How to know your worth as a creative soul

“Why would people buy from me when there’s someone wayyy better, cooler, more popular than me?”
“Nobody bought the offer. That must mean I suck.”
“Barely anyone liked my post… maybe I should just delete it.”

These are just a few of the thought-attacks the ego mind can launch whenever you're putting your work out there as a creative or entrepreneur. It tells you that you're not worth anything, you're not good enough, your art (and therefore you) are a failure.

Sounds harsh spoken aloud, but that’s what the ego does to us.

I used to suffer from this existential crisis of “trying” to find my worth for a long time myself, so I know what it feels like to be aching with that pain behind the scenes. On camera and in the images you put out in the world, you may have the polished look of “having it all together” but in the back of your mind, it can feel like you’re walking on eggshells wondering if and when people will finally see your worth (and choose you). And some days, these thoughts can really hit the fan that you feel paralyzed and all you can do is be dragged by the heavy melancholic insecurities around your worth.

But the good news is, it doesn’t have to feel this way.
You can feel at peace even when someone “rejects” your offer.
You can feel rooted even when your post gets two likes.
You can feel whole even when someone chooses to work with someone else.

The ego will not like it– and it will say something like “No! You should be sad! You don’t deserve peace because you haven’t got (insert the goal milestone in your business)” and it will probably make you click off this article.

But if you’re still here, there is a part of you who knows the deeper truth. That is, that you can be at peace regardless of how your business performs.
And when your business does grow and receive more attention, your sense of worth can remain just as steady— because now it's not built on shifting ground anymore.

Stop finding your worth

The reason why it’s so hard for the ego mind to find your worth is because it thinks that your worth is “out there.” 

It thinks that your worth is in your title— 6-figure, 7-figure, industry leader. 
It thinks your worth is in the numbers—followers, likes, subscriber count.
It thinks your worth is in your appearance—whether you fit the latest standard of “mainstream beauty.”

But no matter how hard the ego tries to attain it’s worth, it will never truly find it. 

There is never going to be a moment where you are going to be like “wow after this achievement, I finally become a person of worth and I’m never going to have doubts about myself again.”

Instead what you think will give you your worth will always feel like it’s in the next thing. The next goal, the next achievement, the next skin care product. And that’s because your worth was actually never out there in the first place. 

Your worth has always been in you, my dear. Yes, the you who didn’t achieve the thing, get the like, get the sale (whatever that is that the ego is insecure about). It’s been all along in the you who you judged as failing, “bad,” not good enough, and inferior compared to other people.

All the worth you can attain from this world has always been inside of you in the first place: in the very big bright pair of eyes you were held right out of your mom’s womb. And the one who cried on the floor, being neglected or not looked at by everyone else. It’s only the ego mind that can’t see this.

You are not your product

There is a difference between who you are and what you create as a product (or an art, an offering, a digital course) etc. And it is this total identification with the things you call “me, my, mine” (such as “my” product, “my” stuff) that makes us suffer (and therefore feel unworthy).  

When really, who you truly are is the awareness that is the eternal, unchanging, boundless. Who you are is the Self that is one and the same with all beings in the Universe– just like how there is actually no separation between one droplet to another in the ocean. All is the ocean. You are the entire ocean—expressing itself uniquely through a wave called (insert your human name) you.

But the ego mind forgets this. Instead, it completely misidentifies you with the things you own/ you have. It thinks that because the idea (of the product/the offer) came through you, you have to “figure it out” all on your own, alone to make sure it works. When actually it is the cosmic field that gives us creative insights and ideas– the one Universal field that is connecting all of us. And this field is available also to all us if we just listen. The ideas that we call ours don’t actually come from the small, personal separate self.

But of course, instead of seeing your business (and your ideas) as life expressing itself, the ego mind completely identifies with the idea and therefore suffers… with your sense of worth plummeting whenever the product “fails” or the results don’t go according to the mind’s expectations. 

Offer yourself to love

When we are struggling with worth in business, that’s because we are looking at the world through the “empty tummy” of the ego mind. And I don’t mean in the sense of not having food, what I mean is, the emptiness of not having enough love and validation. 

And the thing is, this love has to come from You– your customers cannot give you that, your audience cannot give you that, your business cannot give you that. If you think they will, it’ll be a long, hard windy road until you find yourself at a deadend that they can’t. 

Which is why I believe that what’s even more important that trying to “figure out” what to do in your business is to be nourished by love first.

This is important for mainly two reasons: 1). When you are not receiving love for yourself, you will always be caught up with frustrations and worries about your business (thinking that your business is the problem, when it’s actually not the source of it).
And 2). When you are already full of love, you naturally will want to become of service to others. And THIS is when you no longer run your business to validate your own worth but to actually be of genuine service to reality. And people who do align with you will feel this overflow. This is also the path I believe to not only build a healthy, peaceful business that is sustainable for years to come but also fills you up in ways beyond money.

~
Your worth has never been up for doubt nor never to question about. Sure, there is the aspect of pricing for your product but your worth is different, it is immeasurable and unchanging no matter whether you price your product high or low, mid-tier or luxury, or go affordable or donation based. 

When you untie your worth to your business, your creations simply become based on preference and is geared more toward service to others, rather than being used as devices to bolster our own ego self. Also, you stop solely relying on your business (and your creations) to give you happiness when actually, they can’t – at least not in the unconditional way that God does. Instead, creation becomes a communion between you and the Creator, you and love. To me, this realization is where the actual freedom begins.