Pleasure + Worthiness Part 1
Why you need both in order to have good sex, money, and relationships
Good News! You are worthy.
What happens internally when you lean into that truth?
What thoughts, feelings, sensations surface in your body when you think of worthiness.
Worthiness + Pleasure:
Our self worth is determined by our behavior, thoughts, emotions that support us in creating deeper experiences of worthiness or undermine our experiences of worthiness.
Meadow Devor in her book “The Worthy Project” describes the difference between our relationships with our true self and our false idealized image as determining factors in whether or not we feel worthy. Our true self is our soul essence, it includes both the light and shadow aspects of us, our strengths and weaknesses, our potential, and the parts of us that no one sees.
Our idealized self is the projection. It is the image in our minds of who we would be once we are worthy. It is often the parts of us that make addictive decisions, spend money compulsively, show up when we are trying to impress people or hustle for approval.
Let’s talk about the idealized self for a min. I have always had an image in my mind about my false self. She was always cooler than me, she always knew the right things to say and do, she would look hot with long hair, she would have an amazing business and husband making billions. I know her well. I spent over a hundred thousand dollars trying to be come her and always feeling worthless when I finished the course, wore the clothes, went on the date and was somehow still myself. All that time I was undermining my worthiness because I was disconnected from my true self.
When we feed the false idealized image, we chip away at our self worth. I’ve spent so much money and time trying to be someone else that I didn’t have much of a connection to my true self.
That was a painfully freeing thing to realize. I’ve spent a lot of money trying to be someone else and at the end of the day, I was still myself.
When I am making decisions about my true self, I lean into the truth of who I am. I lean into my wholeness: both light and shadow aspects of myself.
I lean into the parts of me that I want to hide, the ugly parts, as well as the parts that I’m too afraid to believe in like my wholeness and my beauty.
And this brings me to pleasure. Pleasure is unobtainable when I am chasing my false idealized self. It becomes yet another carrot on stick I am chasing.
Pleasure becomes tangible when I’m connected to my true self.
So for today, a question.
What parts of yourself do you need to embrace today?
Here is a simple practice you can do to begin to build bridges with your inner children and the parts of you that hold uncomfortable beliefs, thoughts, emotions, sensations.
What is your relationship to worthiness and your idealized/true self?