Your Internal Scorecard

Everyday Enlightenment: The Twelve Gateways to Personal Growth
by Dan Millman

(Page 6 of 8)

One of the most important steps you can take to improve the quality of your life is to become aware of how your self-assessment has shaped your existence and how you can transcend whatever rating you gave yourself.

To understand the roots of low self-worth and the source of self-sabotage, we need to examine a universal dynamic that applies to you and to every individual in every culture on earth. In order to fit into society, your parents (or caregivers) taught you what was considered right and what was deemed wrong.

If you behaved well, you earned your parents' approval and were rewarded with positive attention. If you behaved poorly, you received their disapproval and were punished with negative attention. Thus, when quite young, you learned the two prime moral directives: If I am good, I am rewarded. If I am bad, I am punished.

In an ideal world, these rules would be absolutely fair and consistent. In the real world, however, your parents didn't always notice misbehaviors. Even if they did see every misdeed, they might have been too tired or distracted to respond consistently to your actions.

But there was someone who saw and noted, without fail, every single misstep you ever made. You did, and you still do. Not only that, you also saw and recorded every negative, hateful, petty, envious, spiteful, or cruel thought and feeling that passed through your mind. Thus began your issues with self-worth.

Remember the two rules: If I am good, I am rewarded. If I am bad, I am punished. Your parents, however, didn't always do the punishing. So you end up punishing yourself-sometimes for the rest of your life-in the form of self-sabotage or self-destructive behaviors.

The Subtleties of Self-Sabotage

Self-sabotage takes many forms, such as quitting school, taking low-paying jobs, choosing a spouse who abuses you physically or verbally, spending more money than you make, committing slow suicide with tobacco, alcohol, or other drugs, getting involved in crime, working yourself to illness or death, self-starvation, self-inflicting wounds, running away, dropping out, or engaging in other behaviors that undermine your health, success, or relationships.

Fame and fortune have a downside for those who feel undeserving of the adulation. Think of the celebrities who engage in punishing, self-destructive behaviors. It is important to note that those who have garnered fame and success without self-destructing have at least some of the following characteristics in common:

Someone in their family nurtured them as innately worthy, independent of what they could achieve or do.
Even when they were treated poorly, they had at least one significant person-a teacher or relative or friend-who listened to, valued, and treated them with respect.
They felt deserving because they had paid their dues-had sacrificed, studied, and worked diligently over a period of time.
They developed a sense of perspective and had a sense of humor about themselves; they didn't take themselves so seriously.
They shared their wealth in concrete ways, donating to charities, working for a cause they believed in.

Consciously you may desire success. You may read books and attend seminars, only to undermine your efforts in ways both subtle and creative. Consider those times friends or loved ones you trusted advised against doing something, but you did it anyway because you just felt you had to.

Of course, sometimes it's best to follow your own counsel. (Where would Columbus have been without it?) But if you see a pattern of blindly stepping into potholes despite others' guidance-like buying a lemon of an automobile when a mechanic friend thought it was a bad deal, getting an expensive item you didn't really need, gambling more money than you could afford to lose, or getting involved in a hurtful relationship-consider this: Haven't you already punished yourself enough?

© 1999 by Dan Millman

About the Author

Dan Millman is a former world champion athlete, college professor, and bestselling author whose eight books, including Way of the Peaceful Warrior and The Life You Were Born to Live, have inspired millions of people in more than twenty languages. His books and seminars have influenced people from all walks of life, including leaders in the fields of health, psychology, business, education, politics, entertainment, sports, and the arts. A youthful grandfather, he lives with his family in northern California.