Wind Machine Worthy

Several years ago, I experienced my first professional photo shoot with the fabulous Melbourne-based photographer Fi Mims.

Leading up to the shoot I noticed a slight feeling of nervousness. The big day arrived, and we started the process with getting my hair and makeup professionally done. As I sat in the makeup chair looking at myself in the mirror, the voices in my head began getting louder and louder. I became more and more convinced that I was not worthy of all the fuss and attention. My mind raced into the future to manufacture even more anxiety by imagining meeting new people and seeing the looks of surprise on their faces upon realising that the in-real-life version of me was significantly less polished and glamorous than the version of me in the images we were about to create.

I put on a brave face and soldiered on. As we started the shoot, I began to calm down a bit. Fi’s warmth and humour helped me to remember my playfulness, and the voices in my head began to fade.

That was until the moment when Fi wheeled in her wind machine.

Within a split second of seeing the machine and then realising what it was, a loud voice inside my head boomed, ‘who the hell do you think you are, love?’

And so, I lost it.

Luckily Fi had seen it all before. She was patient and kind and she told me about the many times she has seen the same reaction from her other clients. We managed to get through the shoot and the images we created that day hold a very special meaning for me.

This experience taught me that we are all ‘wind-machine-worthy’.

We can all experience feelings of unworthiness. For some of us, these feelings surface occasionally, for others they are a constant companion.

When we are in the trance of unworthiness we are out of touch with reality and we lose the capacity to accurately discern strengths, limitations, opportunities and threats. Whether we feel trapped in the land of low self-worth or are just an occasional visitor, every moment we spend there causes us to miss opportunities and suffer.

Self-worth is not something we achieve – there is no finish-line we can cross, arms in the air declaring, ‘Finally, I will forever feel worthy!’ The cultivation of self-worth is a commitment to the ongoing practice of reminding ourselves over and over again of our worthiness – and choosing to believe it every time.

Over time, we can learn to source a sense of enough-ness from within us, rather than continuing in vain to fill the void in our hearts by collecting gold stars or striving to prove ourselves by climbing the corporate ladder, earning big bonuses, having well-behaved kids, the perfect external measures of success.

At its core, accepting our own intrinsic worthiness is about learning that we can’t do our way to being someone. Instead, we must do from a place of knowing that we already are someone. That we have always been someone. We truly let be when we embody the knowing that we are all born worthy.

Self-Fidelity Practice To Play With

Here are some burning questions I invite you to reflect on this week

What new possibilities might emerge if you felt worthy more often?

How might being connected with your worthiness uplift your working life?

How might being connected with your worthiness uplift others in your life?

When you remember your worthiness, what other elements of your essential nature emerge?

If, in your own mind, your worthiness was irrefutable, what would this mean?

It is our light not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask our- selves, who am I to be brilliant, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? Playing small does not serve the world … We are all meant to shine, as children do.

Marianne Williamson