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DR JOHN DEMARTINI - Updated 2 months ago

Living congruently with what you value most, your highest or core values, is the key to mastering and feeling the deepest fulfilment in life. It is the also the key to dissolving self-doubt and exponentially growing your self-worth.

Every human being, regardless of age, culture or gender spectrum, lives moment by moment by a set of priorities, set of values, things that are most to least important in their life. 

This hierarchy of values is fingerprint-specific to each individual, and although it evolves and changes throughout your life, it is highly unlikely that another human being will have the same hierarchy of values as you. 

Whatever is highest on your list of values is what you are spontaneously inspired to act upon. It's an intrinsic value – one that no-one likely needs to motivate, remind you, and incentivize you to take action on.

However, as you go down the list of what you value to your lower values, the more likely you are to require extrinsic motivation to get you to take action on them because they are less meaningful or fulfilling to you.

I like to use the analogy of a young boy who loves online gaming. Nobody has to motivate him to play his favorite games because its something he is intrinsically and spontaneously inspired to do. However, his parents may have to extrinsically motivate him to do his homework, finish his chores or clean his room.

In other words, if something is low on his list of values, like cleaning his room, it might require the promise of a reward or fear of punishment to get him to do it. But not when it comes to him spending time gaming – in which case, he will likely look for every possible opportunity to do it.

Your unique hierarchy of values determines what you perceive, decide, and act upon. 

In fact, every decision you make is based on what you believe will give you the greatest advantage over disadvantage at that moment to what you value most. 

As such, I can likely rely on you to do whatever you believe at that moment will give you the greatest fulfillment in your highest values. 

I can trust you, be fairly certain that you will be loyal in that area, and committed to the outcome, in the same way that you can likely rely on that boy to spend the majority of his free time gaming. You can also rely on me to be teaching and researching but not to be cooking and driving, which are way lower on my values.

To sum up so far, whenever you act in a way that is aligned and congruent with your highest value, and anytime you perceive that an action will help you fulfill your highest value, you will be spontaneously inspired to do it. 

As you take action on it, your self-worth goes up and your confidence increases because you tend to walk your talk in that area. 

However, as you go down your list of values, you’ll likely procrastinate, hesitate, and frustrate, and tend not to perform those tasks. As such, you will also tend to depreciate yourself and lower your value on yourself because you're not walking your talk and not doing what you say you’ll do.

Anytime you set out to do something that you say is important, if it's not really truly intrinsically important, you'll tend not to do it. The likely result is self-depreciation and self-doubt because your confidence in yourself and belief in yourself decreases.

Your self-worth is a reflection of how congruent you are acting in alignment with your highest values, and your self-worth deteriorates as you go down your list of values. 

The way you know you're doing something high on your values, is that you tend to love it, feel inspired by it, and be truly grateful for the opportunity to do it. 

In my experience, many people think they know what they truly value in life, yet often they are not really clear. 

Having helped hundreds of thousands of people identify and determine their highest values for almost five decades, I have come to realize that what most people perceive as being important to them and what actually is truly important to them are two different things.

A key reason for this is that most people inculcate and inject the values of other people that they look up to, society's norms, traditions, conventions, belief systems, and their particular upbringing. As a result, they often have internal conflict between their true highest values and what they perceive those highest values SHOULD be.

As I often say, anytime you hear yourself saying, “I got to”, “I have to”, “I must”, “I should”, “I'm supposed to”, you’re most likely:

1. Doing something that's not truly most important to you, and 
2. Feeling trapped by it. 

As a result, it tends to devalue you and result in your feeling less fulfilled. 

What you may not know is that you're DESIGNED to react that way – self-doubt and self-depreciation is not a weakness. 

Instead, they are a normal biological, physiological response that occurs when you do something that's not intrinsically important to you.

You're inauthentic when you're not doing what's highest on your values. 

Whenever you do something that's low on your values, you devalue yourself, and so will the world – to let you know it. 

The second you stop and reflect on what's really important to you and get on with doing that, you are more likely to value yourself, have the world value you, and have your self-worth increase.

As such, your self-doubt is a biological feedback system to let you know that you're likely pursuing something that's not intrinsically important to you – perhaps because you perceive that you have to/must/ought to/should do something according to somebody outside you, which is in your mind some form of an outer authority.

When you inject the values of outer authorities into your life, you create what Freud called the super ego, the moralizer inside you that self-judges. 

I believe that the majority of autoimmune responses and illnesses result from that internally conflicted state. Once again, illness and self-doubt are valuable feedback mechanisms to let you know you're likely not pursuing what's truly meaningful and inspiring to you, likely not delegating lower priority tasks, and likely not sticking to what is highest in priority for you.

If you don't fill your day with highest priority actions, it automatically fills up with low priority distractions. Low priority distractions are there to get you frustrated enough to get back to your higher priority actions. 

What happens in your brain when you align your life and live congruently with your highest values versus when you spend time attempting to live in your lower values.

When you live according to your highest values or top priorities, blood, glucose and oxygen go into your forebrain, which is the executive center of your brain. 

So, anytime you fill your day with your highest priority actions and do what is most important, meaningful and inspiring in your life; you wake up the part of your brain that is involved in inspired vision, strategic planning, objectivity, execution of plans, and self-governance. 

You are also more likely to wake up your leadership capacities because you will tend to be more effective and efficient in your actions and have more resilience and stamina in life. 

This is when you are LEAST likely to experience self-doubt.

On the other hand, when you fill your day with low priority actions, the blood, glucose and oxygen go into your hindbrain. 

So, instead of waking up your executive center for inspired vision, you wake up your subcortical brain, which deals with conditioned reflexes, and impulses for immediate gratification and the avoiding of pain. 

As a result, you are most likely to try to avoid challenges and seek an easy less-efficient path, while also taking on the role of follower. 

This is when you are MOST likely to experience self-doubt.

The amygdala is focused on survival instead of thrival. As such, it wants to avoid difficulties and seek ease, avoid pain and seek pleasure, avoid negative and seek positive, and avoid predator and seek prey. 

It also seeks a one- sided life where there is pleasure without pain, happy without sad, positive without negative, peace without war, comfort without discomfort, and freedom without constraint. But, attempting to achieve a one-sided life is as unlikely as achieving a one-sided magnet – there are always two poles and two sides.

Anytime you expect a one-sided world, you set yourself up for an unrealistic expectation, delusion, fantasy, that is going to bring out the other side to break your addiction to that one fantasy and get on with being more wise and neutrally objective. 

That too, is a symptom to try to get you back to your highest value where you're objective, where you embrace both sides of life and see life as being on the way and not in the way. 

If you are in a relationship with somebody and you expect them to be up, never down; positive, never negative; nice, never mean; and kind, never cruel; you'll tend to end up with anger and aggression, blame and betrayal, criticism and challenge, despair and depression, a desire to exit and escape, futility and frustration, grouchiness and grief, hatred and hurt, irritability and insanity, while also feeling jaded and perceive that they’re a jerk. 

In other words, the ABCDEFGHIJs of negativity because you've set up a fantasy of a one-sided individual or world that cannot exist. 

Every time you do this, you tend to experience futility, which most often results in feelings of self-doubt. 

Again, self-doubt exists to try and get you out of the amygdala and into your executive center so you can crack your fantasy addictions and get back to reality and a more strategically planned objective. 

Anytime you're addicted to one side, the other side comes in to balance you.

As such, if you're addicted to a fantasy, you tend to attract a nightmare. 

If you're addicted to peace, you tend to attract a conflict and a person with aggression to balance it out and help you grow. 

The amygdala is not the gratitude center, it’s the desire center. It comes on line when you attempt to pursue some form of immediate gratification, consumerism, addiction, overeating. In other words, it's the center for your survival response. 

If you want to live in survival, pursue one-sided outcomes. 

If you want to thrive, embrace the two sides of life. 

To sum up

People who experience self-doubt and who self-depreciate are more likely to:

1. Fantasize about a one-sided life instead of embracing both sides;
2. Not be living by priority and instead attempting to live in their lower values;
3. Activate their amygdala and search for hedonistic pursuits of immediate gratification;
4. Procrastinate, hesitate and frustrate instead of being engaged, inspired and fulfilled in their life.

That doesn’t have to be your story or your journey.

If you would love to empower your life, dissolve self-doubt and become the master of all areas of your life, it is wise to:

1. Identify your unique set of highest values by completing the FREE, Value Determination Process on my website.
2. Align your life so you are living congruently with your highest values by priority.
3. Embrace both sides of life instead of buying into the fantasy of a one-sided person or life.
4. Acknowledge that everything that is going on in your life is a feedback mechanism, including self-doubt and self-depreciation, to help guide you back to your authentic self and back to priority.

If you would love to grow your self-worth and dissolve self-doubt, then the #1 WISEST ACTION you can take is to learn how to master your life by living congruently with your highest values. 

This is one of the processes I take you through during my 2-day signature program, the Breakthrough Experience; together with the Demartini Method that will help you dissolve the baggage in your life so you can get on with living an extraordinary life.

Are you ready for the NEXT STEP?

If you’re seriously committed to your own growth, if you’re ready to make a change now and you’d love some help doing so, then book a FREE Discovery call with a member of the Demartini Team so we can take you through your mini power assessment session.

You’ll come away with a 3-step action plan and the foundation to empower your life.

 

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In 2 days you’ll learn how to solve any issue you are facing, transform any emotion and reset the course of your life for greater achievement and fulfillment.

You’ll unlock your true potential and lay the groundwork to empower all 7 areas of your life.

Get ready to take your life to a whole new level of meaning and purpose.

Today is the day you step into your power and value yourself by investing in your inspired life when you sign up for Dr Demartini’s signature seminar the Breakthrough Experience:

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