How to Identify Your Good Qualities When You Feel Worthless
Identifying your good qualities can be challenging when you believe you’re worthless or have low self-esteem. When you’re feeling worthless, your negative thoughts distort your perception of yourself and you overlook the positives. However, they’re not the truth even though you might believe it. No matter who you are, you are not worthless and you do have good qualities. Identifying your good qualities even if you feel worthless can help guide you to the things you’re suited to, find meaning or purpose in your life, and most importantly, to see your own worth so you can build your self-esteem.
Note that these tips are not intended as a substitute for therapy. If you are feeling persistently worthless, it may be helpful to seek the help of a therapist.
Tips to Identify Your Good Qualities When You Feel Worthless
In order to identify your good qualities, you need to get to know yourself. Self-awareness is empowering, and it’s worth spending time figuring out what makes you unique, and the good qualities that go with that. Here are some tips.
- Focus on the good things about yourself and your life. You need to make a deliberate effort to notice the good things, especially when you’re feeling worthless. Pay attention to the good things you’ve done each day and that includes both your thoughts and actions. Also pay attention to any compliments, smiles or thank-you's that you might get. Reflect on the good things about your life. You might like to write down a list of good things every day, to keep you focused, and also as a reminder for when you're feeling negative (Gratitude and Feeling Better About Yourself).
- Try a variety of new experiences. The more you experience, the more you will learn about yourself.
- Look back at your history. Think about the things you were good at, or passionate about as a child. Look back at the things you're proud of, or have done well in your life. These might be clues.
- Ask someone you trust. Ask a trusted friend or family member about your good qualities. They will probably see things you don’t.
- Get professional help. A mental health professional can help you to see the positives in yourself and help you to change your negative thoughts into positive self talk.
- Get to know your personality and the strengths that go with it. There are many good things that come with who you are. Learn to see the positives in your individual traits.
- Use a profiling tool. There are plenty of tools to use that can help you learn more about yourself. For example, the VIA Survey (noting character strengths from the VIA Institute on Character) can help you identify your key character strengths.1 There are also many personality profiling tools such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), which can help you to learn more about your personality and the strengths that go with it.
- Ask yourself questions to help identify your good qualities. For example: "Who or what do I care about?" "What am I passionate about?" "Who cares about me?" "How have I helped someone?" "What challenges have I overcome?" "What do others like about me?" "What good things have people said to me?" These are just some ideas to get you thinking and I encourage you to come up with your own questions.
- Focus on who you are as a person. Your good qualities, and self-worth are not about achievement or possessions. Your worth is who you are as a person and it's important to know that.
Most importantly, understand that even if you feel worthless, you do have good qualities and it’s a matter of becoming aware of them. Identifying your good qualities is particularly important in helping you see your worth, particularly when you are feeling worthless.
How to Identify Your Good Qualities When You Believe You're Worthless
In this self-esteem video, I talk about ways of identifying your good qualities when you believe you're worthless.
1The Via Survey. (n.d.). Retrieved October 13, 2015, from http://www.viacharacter.org/www/The-Survey
You can find Fay Agathangelou on Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Pinterest and her website.
APA Reference
Agathangelou, F.
(2015, October 13). How to Identify Your Good Qualities When You Feel Worthless, HealthyPlace. Retrieved
on 2024, November 5 from https://www.healthyplace.com/blogs/buildingselfesteem/2015/10/identifying-your-good-qualities-when-you-believe-youre-worthless
Author: Fay Agathangelou
Dear healthyplace.com admin, Your posts are always well presented.
Hi Russell,
My name is Natasha, and I'm the Blog Manager here, and I wanted to address your comment as we don't have an author on this blog right now.
I'm so sorry you're hurting so much right now. I know what it's like to feel like life is over. I have been to the lowest of the lows myself.
That said, I survived. And now things are different. And what I learned is that there is one constant in life, and that is change. Even when it feels like life is over, that feeling will change, but you have to hang on for it to happen. Please, please hang on so you can see that change.
Please reach out to a healthcare provider, to a therapist, or even to a hospital.
We also have a list of helplines here where people can offer you ways of changing your life: https://www.healthyplace.com/other-info/resources/mental-health-hotline-numbers-and-refer…
There is so much more to come.
-- Natasha Tracy
How to identify your good qualities when you feel you have none, step 1... Focus on your good qualities. Thanks but if it was that easy I wouldn't be reading this
It's not easy, Michael, to change, and not every post is going to speak to each person, but the fact that you are here and reading this means that you are aware that you want to change, and that's really the most important part. Keep reading our posts and maybe one will click with your personal journey. One of the things that started me being able to see my good qualities a little easier was to focus on practicing gratitude. I spend a few minutes every day being thankful for the things that are in my life right now. Sometimes this makes something positive about myself pop out by accident. It also helps a lot to have a therapist that I trust who helps me see things that I can't see on my own. I encourage everyone to try therapy when they are faced with a difficult mental health challenge like low self-esteem. Best wishes.
Doesn't help me. And my family and only friend would just say "oh... I'm... I guess... He's nice?"
Nils, not every post is going to speak to each person's journey, but I encourage you to continue to read our blog to find different ideas each week that can help you in your desire to build stronger self-esteem. Be brave enough to continue trying new paths, especially working with a professional counselor. Wishing you well!
I've always thought if i didn't put everyone elses needs and wantd before mine i was being selfish. Mom taught me put yourkids before yourself. Ive carried that oer to even after they are adullts and they guilt me into a lot of this giving in to what they wanted.
Many people say that do what u do the best. But if I don't know what I do best then how can I do that. Pls help.
Hi Lokesh,
Thank you for reaching out. It can definitely be tough to know what we do best, but often, we don't need to single out a best quality about us in order to feel we have value. If I was chatting with a friend or family member of yours, what would they say were your good qualities? Focus simply on what you like about yourself and remind yourself of situations where you expressed those qualities. This can really help with tackling low self-esteem.
Take care Lokesh,
Sam
Thank.. A guy like me needs this type of articles, it has encouraged me to be a responsible person.. looking forward for another interesting one...
yes email me emily@theguidancegirl.com we can chat more!
Enjoyed the article! Very useful for self and others that I reach out to. Look forward to more!
Thanks very much Shannon, glad you enjoyed the article.
Thank.. A guy like me needs this type of articles, it has encouraged me to be a responsible person.. looking forward for another interesting one...