Having a strong sense of self-worth is an important characteristic of a successful online entrepreneur. According to the American Psychological Association (APA), your self-worth is your evaluation of yourself as a capable and valuable human being deserving of consideration and respect. It’s an internal sense of being worthy of love.

Those with positive self-worth tend to have more confidence in their abilities. However, if you’re struggling with low self-worth, like I did in the past, then I know how easy it is to fall into a habit of harshly judging yourself. With a tendency to focus on your mistakes and shortcomings, rather than your strengths and abilities.

In this article I’m going to share with you five powerful tips for flipping the switch from low self-worth to positive self-worth, so you can see yourself in a new light. When you shift your energy, your prospective clients will pick up on this and will feel more confident and drawn to work with you.

Forgiveness

One of the first steps in increasing your self-worth is to forgive yourself for having such harsh, judgemental thoughts about yourself. This helps shift your perspective and opens up a space for more compassionate thoughts. Beating yourself with a stick is never the right answer, trust me I’ve tried (metaphorically speaking of course), although when you’ve been doing it for long enough, it becomes a pattern. 

But the good thing about patterns is that they can be broken and you can create new more positive and empowering beliefs and patterns, which will better serve you and your clients. You get to be the role model and inspire your clients with your own journey of transformation. That has certainly been a mission for me, to inspire, support and empower fellow business owners and show them what is possible. Because if I can do it, so can you my lovely.

So start today with a practice of forgiveness. You can do this in different ways and I encourage you to find what best works for you. I like to journal my thoughts, practise the ancient Hawaiian forgiveness practice of h’ponopono and use EFT (tapping) to clear old beliefs and patterns of behaviour.

Self-Love

This moves me onto the next topic; self-love, which nicely follows on from self-forgiveness. Once you’ve forgiven yourself or each time you forgive yourself for having a negative thought you get to step into a place of self-love. You get to show your mind, body and soul that you are worthy and deserving. Self-love is a powerful tool for empowering yourself and creating a shift in how you perceive yourself.

One of my favourite self-love practices is by the former Louise Hay. It’s simple but may be more challenging than you think. All you need to do is look in the mirror, look directly into your eyes and say “I love you” followed by your name. As you do this, notice what thoughts and feelings arise in your body? Do negative thoughts creep in? Do you feel tension and dis-ease in your body? Notice those signs of resistance and keep doing this practice until it feels comfortable and easy. Because you are worthy and deserving of self-love.

Other practices for self-love include challenging your negative dialogue and bringing in positive feeling thoughts. Ask yourself, what is the next best feeling emotion? Reach for that and know that it’s yours for the taking. We’re so conditioned to focus on fear and lack, but when we make a conscious decision to choose again, as Gabrielle Bernstein talks about, we get to shift our energy into a place of forgiveness, self-love and self-compassion. How are you feeling right now and what best feeling thought can you reach for?

Values

When we’re clear on our values we can get clear on what we’re willing to tolerate in life and what we’re not. Getting clear on your values will also help you set clear boundaries for yourself. So if one of your values is freedom, then when you’re living in line with that value you’ll focus on taking action that makes you feel free. That could mean free from the negative thoughts that are weighing you down, by working with a coach and or doing your own self-development.

Are values relate to the way we want to live our life and we have move towards and move away from values. For example, if you want to move towards freedom and empowerment for example, you’ll align your actions to achieve these positive feelings. In doing so it will help support you in increasing your self-worth as you actualise the results you desire in your life. Then there’s the move away from values, such as fear, rejection and loneliness because they bring you pain.

When you know the values you want to move towards (pleasure) and move away from (pain), you can start to shift your internal thinking, change how you view yourself and increase your self-worth. Ultimately by getting clear on both of these sets of values will give you clarity on what you do want. So take 10 minutes out of your day and create an inventory on the values that you do want to focus on and those that you want to let go of.

I hope you’ve found this article helpful and you should now have some clear strategies for improving your self-worth. To receive more support take the entrepreneurial confidence quiz and receive customised results with personalised action steps for your next level of personal growth.