How Your Self-Worth Affects Your Success

by Tiffany Walking Eagle | 9-minute read

I don’t think there are any real “secrets” to success.

People love the idea of it being some big secret that once they know it, success will magically happen. We love life hacks and shortcuts but in reality, most of the time success comes from just doing the work.

However, though there aren’t any magical secrets to success, there are ways we can foster success in our lives.

I’ve been reflecting lately on the relationship between our self-worth and our success. How does our self-worth affect our success? Is low self-esteem holding us back from the things we want?

Let’s dig into that a little bit together.

1. Healthy self-esteem and the habits that foster success play into each other.

When you value yourself, you take care of yourself. You say no when you need to. You set boundaries with people. You take care of your body even when it takes effort because you know it’s for your ultimate benefit. You do the hard things and work on yourself because you know you’re worth it.

Here are a few questions to ask yourself that might not seem related to self-worth, but they are:

How disciplined are you?

Do you tend to do the minimum when it comes to self-care?

How productive are you?

How well do you manage your time?

Now, just because you struggle with these things sometimes doesn’t mean you have low self-worth. No one is perfect at these all the time. However, if you’ve found that you’ve really struggled with these things throughout your life and can’t seem to figure out why, it’s possible that low self-worth is at play.

Time management, productivity, self-care, and discipline are essential to success, but those of us with low self-esteem might find ourselves just trying to get by without really prioritizing these things.

Even worse, we beat ourselves up for not having figured these things out yet, further diminishing our self-worth!

And guess what? When we start to work on/master discipline, productivity, efficient time management, and self-care, we feel a sense of pride and accomplishment, which is a major boost to our self-worth.

So it’s like there are two different cycles. The healthy cycle:

Healthy self-worth —> productivity, time management, self-discipline, self-care —> Sense of accomplishment and pride —> Healthy self-worth

And the unhealthy cycle so many of us can get stuck in looks more like :

Low self-worth —> low productivity, poor time management, lack of self-discipline/self-care —> Feelings of shame —> Low self-worth

Please understand that I’m not saying that accomplishments equal self-worth. However, when you put in the work for yourself and the things you want, you’re sending the subconscious message to yourself that you’re worth it.

When you don’t put much effort into yourself and the things you want, you’re telling yourself you’re not worth it.

I’m also not necessarily saying that healthy self-worth is the ultimate secret to success, but maybe, just maybe, it is a huge piece of the puzzle that you’re overlooking.

Also, when you have healthy self-worth, your perception of success might change.

Success might not mean all the material things you think you want. It might shift from society’s definition of success to what it looks like for you as an individual.

It might not mean fame or fortune or a flashy image. It might just mean being able to comfortably provide for your family, or having everything you need, or helping others in the way you’ve always longed for.

As successful entrepreneur Gary Vee has said, if you’re happy, you’ve won. (I’m paraphrasing, but he said something like that!)

But it’s pretty hard to be truly happy if you don’t value yourself.

2. Negative thoughts and self-talk may be damaging more than we realize.

Do you often fall into negative thinking patterns? Do you talk to yourself as you would someone you care about, or is your inner dialogue hateful and harmful?

Everyone’s inner dialogue will look different, but all of us have the ability to fall into harmful negative thinking patterns that can quickly send us into a downward spiral of self-pity and low self-worth.

I’ll share one of the negative thinking patterns that I often battle. I struggle with a core belief that I ruin things or mess things up. I’ve had to fight feelings of being a failure or disappointment for much of my life. I still fight this belief to this day!

While I’ve done a lot of self-work to improve, and I’ve gotten a lot better at stopping negative self-talk when it starts, I still can fall into this pattern so quickly. It usually starts with making a mistake or some form of conflict, then the thoughts start to flood in. You always ruin things. You can’t get anything right. You always disappoint everyone. And on and on it goes.

Can you relate?

These horrible, abusive thoughts can flood in so quickly, and we give them far too much merit. I think when our self-worth is low, we feel as though we deserve to berate ourselves. We screwed up, so now we must pay our penance by beating ourselves up.

This is SO counterproductive!

We waste so much energy on beating ourselves up! Valuable energy that could be spent on working to be better.

You see, these negative thinking patterns are a trap. Stop believing the lie that you can guilt yourself into growth.

Has beating yourself up been an effective method so far in pushing you toward your goals? I’m willing to bet the answer is no.

So what do we do instead?

When those negative thoughts come up, learn to challenge and question them. Put them into perspective and be realistic about whether or not they are helping you.

Some questions to ask yourself when difficult situations arise and negative thoughts surface:

Is this belief about myself true or not true? Why or why not?

Am I being honest with myself or am I being negative to punish myself?

Is my perspective making this situation better or worse?

What good can I find in this situation? What changes can I make?

Will this matter in five years?

Too often we throw logic and truth out the window when we allow our nasty inner critic to take over, so try giving the negative self-talk a reality check.

3. When it comes to doing things for you, do you take the easy way out?

Fairly early on in my relationship with my now-husband (then-boyfriend), I had him over for brunch. I made us these tasty breakfast sandwiches with a fried egg, cheese, and breakfast sausage on an English muffin. Well, being the nice girlfriend that I was, I made his sandwich first. I added a pat of butter to the pan and made him a perfectly fried egg with a runny yolk, just how he liked it.

(Stick with me. There is a point to this silly egg story!)

Well, when I made my egg, I slapped it in the pan without any butter. I ended up overcooking the yolk and burning the edges a little, but I didn’t really care because I was just making it for me. Cole (then-boyfriend) was so disturbed by the fact that I took the time to make his egg perfectly but when it came to mine, I didn’t care.

Can you relate to my silly story? Do you tend to do your best when you’re doing for others, but then put in the minimum amount of effort for yourself?

If so, there could be deeper things at play here.

Do you feel you’re worth your best effort?

If not, why? And how can you work to change that?

These are some things that would be worth digging into. If you can, talk to a therapist about it, and if that’s not an option for you, at least spend some time journaling about it.

4. Are you becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy?

I’m going to include some quotes in this section from an article I found helpful because self-fulfilling prophecies are something I’m still learning a lot about. (But let me tell you, I’ve found this effect to be true in my own life so far!)
”When we believe something about ourselves, we are more likely to act in ways that correspond to our beliefs, thus reinforcing our beliefs and encouraging the same behavior.”

The article goes on to describe the cycle we go through with self-fulfilling prophecies:

“1. First, we harbor a belief or set of beliefs about ourselves;

2. These beliefs influence our actions towards others;

3. Our actions toward others, shaped by our beliefs about them, impact their beliefs about us;

4. Their beliefs cause them to act in ways consistent with those beliefs towards us, which reinforces our initial beliefs about ourselves.”

YIKES. Have you found this to be true in your own life?

So how does this relate to success?

It’s time to evaluate what you truly believe about yourself. Do you consider yourself someone who will likely never be successful? Do you believe that most people who are successful got lucky or have some secret, special formula that most of us don’t have access to? Do you think you’re just a screwup who will forever be stuck in their current patterns?

Well let me tell you the ugly truth: if you believe that your lot in life is to never find success, you are probably right. And the only person who can change that is you.

(That message is just as much for me as it is for you. I’m preaching to myself here, so you are not alone!)

(Click here to read the article I quoted. It’s long but informative!)

So what now? How do I change?

So my advice to you now is to start doing some self-work. Journal. Go to therapy if you can. Start trying to understand the root cause of why you believe you’ll never achieve success; it’s often related to our childhood or upbringing, and sometimes in ways that we don’t even realize affect us.

Next, pick small steps you can take to start to boost your self-worth.

Can you create something? Try something new?

Can you apply for that job you want? (And make sure your resume is on point!)

Can you keep your surroundings neat and tidy? Even just take 10 minutes a day to pick up?

Can you do one small thing per day to take care of your body, mind, and soul? (Exercise, prayer/meditation, taking time for yourself, etc.)

What tiny, totally doable action can you take every day to feel a sense of pride and accomplishment? (Wear an outfit you like. Add a few decorations to your space to make it more your style. Practice a new skill. Spend a little time on your appearance. )

Remember that self-worth and action go hand in hand, so if you’re not in a place where you feel like you can boost your self-worth by shifting your perspective, try an actionable strategy. As in, do something that you can complete and then take pride in. Jump into the healthy cycle wherever and whenever you can!

And just keep practicing. Like anything else in life, building self-worth takes practice. I believe in you!!

Holy moly, was that as much of an emotional ride for you as it was for me? Do you think your self-worth is tied in with your success, or do you think I’m full of it? Let me know in the comments! ;) And as always, thanks for reading. You got this. <3

Want more? Check out How to Build Your Self-worth When No One Taught You How