Worthiness: The Key to Genuine Creative Living and Your Life By Design
Article Published for The Creative Woman Diaries Collection, Written by Charlotte Jade Askew
Photo by Cottonbro Studios
If you’ve come across “manifestation” before, chances are it’s been something akin to The Secret documentary released in 2006, which popularised the following formula:
Ask
Believe
Receive
“Ask for what you want, believe it’s yours and you will receive it.”
Many became enamoured with the idea (including myself) and began visualising in earnest. It seemed that I could visualise my way to the life I dreamed about, which for 11-year-old me was any life with horses in it.
I lay awake at night listening to soulful songs on my hand-me-down mp3 player, seeing myself galloping across open pastures, a smile fit to blind the sun.
Photo by Nataliya Melnychuk
Missing the essential components.
But it never came — the horse or the pastures. My parents were not in a position to afford a horse and everything that went along with it, and eventually, I stopped visualising and the smile dried up.
What the documentary missed explaining, is that whilst setting an intention (asking) and visualising (believing its yours) are components of the manifestation process, they are not the only components. There are two key aspects left out of this formula that were perhaps implied in the documentary but not explicitly explained.
Here they are:
The universe gives us only what we think we’re worthy of receiving.
Which inherently means, we must feel worthy to receive on the deepest of levels.
Immediately you might think (like I did) ‘I’m worthy, I feel worthy. I’m a good person, I deserve the promotion, the love of my life, that dream house,’ and consciously you might truly believe that. It’s what you believe subconsciously that is likely getting in the way.
Body-based behavioural shifts are the ultimate reinforcement.
The truth is, you cannot feel genuinely worthy and not be showing up for yourself. You cannot be worthy and be dependent upon an outcome or achievement. You cannot be worthy and not be in love with who you are right now.
Why? Because just saying you’re worthy does not overcome the way you act and behave. Your actions must match your intentions for your brain and body to believe you.
What are your thoughts first thing in the morning before you even open your eyes? Are they grateful to wake up another day, inspired by what may come, excited to set your feet down on this Earth?
Or do they dread another day of work, stress over all the things you have to get done, and fear what might happen? The same way you’ve been thinking and feeling for the past however many years. Same old, same old.
And how does your day go from there? Do you reach for your phone to distract you? React to those emotions and enter the day angry and frustrated? Unconsciously snap at your partner or colleagues and long for the end of the day when you can sit in front of Netflix and forget that the world is out there.
Photo by Valeriia Miller
Recycling the same physiological story.
Your brain and body are programmed to react and interact in the same way(s) you have been all your life. When you feel those familiar emotions of stress or frustration, your brain and body go straight to the thing(s) that worked to distract you from (or numb you against) those emotions the last time you experienced them. Your brain and body are used to feeling this way every morning.
Your body chemistry has altered to now include craving this level of stress and frustration when you wake up (even though you consciously don’t want to feel it). It’s a habit. A compulsion. A biological need for the level of chemicals that create those feelings.
So, you’re saying, ‘I’m worthy, I’m worthy, I’m worthy,’ but every day you’re behaving in a way that communicates, ‘I’m stressed, I’m sad, I don’t truly believe that I can change my life.’ Recycling the same story.
Photo by Liana Mikah
Worthiness is accountability.
Experiencing worthiness is experiencing yourself as someone who has already received. One could consider the adage — ‘fake it till you make it’… but it’s so much more than that. Showing up for yourself as the person you long to be. No faking. Being.
Do you set a time to do your mindset work and stick to it?
Do you take yourself to the gym or for a walk or whatever form of movement feels good for you?
Do you eat to nourish yourself and inhabit your physical body in a state of thriving?
If you want to do those things, if you know that they will support you to create the life that you crave — the health, the wealth, the relationship, but you’re not actively engaging in the activities required for them, you do not have a unified internal sense of worthiness. There is an aspect of self that does not believe you are worthy, or does not desire to get on board with the process of being the person you deeply desire to be.
Why? Because if you fully knew you were worthy (and understood yourself as that person), you’d be showing up for the things you know will get you closer. You’d be keeping your agreements with yourself and rewiring those old habits that keep you stuck.
Creating the life you dream about does not come from this same old way of behaving and interacting that you’re in right now because, if it did, you’d already have those things.
The great teachers on this topic, Dr. Joe Dispenza, Dr. Brue Lipton, Napoleon Hill, all agree that you must change yourself, to change your reality. Doing the same, acting the same, thinking the same, will only get you more of the same.
Believing we create our own reality means acknowledging that nothing can change in our lives until we change something.
When you tell yourself ‘I’ll start tomorrow, I’m too tired, I don’t have enough time, I don’t feel like it,’ you’re telling the universe: I am my old self, the one who gives up and gives in and doesn’t believe I have the power to change.
If you believed it was going to work, you’d be doing the meditations, the visualisations, the journaling, the mindset and embodiment work. And you’d be taking consistent and precise action that gets you closer.
Worthiness is a state of unity and connection, not fragmentation and separation.
Photo by Jonathan Borba
Being willing to ask the potent questions.
One of the most powerful questions you can ask yourself is: What do I still need to change about myself to connect me to that future I desire?
And it’s a tough ask, I know, because we often don’t like to admit that there are things about us that need to change. What about being perfect just the way we are?
You are lovable just the way you are. Valuable just the way you are. Those two things you were born with. But perfect? Perfect is a poisonous societal construct.
Exhibiting healthy insight — the basis for change.
It is healthy to exhibit the insight to look at ourselves in a constructive way and decide which parts align with the most authentic version of our expression. This process isn’t about losing weight so that we match the idealistic Barbie doll that we envision should drive the convertible and live in the mansion we lust after. Manifestation is not about this kind of creation, because these desires are not driven by genuine intention. That kind of yearning is outcome-focused and, frankly, hedonistic. Money for money's sake.
Manifestation is about the effort to become your highest expression, fulfilling your life’s purpose in service to the greater collective. Happiness for happiness's sake.
This process is change at the level of our soul’s expression.
Recognising things like: I’m irritated most of the time or I lose my temper quickly and snap at the people I care about. I’m impatient and unkind when things don’t fit my routine or plan, or I complain a lot and make excuses instead of listening and considering where I might be able to improve.
Those kinds of behaviours are usually products of how we were raised and what we’ve been through in our lives. Adapted patterns of interacting that are often unconscious and rarely helpful. They may not be our fault, but they are our responsibility. And ultimately, they’re keeping us from manifesting a life of resonance and joy.
The emotions attached to those kinds of behaviours perpetuate and distribute the energy of lack — a deep frustration with the life you live and the people in it. Which energetically brings back to you more of the same. Interacting in that way does not align with you dream career or that fulfilling, loyal relationship you long for.
Learning who you are, witnessing yourself, and paying attention to the ways you react and interact on a day-to-day basis is the beginning of the manifestation process. This is the basis for change. To receive different outcomes, we must observe ourselves in new ways.
This doesn’t mean that the things that have happened to you in your life haven’t given you reason to feel the way that you do, nor that they were fair or just or in any way okay. What we can do, and the only thing we have the power to do, is to change how they continue to impact your life in this moment, right now.
Our control exists only in this present moment.
Photo by Liana Mikah
Guiding yourself through a self-excavation.
You do not have to embody the identity of that angry person, or the one who is always stressed out. You can decide, today, to begin creating the highest expression of your soul in its physical form. No matter your story point, you have the ability to be the authentic you that you were destined to be.
Potent Questions to Ask:
What parts of me do I want to leave behind?
Who don’t I want to be any longer?
What qualities and characteristics would I love to embody?
How would I love to show up in the world for my family and friends, and for myself?
This is the beginning of exercising worthiness — this process of insight as a self-excavation and journey of growth into loving oneself to the bone and showing up in the world as worthy.
Ultimately, worthiness is this level of accountability. Taking responsibility for the way we show up, and honouring our commitments to ourselves. Being who we want to be. Acting as the person we feel we authentically are.
Photo by Sincerely Media
This was a big part of my personal story.
For me, a big part of this journey was uncovering the areas of my life where I wasn’t showing up for myself. The relationships in which I put myself last, the reactions I let get out of hand because I didn’t want to feel the challenging emotions. I was saying I was worthy, but my actions said I didn’t believe it.
I was working against myself: one foot on the gas and one on the break.
Shifting those things is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. Your old familiar self will try to get in the way. You’ll react before you realize you’ve gone straight to that place of frustration rather than empathy and understanding. You’ll tell yourself it won’t matter if you skip your meditation today, or your gratitude exercise. You’ll wake up annoyed and over it and not feel like showing up for yourself.
This is the process of change.
The thick of it.
Photo by Karly Jones
Body supporting mind, and mind supporting body.
These are your opportunities to overcome that old personality, that old familiar self, and step into your authentic expression. And as with any kind of repetition, the more you do it, the more often you catch yourself and decide to do something different, something that embodies the self that aligns with your manifestations, and the easier it will become. Soon, your default will be your new personality. The patient, kind, generous, empathic, understanding, driven, passionate, attuned person you knew at heart you always were.
When you consistently show up for yourself, you send the very strong, very clear message that you are worthy, that you’re ready to receive and that you believe in possibility, and if you believe in possibility, you believe in yourself.
Photo by Andrea Piacquadi
Living in deep communion with the emotions and experiences of your future.
Instead of being stuck in the past emotions and experiences, you’re now connected to the emotions and experiences of your future. From this place, we no longer obsess over the outcome. We stop needing the things we so desire and start loving ourselves while we create it instead. We feel so whole we couldn’t possibly want, and it’s from that place, that the things we were trying so hard to manifest come to us.
So, here's a new ‘formula’:
Self-excavate and cultivate awareness.
Set an intention for how you want to show up in the world.
Consciously change your actions and interactions to match this intention. (Begin gathering support for this process in the ways that truly reinforce you — whether it be body work, psychosomatic therapy, energy work, professional coaching, friendship, or something entirely different.)
Practice expressing your authentic self and feel the emotions of having received.
The best part is, changing your state of being isn’t about the result so much as it is the process and the effort. The effort alone becomes your message to the universe:
I believe in me.
I care about me.
I show up for myself.
I am worthy.
Your life is your experiment.
Even if this doesn’t quite make sense to you, or you still feel like it’s all a bit ‘woo-woo’, I ask you, why not try it on for size? Why not believe it? What do you really have to lose by practising showing up as the kind of person you’d love to be? Afterall, your life is your experiment.
—Charlotte Jade Askew, In-House Writer at Casey Jacque
Let’s Connect! Instagram: @inner_chatter
