How do you measure your self-worth?

Last night, I caught myself with a full shopping cart, feeling so happy just thinking about coming home and cooking healthy food for the week.

What was particularly striking about this simple moment of joy and contentment was that it seemed like the first evening in weeks that I wasn't preoccupied by an internalized imperative to be writing, marketing, promoting, creating, or otherwise producing something!

The simple act of self-nourishment was enough.

Lately I’ve been feeling plagued by feelings of inadequacy, constantly comparing myself with all the “more successful people” around me.

Truth is I’ve been experiencing a bit of a creative block, trying to write for the past 3 weeks with nothing inspiring coming to mind.

Each day receiving emails from people I respect and admire, comparing myself with them and their prolificness and seemingly endless stream of creativity.

Measuring my self-worth by email open and click rates, yuck!

Don't we all do this at times though. Compare ourselves with others. To their bodies, their parenting, their professional lives…Measuring our self-worth in numbers, like how much we weigh, how many centimeters dilated we are, how many ounces of milk we've produced, how many clients we have, our score on an exam, how many items we’ve checked off our to-do list, and so on.

The value of a human being reduced to a number? This can’t be!

And yet, I've caught myself doing it a ton lately.

At the moment, I’m just feeling grateful to have escaped the internal pressure cooker of shoulds and comparisons for long enough to recover a sense of joy and contentment in the present moment.

And of course, that’s exactly the space in which my inspiration returned!

For me the message is to be kind and patient with myself when a lapse in creative inspiration hits. When I’m feeling that kind of pressure to perform, to remember the power of returning to basics.

That’s where true self-worth thrives anyway, beyond vacillating numbers, click rates, centimeters, grades, lbs, ounces, and other measurements. It thrives in simple acts of self-care and self-love. Always.

Have you ever measured your self-worth by a number? Share your story in the comments.