.

Perfectionism has been a long-time struggle for me. I grew up in a household with a mother who used perfectionism as a coping mechanism to deal with an abusive childhood she refused to acknowledge, and she passed both the abuse and the coping mechanism of perfectionism on to me. I could still lower the standard I hold myself to (I definitely consider dealing with perfectionism an ongoing journey), but I cannot describe how freeing it was to finally “give up” and look at the reasons behind my drive for perfection rather than distracting myself with to do lists, tasks, and activities.

On the journey to let go of perfectionism, one of the early things I worked on was changing the way I talk to myself. At first, I thought all the going on about positive self talk was really hokey, but I now understand just how important talking to myself gently is. Affirmations for perfectionism were game changing for me, so below I’ve put together a few examples of positive self talk for perfectionism that I hope will be helpful to you as well!