You’re worth it!

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Over the last year or so, a number of add-campaigns on television have incorporated that little sentence in their promotional efforts. You’re worth it! And while there is little doubt in my mind that we are worth it ~ that doesn’t have a whole lot to do with whether we have any desire for that specific product.
So what makes that sentence so powerful? Or, maybe more to the point, why do we feel we need to be reminded that we are worth it ~ what makes us so hungry for that positive feedback on who we are?

The most obvious reason would be that, left to our own devices, we don’t feel we are good enough or indeed, worthy enough. Somehow we feel that we are not deserving of the good things in life.

The reasons for not feeling good enough are varied. From the sense that we really need to work hard to pull our own weight, to an all-pervasive idea that we need to please those that are close to us ~ to the somewhat innocuous sounding need to be nice. And these are only a few examples...

Not succeeding in any of those areas is almost guaranteed to make us feel guilty.
And nothing tells us more effectively that we are not good enough than a feeling of guilt...

So in a sense we find ourselves in a vicious cycle where not feeling good enough makes us feel guilty, which in turn gives us a sense of not being good enough...
Sad thing is, it is not getting us anywhere ~ and, more often than not, isn’t even true!

And from that perspective, any feedback on who we are that tells us that we are worth it is a powerful message ~ one that we would so like to believe.

What would it take to step out of that cycle and to start believing on ourselves? To not only hope that we are good enough, but to know it in our hearts?

Being told on TV apparently is a step in the right direction or else add agencies would have dropped the sentence... On the other hand, they too play on our sense of guilt: in order to be worth it, we’d better buy their product and make ourselves look as beautiful as the person who is telling us that we are worth it.
And if we don’t ~ are we still worth it?

Pondering that question leads me to yet another question: What is it in me that makes me deserving, that makes me ‘good enough’, in short, that makes me worth it?
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