This is something that I personally struggle with. In high school I wanted so badly to be noticed, to be popular. I guess a piece of that never went away because even now, as a mid-thirties adult, I have to keep reminding myself that I am special and it doesn’t matter what other people think of me. I may not have it all together but it’s what’s inside that counts, right?
Teens these days, and especially teen girls, cling to the number of likes on their Instagram or Facebook posts as a “public barometer of popularity”. They use likes to measure how many friends they have and to see who has more friends. It may sound irrational but I’ve found myself in the same mindset more than once.
As a blogger I sometimes make the mistake of attaching personal worth to the number of interactions a post gets. My blog is literally my heart poured out into words on a page, so it’s hard to separate that expression of myself from my feelings about myself. I have to consciously ignore my feelings when the number of page views or email subscribers for my blog goes up or down.
My value doesn’t lie in how many people “like” the thing I have to say. I’m a Christian, so I find my worth in whose I am, not who I am. This blog is something I do as a hobby, and how successful it is has nothing to do with how “good” I am as a person.
A friend shared a sweet story with me that I’d like to share with you. She said there was a very timid woman, we’ll call her Gloria, who had been coming to volunteer in her classroom for a while. Gloria wanted to be a help to the class but she didn’t feel like she was smart enough to be working with children. Still, she kept coming and doing busywork and supporting the teacher without actually interacting with the children very much. Then one day Gloria, who is a native Spanish speaker, was sitting near a little boy who spoke mostly Spanish. As she observed the child struggling to understand the lesson she quietly leaned in and began translating for him. And just like that she found her purpose in that classroom.
We are so fortunate to live in a day and age when we can own nice, expensive things. But it’s not just our stuff that we attach value to. Sometimes it’s also the college degree we hold, the number of organizations we belong to, our job, our level of fitness, or where we travel to. Can any of these things truly make you feel valuable?
There is something special inside each and every one of us. You just have to have the courage to dig that gem up out of your soul and share it with the world.
What is that inner quality that makes you precious? How do you measure your worth?