Showing Up WORTHY

Worthiness is a hot topic right now. According to Worthy, a new book by Jamie Kern Lima, a majority of us harbor insecurity from childhood. It lives on in self-doubt, criticism, imposter syndrome, fear and loneliness. It’s the boundary of our success, vibrancy, contributions and legacy.

Supporting Jamie's fabulous work is a critical ingredient: how humans are designed by nature to Show Up, engaging right brained attention.

This way of attending fundamentally interconnects us, not as INdividuals, but as ALLdividuals. It’s how we survived in our native tribes. And it’s how we thrive today. Individual, separate Selves were unworthy of survival thousands of years ago. It's why those of us who feel separate also may feel unworthy. But it goes against our very evolution and nature.

TO FEEL WORTHY ENGAGE RIGHT-BRAINED ATTENTION

THIS IS ACHIEVED BY RESETTING OUR NERVOUS SYSTEM TO ENGAGE OUR RIGHT HEMISPHERE’S ATTENTION SYSTEM. THIS SYSTEM FEELS OTHERS, OPENS OUR SENSES TO NUANCE AND FLOWS WITHIN THE MORE THAT’S GOING ON AROUND US. ATTENDING THIS WAY WE ARE WHOLE, LOVE, PRESENT, ENGAGED, CURIOUS AND WORTHY, AS WE'RE DESIGNED. AND WE AVOID LIVING LIKE UNWORTHY MACHINES, WHAT OUR CULTURE AND DEVICES ARE PUSHING US TOWARD EACH MOMENT.

Like Showing Up, worthiness isn’t a solo sport. It’s a team sport. We simply can’t feel worthy alone. So we need to choose how we’re Showing Up – in our connected attention system - throughout our day. It's the only way of attending that reads social queues, sways to the music, leads from a place of care, and broadens our experience beyond the fractured bits we've been conditioned to see. Indeed, it is exactly this fractured analytical, machine-like, busy-mind sense of the world that creates unworthiness.

Choosing how we Show Up reinfuses us within our collective, our tribe and community, family, company, religion, nature, whatever we choose to connect with today. Crucially - Humans survived only through coordinated activity. Yet, so much content on worthiness speaks to us as individual islands needing a confidence boost.

As long as we live self-focused, in narrow, get-it-done mode, sensing our Selves as separate, we'll struggle to feel worthy. This self-focused quality of attention, what I call Just Showing Up, engages shallow perception. It lives in our left hemisphere. Using it - which we default to when we're multitasking, stressed, etc., we're more bouncing off what is before us, defaulting to a fear-based, control-over mode of being, than the powerfully connected, meaningful life that is relationally primary in our universe (per Einstein, Bohm, Krishnamurti, all Eastern and Indigenous traditions, etc).

DISTINCT DOES NOT MEAN SEPARATE.

We are not islands. Discussing worthiness as if we’re individual, separate Selves does not make sense. Distinct does not mean separate. Once we flow more naturally between our get-it-done, left-brained attention system and our interconnected right hemisphere’s mode of attending, topics like worthiness dissipate. They are simply inconsistent with how the world works, and how humans are designed to Show Up.

How about we orient around how we’re designed to Show Up to thrive? More as Alldividuals than as Individuals? Succeeding through Alltelligence, not solo-based Intelligence? That’s our true, evolutionary, success path as human beings.

We’re far closer to drops of water in an ocean, fundamentally interlinked, and fundamentally whole. We are nature. We are not in nature.

The solution starts with Truly Show Up. This requires we choose periodically to reset into our right-brained, wholistic attention system. With a few focused breadths we start slowing and feeling more of each other’s shared humanity. We feel others and they feel felt by us. We feel worthy, and so do they. We’re not afraid. We’re outward focused, open, and receptive. Bias, othering, discrimination and unkindness fade. We contribute to each other and to society in a positive, healthy way. A way with less animosity, violence, tolerance of sloppy thinking, impulsivity and absence of care.

So let’s awaken our inherent worthiness by Truly Showing Up, attending to the world the way we're designed. Now we're seeing/feeling each other as human beings on a small planet, one in which we’re sharing the same air and water, peace or insecurity, health or strain, care or disregard, compassion and openness for our dominant similarities and shared needs to be seen, heard and felt.

This is how we’re designed to Show Up.

Then we’ll feel worthy.

Then we’ll feel happy.

Then we’ll help the world move toward peace and health.

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Marcy Axelrod is an award-winning author, 2X TEDx speaker, TV Contributor, and management consultant. She currently lives in New York with her two daughters.