I used to think that if I booked the job, if I got a campaign or if I looked a certain way, I would feel like I was enough.
That I'd finally have the confidence and the validation I was chasing, but I was wrong.
In this video, I'm going to explain what it actually means to have self-worth, why so many of us struggle with it and why it has nothing to do with the way that you look.
I'm also going to share why being a model, despite being part of one of the most harsh and judgmental industries, actually helped me dismantle my limiting beliefs around worthiness and help me create a sense of self-worth that's going to carry me through life.
If you're new here, my name is Daphna, but you can call me Daph.
I love making videos all about self-worth, mindset, and how to become the best version of yourself.
So if that sounds like something you're into, you should definitely stick around and subscribe for more videos.
Before I get into how to build your self-worth and what steps you can take, I kind of have to back this up a little bit and give some context to where all this started for me.
I started modeling at 11 years old and by the time I was 15, I was traveling to cities like Milan and Tokyo and trying to navigate the modeling industry as a teenager.
So by the time I was 17, I was ready to move to New York and start building my career there as a professional model.
At that age, I had no idea what self-worth was.
I mean, this is not something that you're taught in school, and this is something that not really many people talk about until they're much older.
And so instead, you learn to measure yourself by all of these external things how many jobs you book, how successful you are, how promising of a career you're going to have and also, just a lot of the times, by how people perceive you to be.
And so this is where my validation was coming from for a long time.
And for a while, I was in this constant cycle of ups and downs.
You know, when I booked a big job or I worked with an exciting brand, I would feel amazing.
But then, as soon as the work slowed down, or as soon as things were not maybe going the way that I had planned in my mind, my self-esteem was on the floor.
It was very much like being on an emotional roller coaster, where my worth And the way that I saw myself was dictated by something that was really out of my control.
And to be fair, at that time, I didn't really realize it.
I just thought that this was the way that things were supposed to be.
Fast forward to the pandemic, everything stopped.
There's no jobs, no distractions, just time to sit with my thoughts and sit with myself.
Now, this was kind of an interesting time, right?
Because I wasn't working and I was feeling all of these feelings.
But this time I could explain those feelings away because of something that was out of my control.
And this kind of made me look at the thoughts and the feelings that I was experiencing when I maybe wouldn't get a job or I would get rejected by a brand or a client.
I realized that if my confidence disappeared as soon as my work disappeared, then I probably wasn't that confident to begin with.
And so it was during this time of the pandemic and not being able to work that I realized that self-worth isn't really about earning something or working hard to get something.
Self-worth is something that you claim.
It's something that you choose to have and it's something that you cultivate within yourself.
I had spent years waiting for the industry to tell me that I was enough waiting for things to finally happen to me, like.
I remember saying this to myself like when is it going to be my turn?
But the truth is, it was never the industry's job to do that.
It was my job to do that, and this is also when i started to realize that there's no amount of success and no number of jobs or bookings or things that i can do externally to change about myself that's going to give me the confidence that comes from within.
Even though that realization was obviously really powerful and really helpful for me, There's still a number of lessons that I had to learn and actions that I had to take, which I'm going to explain to you now.
But just because I'm relating this to my own life and my own career doesn't mean that it's not transferable to your life and your situation.
I actually believe that our level of self-worth impacts everything in our lives, from our career to our friendships, to the way we perceive life to be and the kind of people that we attract in our life.
And I will explain all of that in just a second.
But as you listen to these lessons and these actions that I started to take, I challenge you to think how you could maybe apply these to your own life, or how any of these feelings that I talk about might resonate for you.
At this point.
We know that self-worth comes from the belief we have in ourselves, how we see ourselves and also the way that we talk to ourselves.
And so the first thing that I had to do was reframe rejection.
I used to take rejection so personally.
It was almost as if every note that I received or every job that I didn't get was like confirmation that I wasn't good enough.
But I knew I had to start seeing these things differently.
And so I actually did this doing two different things.
The first one was looking at things from a client or a brand perspective.
The thing about castings and auditions and things like that is, the client usually knows exactly what they're looking for.
They have a really clear idea of what they want.
And so just because I wasn't the right fit for that client at that specific time doesn't mean that I was lacking, or doesn't mean that I was any less good or any less worthy.
I really like this perspective because it took away a lot of the pressure on me, But it also made me realize that I think in a lot of situations there's things that we just can't see.
The same thing goes for other jobs and I think also even relationships, because a lot of the times it's really more about the other person than it is about us.
It makes you realize that you only can control like a little little tiny part of the situation.
It kind of just makes you realize that you have very little power in the situation, and so your emotional investment should also match that.
The second thing that was really helpful for me in terms of rejection was actually seeing things from a more spiritual perspective, and so i'm sure a lot of you guys know this phrase rejection is redirection.
This was really helpful for me because it made me feel like every rejection was getting me closer to me actually getting the job, or getting a job maybe similar to that.
But it also helped me take some of the pressure off and some of the weight that I was carrying really just made me feel like this was just one job and my whole world wasn't depending on whether I got this one job or not.
Now, I'm not going to say that this is always easy to do.
Sometimes we get excited about things and we naturally get our hopes up.
But I do think that the more we tell ourselves that the right things are going to come to us at the right time and if we don't get something, there is likely a reason for it.
That has nothing to do with who we are, and maybe it has something to do with the brand or the client or your employer, or maybe there's something better that is coming along in just a matter of weeks that this other thing would have been holding you back from.
You know, like just kind of reframing things in that way.
And learning how to be sort of detached from outcomes was really helpful.
Second thing that I had to do was I had to decide that I was enough.
Something that I was doing for years was telling myself that once I lost weight, or once I started looking older in pictures, or once I booked this job and worked with this client like then, things would start to happen for me.
But the only thing that that was doing was keeping me in the exact same place that I had been for so long and kind of keeping me in a cycle of waiting.
Again like waiting for that external validation instead of deciding in the moment that I am enough as I am, without having to change anything about my external self.
I really have to start focusing on the things that I already was and the things that I already had, and accentuating those things, rather than keeping myself stuck with these stories that I was telling myself.
And part of the reason why I did that and why a lot of us do that is because it keeps us comfortable.
Me confronting myself and saying like no, like this is not true, like this is just a limiting belief that you have or this is just something that you're telling yourself was the uncomfortable part, because then I had to actually start doing the thing, which was feeling like I was enough and deciding that I was going to do it anyway, or deciding that I was going to believe it anyway, even if I maybe didn't feel that right in that moment.
And so, in terms of how to do that and the actions that I took to be able to do that, first thing is journaling.
I talk everybody's ear off about journaling, but actually writing about that every day and writing about the things that i actually wanted to start believing and the way that i wanted to start seeing myself was really helpful in the beginning, creating some sort of like morning ritual around that um, and then also this kind of ties into my next point too.
But i had to start acting as if and i had to start living my life as if.
That also means like catching myself when i'm saying these old stories and talking about these old narratives, you know, and cutting myself off, or catching myself when I'm thinking about myself in a negative way or when I'm looking at myself in the mirror and maybe not thinking the most positive, uplifting things.
Slowly but surely every single day, like changing that narrative that I had created for myself in my own mind and starting to believe this new story about who I am.
That brings me to point number three, which is shifting my identity.
We've been talking about a lot of things related to identity on this channel recently.
But this is a little bit different than stepping into a new version of myself.
Although I do feel like I had to do that.
But when it came to where I was at that time in my life, I was in a place where I really saw myself as just a model.
And it was almost like my whole sense of identity was wrapped into what I did for work and this job of me being a model.
But real self-worth doesn't come from what you do or what role you play.
It comes from who you are.
I don't know why I feel like this might sound silly, but I had to start seeing myself as a person, like as a sister, as a friend, as you know, eventually a girlfriend and a partner.
I had to start seeing myself as a creator and as someone with a purpose, and seeing myself as this person who is actually multi-dimensional and not just one thing, and not defining my life by this one thing that I'm doing, maybe for this short part of my life, you know, and i think that if there's anything you take away from this video, it's this it's looking at your life and seeing yourself for all the things that you are, rather than defining yourself by this one thing, because that creates a lot of stress and a lot of pressure and it kind of puts us in a box, and I don't think any of us really need to be put into a box of like okay, you fit here and you fit here.
Like, no, like we're all so many different things.
We have so many different parts of ourselves.
You know, and if I relate that back to my own journey and my own experience, as soon as I started seeing myself in this different light and seeing all the things that I am outside of being a model, it actually took a lot of pressure off of my career and a pressure of having to succeed and having to do all these things for the sake of feeling good about myself, you know.
There were now all of these other amazing things that existed alongside my career.
I found it to be really helpful, especially in the beginning, when I was first realizing this and learning these things, to kind of write out all of these things in my journal and write out all the things that I
I'm capable of and all the things that I am in my life.
And whenever I would go through kind of a lower moment or I had my expectations really high and then I was disappointed, I would go back and read these things and remind myself of these things or even write it out for myself in that moment.
It's nice to have these little exercises or little things that you can do when you're feeling that way, to kind of Get yourself out of that mindset and get you focusing on the right things.
And that brings me to my fourth and final point, in terms of what really helps me cultivate my self-worth.
And that is living out my self-worth on a daily basis.
I think this is the part that can be the most challenging, because a lot of us, myself included, for a long time believed that the world around me kind of had to change, or my circumstances had to change, in order for me to feel differently about myself.
But it's actually the other way around.
When I start to feel better about myself, when I start to talk differently, when I start to live my life differently.
The world is going to reflect that.
In order to live out your self-worth on a daily basis, you have to have the right mindset and you have to have habits that match that mindset.
Again for me.
I love to do my journaling.
My little morning routine that gets me in the right headspace.
You know, looking at your habits and looking at the things that you do every day.
Like how do you treat your body?
How do you treat your mind?
Like do you get exercise, do you eat well, do you sleep enough?
All those things that we don't really think about are oftentimes a reflection of how we feel about ourselves and what we think we're deserving of.
And also taking a look at the way that we talk to ourselves and the way we think about ourselves in our own mind.
I recently made a video about the 10 books that completely changed my life and I think everyone should read.
And there were a number of books in that video that spoke about the power of our thoughts and how important our self-talk is.
And I think, especially when you're in a place like this, where you want to cultivate the strong sense of self-worth and really build this level of confidence, your self-talk has to match that.
So you want to speak to yourself like someone that you love. and someone that you believe in.
Before I started filming this video, I was thinking about how funny it is actually that, in an industry that's based around how people look and external things, how much it's actually taught me about myself and how much it's actually brought into my life in terms of deeper understanding and deeper relationship.
It's not something that you would expect to happen in an industry like this, but it's definitely one of the things that I'm most grateful for throughout this whole experience and more than half of my life.
Again, even if you're not in the same industry as me or even if you can't relate to the modeling aspect, I hope that you were able to take something away from this video and learn a little bit about self-worth.
If this video resonated with you in any way, or if you've gone on your own self-worth journey, I would love to hear about it in the comments.
Maybe sharing the one thing that you found the most helpful.
I'm sure everyone else would love to hear that too.
I hope this video resonated with you.
If there's anything that stood out to you in particular, or if you've gone on your own self-worth journey and there's something that really helped you, I would love to hear about it in the comments.
Don't forget to like and subscribe this video and I will see you in the next one.
