A&A Ep. 91
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Karrie: [00:00:00] Welcome to Awakened and Alive After 40.
Dominique: If you're searching for inspiring and easy to apply Enneagram and Human Design content, then you've come to the right place. We're your hosts, Dominique
Karrie: and Karrie. Two friends and coaches who are passionate about sharing our knowledge and insights on these two powerful self awareness systems to help you step outside the box and into a life that is true to who you really are.
Dominique: We're so grateful to have you here. Let's jump into today's episode. Hey there friends and welcome back to Awakend and Alive After 40. If this is your first time listening in, we are so grateful to have you here. Today's episode is going to be on a topic I think every one of us can sometimes be challenged with. And it's about self-worth and [00:01:00] why we can struggle with our own self-worth and value. But more importantly, we want to share ways on how you can start to see your true value, to reflect that in everything that you do within your life and what you end up doing within the world. First off, if we look at the struggle that we all face with self-worth, one thing I love to remind myself and remind others is that it is completely normal to feel the need to belong and fit in. It is hardwired within our biology. If we don't feel that we fit in or belong, then that's when so much fear and anxiety starts to pop up in life, and it's a big part of identifying our value and worth. Unfortunately, it's not necessarily the truth behind a lot of the stories that we can create within our lives from personal experiences, [00:02:00] especially. Karrie, when you think of self-worth and the role it's played in your life, I was wondering if there was something maybe that you could share so the listeners can get an idea of that.
Karrie: Yeah, definitely. It has been something that I think as I've aged and just grown in my own work and my own understanding of myself and my connection to humanity as a whole, this has improved a lot.. It's one of the great things for me in my aging experience that this isn't quite as much of an issue as it was when I was younger. I think for me, and I've talked about this in past episodes, so this might be repeated information, but a lot of my conditioning had to do with believing that I had to have the exact same opinions and morals and [00:03:00] philosophies as whatever group I was trying to fit into because that is sort of how my family and my extended family always functioned, that everyone just always agreed because debate and disagreement just didn't exist in my childhood or my teenage years within my family structure. There was a lot of judgment placed on outside people who didn't agree with them, and so I grew up exposed to this a lot And it took a lot of time for me to work through what do I actually believe and to have the trust that that wasn't going to make me exiled out of my family that if I didn't believe what they believed or if I didn't have the same value system they had that they would still accept me as a member of the pack.
Dominique: Mm hmm. Yeah. And that's a real fear right there, potentially being exiled, casted out, and that's a legitimate valid fear and one that [00:04:00] I certainly can understand. As you were sharing some of your story, it also is a reminder to me that we all have different experiences that create specific stories and lead to different ways we experience worthiness or value or lack of. For me, when I look at my conditioning and my programming that was created over the years, it was really centered around, first off me not using my voice when I experienced some specific things and not using my voice because I felt wrong. I felt shameful for what had happened. And now, as I've worked on this part of myself over the years, I've come to realize that this muting of my voice because of feeling wrong or bad or shameful has bled over into a lot of other areas of my life, like not wanting to rock the boat or just [00:05:00] stir up emotions within somebody. I don't want to upset. I wanted to please. And this just all led into ways of behavior that now I know were not really helpful for me, but at the time they served a purpose. And that's an important part too, is like when we look at identifying our worthiness and value and starting to get curious about it, understanding that we do or did what we had to do, at the time, because that's all we knew, and that's how we were able to feel safe and connected in some certain way with others. So our conditioning is a big part of why we struggle with this sense of worthiness and value, the stories that we create based off of the experiences specifically in childhood. And unfortunately, many of us have never really been taught how to connect with our truth, connecting with who we truly [00:06:00] are. It was more so of, again, like trying to fit into family and not having your own identity or sense of self or being led to understand or being taught that, hey, it's a good thing for you to believe what you want to believe, as long as you're coming from a kind place, place of love. But again, our parents and our caregivers did the best they could with what they were dealing with, with their own conditioning. When it comes to this worthiness, this value, the lens of conditioning and the beliefs and stories that we create in childhood really become drivers for how we live our lives.
Karrie: Yeah, exactly. And the cynical side of me, or maybe we could call it the realistic side, has a little bit of a negative spin on it that it, as a whole, is somewhat done on purpose, because it's a lot easier when people are living in a sense of lack of self [00:07:00] or just living from this place of not feeling enough to market to people, to make people believe if they have this one thing, they will be enough. At least here in our society, in the United States, we live in a very marketing focused society where there's a lot of advertising and a lot of products and trying to get people to consume and buy these things. When we pick it apart, sort of from this bigger picture that maybe this was done to us without us knowing and looking at it sort of with this bird's eye view of, but I actually have control over this. I can take control of my own narrative. I can take control of what I believe about myself and know that I am perfectly whole just as I am.
Dominique: Exactly. Exactly. Oh, I love that. And one thing that I have learned over the years of just working on my own worth and value is that I was [00:08:00] the one that wasn't valuing myself and seeing my worth. And so if my belief about myself is that I am not worthy or enough, then I am going to act as if I'm not worthy or enough. And this is the tricky and sticky place is that it's easy to want to put it on others, to play the victim in a way. I'm saying that because that's where I was at for a long time in my earlier days. It's just so much easier to put that blame outside of ourselves because then we're still like, Oh, woe is me. It's not my fault. We're still not taking responsibility. So that means we don't have to do the hard work to actually clear this up then, because it's all on us. No one's coming to save us. It is on ourselves. And so when I came to realize, well, yeah, of course I am not being seen the way I want to be seen, or I'm not speaking up for myself the way I want to be [00:09:00] speaking up for myself because I don't see myself. I don't trust my own voice. This led into a lot of self-sabotage for me over the years. So when we can gain that clarity and realization that, hey, we get to decide our worthiness. And first off, there's no earning worth or value. You were born with that. And I love when Peter Crone talks about worth and value, and he gives the analogy of like when a baby is born, and I know you've heard this story before, Karrie. When a baby is born, everyone's just like lit up that, Oh my gosh, this beautiful being is here with us, this creation, how amazing. The baby has not yet earned its place in the household. It's not working, it's not paying for its food, but yet that doesn't mean it's less valuable or worthy of love and attention. It's a child, it's a gift that was born and we never lose that. It's inherent. [00:10:00] However, when we get older, we start to lose that insight within ourselves. It turns, like you were saying, turns into having to prove worthiness because you're trying to keep up with the world and how expensive things are getting nowadays too and if you're struggling different ways in life, it then falls on, well I must not be good enough. Or I'm not looked at as valuable. And in reality, what's happening on the inside? Where are we not seeing ourselves? Where are we not valuing ourselves? Because people are a mirror. That's one thing that I have really loved paying attention to is that the people in our lives become a mirror for what we need to continue to work on within ourselves.
Karrie: Another thing that is such a human thing, and I don't know why this is. Dominique maybe you have insight into this, but for whatever reason for nearly all of us, it's so much easier to believe the negative feedback [00:11:00] we get about ourselves and the negative, more insulting things people say to us. We just take that as truth, but when we hear the good things about ourselves and we are given any kind of positive feedback, we tend to ignore it or just sort of blow it off that it's not that big of a deal or it couldn't be true. We really ingest the negative. So I don't know why that is, but when we become aware of it, it's something that is with intention is really good to try to change within yourself.
Dominique: Exactly. And there's so many things that go on behind the scenes of that. Again, one of them is survival. We're going to be more tuned in to the possible bad things that could happen, and that's just instinctual. It's survival within the biology. But also when have we ever been told it's okay to celebrate yourself? It's okay to see the good that you're putting out there because oftentimes we're taught don't brag. Don't [00:12:00] gush over yourself. When in reality it's not a negative thing. It's not bragging unless you are doing so for attention. That's different. But we've never been taught that, Hey, it's great to celebrate gifts that you're receiving, verbal feedback, and just thanking someone for recognizing something about you that comes from your truth, not because you're trying to prove anything. So I think that's a big part of it as well. And in Human Design, what I really pay attention to within myself and other people's charts is the Will Center. And the Will Center is also known as the ego. Only one eighth of the population has this defined. And how obsessed are we about willpower, right? Most of us don't have a defined Will Center. So when it's open and undefined, it's not energy we can hold on to and that is ours permanently. We borrow it from others around us. We borrow it from the [00:13:00] transits. It's a center where you can really work hard to gain resources to help others and coming from a place of service to others. That's also a big part of the Will Center. But the shadow side of it is pushing yourself, working over the energy that you have to prove your worthiness, to prove that you are good enough, to prove yourself in some way. The chart shows that it's not with what we do that indicates our value. It's in who we are, who we're being. So it's not about doing anything. Your value is not in doing, it's in just being who you were born to be, who you were meant to be. And that's the beauty about Human Design is it shows you your natural gifts and your consistent energy and how you are meant to interact with the world and give to the world in [00:14:00] ways that nobody else can do because nobody else is like you. The more we live off of this blueprint, the map that Human Design offers us with the body graph, the more risk we are for burnout. Because, think about it, how exhausting would it be if you were at like a masquerade party and you're holding up a mask, how exhausting would it be for you to hold that mask up for hours and hours and hours? Your arm's going to get so tired and it's going to have to put it down eventually. We expend so much energy trying to be someone or something that we're not. And eventually we're going to burn ourselves out, and that's going to be manifestation of physical ailments. It's going to be just tremendous self-sabotage. And then this vicious cycle of believing that we're not worthy or good enough starts to really perpetuate as well, because we're trying to be something other than our authentic self. And that's something that I have loved learning within the Human Design world is [00:15:00] that it's okay to not have consistent energy. With an undefined Will Center, you have boom and bust cycles, doesn't mean you're not worthy. And for me as a Projector and now understanding my energy isn't consistent. I would judge myself all the time, and I know you've talked about it too, Karrie, about like not being able to keep up in the work fields and feeling exhausted for supposedly no reason whatsoever. For me, I was called lazy a lot. I was looked at what's wrong with you. You sleep so much. And that made me feel a tremendous sense of low worth.
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Karrie: Yeah, and talking about worth and sense of self and identity connects us directly when talking about the Enneagram system to the Heart Center when we're talking about Centers of Intelligence. And it's interesting because, Dominique, in the past, you've talked about that the Will Center and the Identity Center or the G Center in Human Design split into two, but that from the original chakra system was the heart center.
Dominique: Yes. Yeah. And now you can kind of see the G Center as the higher self and the Will as the ego, the personal self, but yes, they split from the heart chakra.
Karrie: And that aligns so much with what we think of in the Enneagram world when we're talking about the Heart Center. It's also called the Feelings Triad, and this is where our sense of self, our sense of identity resides. So in Human Design, you're thinking about pre-split, [00:17:00] and our identity is our true self and our ego.
Dominique: Yeah.
Karrie: We have both of these in us and we have to learn how to recognize the difference between the two because that is when you can really start to see your own self-worth. The work within the Heart Center in the Enneagram, and this is for all Enneagram types, because we all have all three Centers of Intelligence. There are three types that we call Heart Center types, and that's because they have some commonalities related to this center. These are Types 2, 3, and 4. But when I'm talking about this center, this can relate to any of us, but Types 2, 3, and 4 might really relate with some of these things on a strong level because these types and when we're in our Heart Center, we do have more of a common focus on our self image and maybe even what we would call our false self, so what we're projecting to the world [00:18:00] because we are struggling to accept ourselves, and we want to be accepted by the outside world. So this is how we go about doing that. So within this center we are seeking significance and identity. Our egos and our personalities really desire attention from other people. So within the Heart Center, in the Enneagram system, can look a little bit attention seeking, maybe in different ways. Maybe they're doing it through acts of service, and they just want to get that positive feedback from people. Or maybe they're doing it through trying to climb the ladder of success so that they are admired by people. We all have this within us and understanding your Enneagram type can just give you a clearer picture of maybe how your own personality or your own ego has gone about trying to accommodate your own lack of self-worth.
Dominique: Mm hmm. Yeah. And I love that this just gives us deeper insight [00:19:00] into again that ego structure, how our conditioning is playing a role in things. I think again, I want to reiterate that there is nothing wrong with the ego, and it's there in all of us, it's always going to be a part of us. And the more we accept it and welcome it in ways and just make friends with it, then the less problematic it will be. When we talk about now how to start seeing your true value, I think that's a really important part of it is understanding that your ego is not bad. It is just there as a way to protect you. At least it believes it's protecting. And it's just understanding that you don't have to listen to it. You get to decide who you want to be, how you want to behave and act. And I think, we've talked about this plenty of times, identifying core values is another component that can be helpful. But first understanding there is nothing [00:20:00] wrong with feeling low within your self-worth or value and listening to that little ego voice and being guided. It's about how do you want to change this and actually start following your truth?
Karrie: I know it's easy to say these words and everyone's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, but to really know you are you. You are your soul, your true self, your spirit, however you want to call it, whatever word you connect with the most. You aren't your personality. You aren't your ego. Yes, like Dominique said, it's a part of us, and it's something we work with and are exposed to on a daily basis, but that's not the core of who we are. That can be really scary, but also really empowering and enlightening when we realize this. And this is something that just, like, kind of hit me out of the blue one day, probably five or six [00:21:00] years ago when I was meditating. And it just, like, boom, was like a message given to me, and it's the first time I really, really sat with this and really processed it. I think that might have been the turning point when I just really started wanting to decondition and live my life in a more authentic way.
Dominique: Yeah, that's powerful because a similar thing happened to me. It was something that I was trying to push and force was to finally believe that I am worthy. I am of value. I'm not broken. And once I stopped pushing it and I just surrendered to like, okay, I'm gonna take just daily action steps little by little that's when I had this major download where I was like Okay, I'm ready to surrender to all of it. And I am just going to do what I can to live from a place of love. I am loving myself. I am loving others. And that means, for me, like speaking my truth that was hidden for a very long time. And unfortunately, speaking your truth is not always a [00:22:00] like, Oh, this is so great kind of thing. No, unfortunately, it ended up. hurting a lot of people that I cared for and loved in order for me to release myself from my ego structure and the sabotage that I was carrying with me. I agree with you, Karrie, sometimes it just happens. But having that connection to knowing like you are more than this physical body that you're in. You are so much more than that. It's just incredibly beautiful. But I think also, we're talking about the body and just connecting more to the soul level, really starting to incorporate more body work practices, I think is a huge one for us to begin to see our true value because if we can really start to create more safety within our nervous systems and find more peace within connecting to our body and saying like, Oh my gosh, I get to move my body every single day. I get to use my voice. I get to whatever it might be and showing [00:23:00] gratitude for that and appreciating that about yourself I think can be really powerful, getting out of the mind and the overthinking because that's where fear also resides, and the ego can take hold and trying to shift a little bit more into the body with some sort of practice, whatever that might be to get you into your body. I know we've talked about Yoga, dance, singing, just play in general, sports activities. Whatever feels good to you.
Karrie: Something that was imperative for me, and I'm not saying this is something that everyone could benefit from, but I do think spending time alone with yourself allows you to have or cultivate more of that connection to your true self. And I'm not even saying you have to be meditating. If meditating is something you like doing or it's part of your practice, go for it. But just being, not doing something, just being, just sitting quietly, observing whatever's around you, whether you're inside, whether you're outside, [00:24:00] observing your own internal state. This just helps us disconnect from that personality structure and just realize we are part of a greater whole and gives us some perspective.
Dominique: Absolutely. And like we said earlier, our value and worth is not found in what we do. It's in our being. And just being within ourselves and trying to find that connection to ourselves so that way we can live more on path and not so much in that ego structure. I would love to just leave us with a couple of clarity questions, whether you want to journal on this or just think about it, these questions can really help you to connect more to why you might be feeling that lower worth or value and how you can start taking action to shifting that. So the first question is, what do I believe about my value and worth? And when I [00:25:00] think about that for myself, well, I believed that I had to be the good girl, that I had to keep everything to myself and not burden other people. So just looking at what do you believe about your value and worth? What did that look like? The second one is, what am I allowing to determine my value? Are you allowing your job? Are you allowing your family, your partner, your friend, wherever it might be, but diving deep into what are you allowing? Because this is something that we allow. We have control over it. And it's getting curious not judging or anything like that. Get curious so you can start to make those changes. So what am I allowing to determine my value? Last one here and this is a really really powerful one. It's if I believed that I am enough and valuable because I simply exist, how would my life be different? And really sit [00:26:00] with this one. How would your life be different if you 100 percent belief that you are enough, lovable, valuable, just because you exist. What would you do differently? How would you speak differently about yourself, about others? How would you act differently? What could be possible for you then?
Karrie: Thank you for listening to this episode. Your support is so appreciated.
Dominique: If you'd like to have a question answered about your Human Design or Enneagram type in a future episode, you can submit it through the link in the show notes. We'd love to hear from you.