Welcome to Emotional Wellness Daily, a project of SIMHA, the Sephardic Initiative for Mental Health Awareness.
If we look into secular sources (and of course this is just basic common sense), we’ll see articles on what determines self-worth that list the five top factors that people use to measure or compare their own self-worth to that of others.
Number one is o, whether measured by the number on the scale, the size of clothing worn, or the kind of attention received by others. That's number one on the hit parade- How you look (this may explain the increase in eating disorders).
Number two is net worth. This can mean your income, your material possessions, or your assets, etc.
Number three is who you know. What's your social circle? People judge themselves and their value or status by the important or influential people they know.
Number four is what you do. What's your career? We often judge people by their job. A stockbroker might be considered more successful and valuable than a sanitation worker, even if the sanitation worker makes more money.
Finally, number five is what you achieve. People use their achievements to determine their worth. It could be SAT scores, athletic status, etc.
Those are the reasons people have self-worth. But the difficult thing about these markers is that they're basically external. They're not something inherent. When you say someone's worth a million dollars, that's not what they're worth. That's how much money is in their bank account. And when a person goes by their appearance, then eventually when they start looking old, they think they aren’t as valuable, and so on.
These things are all external and they're not true measures of self-worth. That’s why it's quite difficult and challenging to have self-worth, especially if we add the challenges of social media and the constant comparing that it invites.
We've mentioned in the past that the ultimate evil is Amalek, and there's a pasuk at the end of Bereshit that says, Man’s constant thoughts, due to his Yetzer Hara are bad all day- רק רע כל היום
If we re-scramble the last letter of each of these words, we get עמלק Amalek, which means the ultimate evil of Amalek causes us not to think about doing all bad all day, but rather, as Rav Chaim Volozhin says, He tells us all day, “You are bad.” He's constantly putting you down. He's constantly saying that you're worthless. That is the force of Amalek that's inside of us. This evil force is an inner critic, as we might call it using psychological terms, that’s always telling you You need to be more. You're not up to par, you're less than… but it’s not just a psychological challenge. Its an evil issue. Evil wants to grab and steal everything good from us- including our peace of mind. It’s the snake that's trying to destroy Adam and Chava in Gan Eden, it’s Haman. And it's interesting that Haman, who epitomizes Amalek, can check off all the self-worth markers. He has everything on that list. Appearance- he definitely has nice clothing. His net worth is great. His social status is super. He's hanging with the king and queen. He has a great career, he has achieved a lot, he has a lot of children. And yet he says, This is all worthless to me. That’s the power, the negative force of Amalek, that makes you feel worthless.
So how do you fight back against this force that everything is worthless? B’Ezrat Hashem, that will be tomorrow's class. But for now, let’s understand how hard it is, in this world that we live in, to feel true self-worth based on the markers and systems of the world that we live in. It’s one of the great challenges to our mental health, because we need to have self-worth in order to have good mental health.