As youngsters we get so caught up in whether the right person likes us or not that we rarely think about the issue of self worth. If we are successful in striking up a relationship with that special person who by the way forty years later we'll have trouble remembering that person's name, we feel good about ourselves and it will feel like we have a great sense of self worth. But if we never achieve a relationship with someone special or that someone special disappoints us by dating some one else, we feel rotten about ourselves and our self worth is down the toilet.

This scenario can start in preschool and continue all through life until we start looking at the issue of self worth. This often doesn't happen until our late 20's if at all. And by then, we have built a pattern that repeats itself over and over again. Our sense of self worth gets tied into the success or lack of success of our relationships. And its doesn't stop there. Our sense of self worth gets tied into our success or lack of success with nearly every thing we do. If we succeed at our planned course of study we feel good about ourselves. If we struggle and can't seem to comprehend the planned course of study we feel less about ourselves.

If we're popular and have lots of friends we have a good sense of self worth. If we're teased and bullied we wonder if something is wrong with us and feel badly about ourselves--some to the point that they consider or commit suicide. These early years in school can be very threatening to our self worth.

Finding self worth in our early years is for the most part ignored or never even thought of as something to do. If we hear others talk about the subject of self worth, it sounds rather alien. And then again, what they have to say about finding self worth is most often limited to their own early training which kinda models our own.

In fact by the time in life that we discover that self worth is something one can acquire, we start by studying how our parents and other role models build self worth. We see that they have accomplished things in life. For instance they might be in a successful marriage, have a great career, earn a lot of money, be wealthy, be important in the community or church group, and so on.

So what do we do? We model our personal growth and personal change program by attempting to mirror their experiences and go about finding self worth much the same way.  And to take this one step further, often our parents attempt to brand us with the same paths in life that they took.

It looks like this: they went to Villanova and insist we go to Villanova. They became a doctor and insist we follow suit. Or it looks like this: Our parents struck out with their dreams and want us to succeed where they believe they failed-the Fanny Farmer thing.

We spend so much time fighting our parent's dreams that we never have time to even think of self worth. Instead we get into drugs, alcohol, gambling and so on to rebel against our parents. Or we follow our parent's dreams and wonder why when we achieve our parent's dreams we feel empty inside.

Finding self worth seems to be a myth-even not eating too much to be thinner and find a sense of self worth. And the irony is that most of the things we do or are taught to do set us up for life crisis. The reality is that life is more often about the plans that fall through than it is about the plans we make. It can actually be dangerous to have goals. I say dangerous because it's how we deal with achieving the goal or the disappointment of not achieving the goals. 

In fact its our inability to effectively deal with our disappointments and successes that sets us up for life crisis and low self esteem. Building self worth is to effectively learn to feel the emotions that accompany disappointment and success.