Over the weekend I had the honor of hosting our 3rd Annual Day of the Girl Summit! It’s such a fulfillment to live in purpose and to be able to influence the minds of young women who may struggle with confidence.
Many of the ladies that I work with are brilliant, Ivy League bound girls but who all find themselves struggling to believe in themselves or struggle to understand the power in their voice. I see myself in all the girls because I know far too well what it feels like to believe that you’re just not good enough.
The great thing about them is that they’re learning the tools needed to overcome low confidence and embrace a high self worth at young age, whereas most of us don’t really learn those vital lessons on self-worth until later on in our lives.
It was in my mid-twenties where I started to recognize that I had unresolved issues rooted in low self-worth. Instead of continuing to wear my mask, I did some digging in order to find out why I never felt good enough. I was tired of masking it with a good job, my education and my financial status because none of that left me permanently secure.
What I had to do was find out where my mice were coming from. Let me explain.
When you have low self-worth the key to resolving it once and for all is to find out where your mice are coming from. If you have ever had mice then you know that what we tend to do is set down mice traps or rat poisoning to capture and kill the mice. However, those tactics are only temporary because the mice always find a way to come back into the home and it’s never just one mouse, they always find a way back in. The key to getting completely rid of the mice is to find out where they are coming from and deal with it or else Mickey, Minnie and friends will make your humble abode their new home.
Same idea with low self-worth. If you do not deal with your low-self worth from the root and find out where the problem is stemming from then you’re only trapping the mice, you’re not preventing them from coming in. When you put on the mask as if you got it all together, you’re just covering up the dead mice in your home and eventually those mice will leave a stench.
Low self-worth breeds insecurity and is often rooted in fear. It can be the fear of rejection, the fear of being alone, the fear of failure, the fear of success, the fear of being misunderstood or other internal fears that are those imagined fears that play out in our minds. I need you to identify your fears and replace that fear with love. The love of all of you.
When I got rid of my mice, I realized that my low self-worth was rooted in the fear of rejection and the need of approval. My worth was based on the opinions others had of me because I didn’t have the best opinion of myself. Once I discovered that, I was able to effectively deal with my low self-worth and transform into a woman of high self-worth.
No one else’s opinion of you should change your opinion of yourself. It took me a while to get there and I still experience challenges just like you do but now I can do something about it and deal with my mice from the entrance.
I have God’s approval no matter what I do and so do you. Once I began to embrace His eternal love for me, I was able to embrace the love for myself. It has been a journey but I want you to know that you too can take back the power that any low self-worth has had over you.
Find out where your mice are coming from and deal with it. You were fearfully and wonderfully made and it’s time to take off any mask, accept responsibility for where you are and become the woman you have been called to be!
XOXO,
Maria I. Melendez
@embraceherlegacy