The Epidemic of Productivity-Based Self-worth

As I lay there in a darkened room, on a yoga mat surrounded by 10 other people immersed in their own breath, I felt the weight of so many years of perfectionism. With every breath I pulled in and released, I could feel my mind fighting against itself — you’re not doing it right, you’re supposed to do it faster, why can’t you get this right?, if you’re not going to do it right why do it at all? It was in these few moments at the beginning of my first Sacred Breathwork Circle that I realized just how strongly my mind has attached to the belief that my worth is directly tied to my productivity.

I’ve known for a long time that this is a problem for me, though I guess I never understood just how deeply ingrained it still was. I mean shaming myself for potentially not breathing right? That’s a new level, even for me.

But what this experience gave me was an opportunity to witness the way I was keeping myself small and actively choose a different path. I couldn’t distract myself with work or TV or Instagram — I was fully there in that moment and I could choose to suffer or I could choose love and compassion instead.

I focused on my breath and allowed the negative self-talk to pass through my mind, as if I was watching storm clouds pass across an otherwise blue sky. When I felt myself start to grab for one, I deepened my breath even more. After 15 minutes or so, I was breathing so deeply and rapidly that my fingers were tingling and I could feel negative energy being released through my body.

When I shared afterward in circle about this experience of feeling like I needed to get it just right, The nods and murmurs of understanding signaled that this was something others struggled with, too.

Why do we tie our self-worth to our productivity?

Thanks to society, we’ve all been brought up with the idea that our self-worth is directly correlated with things outside of ourselves. For some of us, the status of our romantic relationships can make us feel more or less worthy. For others, it’s financial success, or physical appearance, or weight, or popularity among a certain crowd. Far too many of us look at how much we accomplish in any given time period and base our self-worth on how well we think we did.