Bigger on the Inside - The Self That I Long to Believe In

The Self That I Long to Believe In

Bigger on the Inside Than the Outside

Attempting to Define Success to Define Ourselves

“It would make sense that our worth should be, and in reality is based on something that cannot be proven for any other reason than its value lies forever beyond the most magnificent achievements that would serve to even remotely evidence it.”

Success has been accorded an endless array of definitions.  Some of them are crafted to make failure seem more like success so that we can limp through life and fail without remorse or guilt.  Other definitions are quite lofty, written to give us opportunity achieve in a manner that has little to do with the achievement and everything to do with restoring blunted self-esteems.  At times success is defined by whatever will accord us the accolades of others or advance us socially or professionally.  At yet other times, the definition of success is more about giving ourselves a sorely needed boost when our spirits have been lagging.

 

Lost in the Array of Definitions

Whatever and wherever their source, a dizzying array of definitions abound.  Many seem to be a target created after the trigger was pulled, making every decision a bulls-eye even if the aim was horrid.  Some are thrown out because they’re easy, or we’re not certain what success is so we just come up with something that might pass for success if people don’t pay too much attention.  And in the squalor of definitions gone awry and rogue, we seem to have lost a genuine definition of success.

 

Why Success?

It's interesting that success, in whatever manner it is defined, has come to define our worth and value.  That’s why a lack of perceived success will tank our self-esteem quicker than just about anything else.  Success appears to have become the litmus test as to the credibility of our existence and the unforgiving gauge of our worth.  Success has evolved into the exclusive commodity by which we ascribe value to ourselves and others.

 

Fear of Questioning the Definition

Success becomes so acutely defined and so irrevocably defining that we seldom entertain any other possible definition.  We find ourselves entangled in the culturally mandated definition of success, or the definitions imposed by our families or friends or occupation.  We become so absorbed in the sorting out and the achieving of those definitions that the endeavor to achieve them becomes inordinately consuming. But what does this mean in terms of how we’ve come to identify who we are and in that, how we’ve attempted to determine the value of who we are?

 

The Flaw of Success

Yet, the nature of such a mentality of success demands that we constantly achieve.  It is an effort of insanely perpetual works that requires that we continually prove our worth as the previous success eventually fades sufficiently to demand a new one.  Sure, we can define it.  But success as used to determine our worth and value is always temporal.  It’s always moving.  Therefore, we become enslaved to successes that demand nothing more than other successes.

 

We Are Too Big to Be Defined By Any Success

Our value is not based on ‘what we do.’  Rather, it is based on ‘who we are.’  If we remain stuck with the feeling that our worth is based on ‘what we do,’ the definition of success is what lends credence to those efforts.

Success is irrelevant in respect to our self-esteem as any definition of success regardless of how lofty does not possess the power to sustain our sense of worth or feed our sense of value.  When it comes to our sense of worth and value, success is the thing that’s not the thing.  It’s been marketed as the snake oil for our self-esteem by the carpetbaggers of our culture, but it’s snake oil only.

Success cannot do what it promises to do. With such an apparently irreconcilable flaw in its makeup, it would be worthwhile to postulate that our worth must be based on something significantly more consistent and profoundly more fundamental than success.

 

Value Based on Who We Are

Maybe we should dare to consider that our worth does not need to be established either by effort or definition.  Maybe we should consider the possibility that it has never ‘not’ been established.  That success was achieved by the fact that God decided to designed us and then deliver us into a far larger design to make an impact in and upon that design.  We’re here, and that itself is a success. 

Everything that we do from here forward is not about success, for success has already been achieved by the fact of our existence.  It’s about calling.  It’s about fulfillment of the purpose that we’ve been given the privilege to fulfill.  It’s about honing in on our purpose and purposefully carrying it out.  It’s about obedience to the call, not the adherence to some definition that measures our obedience to the call.  It’s doing all of that knowing that our worth and value exists by virtue of the fact that we exist.  From there on out, it’s about the doing and not about the proving.  

 

Thinking a Bit More Deeply

It would therefore be wise to consider the possibility that our worth is based on something so profound and unerringly rich that its worth singularly speaks for itself.  Something that does not need to be proven simply because it is established in a manner that the need of proof is the weakness of our vision and not the fact of reality.  It would make sense that our worth should be, and in reality is based on something that cannot be proven for any other reason than its value lies forever beyond the most magnificent achievements that would serve to even remotely evidence it.

 

Achieving for Sheer Pleasure, Not Proof of Value

We would be wise to embrace the liberating reality that we can achieve in life for the sheer pleasure of achievement, rather than as a despairing effort to establish our worth.  We can walk through life with vigor and tenacity out of a sense of worth, not out of some desperate effort to prove our worth.  We change things and we change the course of things because we have been privileged to possess both the ability and the permission to do so.  Life is engaged, energized and inspired by our worth, rather than depleted in the pursuit of it.  Our days are lived embracing the reality that our value is based on who we are, and to embrace that liberating reality is to embrace a life liberated.

 

The Viciousness of Low Self-Esteem Explained

If we cannot embrace this indispensable reality, we will be irreversibly stunted by the limitations of the achievements we pursue.  We will chain our potential to the baseness of achievements.  When we do, the infinite worth that defines us will be forever overshadowed by the shallowness of achievements, for the greatest achievements will never come close to reflecting our true value.  Your value is based on who you are, despite what you do.  And that is a critical but glorious shift that we each must make.