When will it be enough?
We compare ourselves to others. We try and convince ourselves we’re worth something by getting others to approve of our choices, clothes, houses, cars, and spouses. We think we’re the only ones struggling.
How do we stop? How do we learn to rest, and know we’re enough and loved? How do we find our worth from Christ?
Here’s how to break free from the striving, and start seeking your worth in God:
Key Action Items:
- Discover where you’re getting your worth [2:17]
- The comparison trap leaders fall into and how to spot it [4:06]
- What we’re really doing when we try to impress others [6:08]
- How to know what God says about you, and your self-worth [7:47]
- 2 things that hold us back from understanding our worth in Christ [17:19]
Resources:
Download the episode
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Chris LoCurto: Welcome to the Chris LoCurto show where we discuss leadership and life and discover that business is what you do, not who you are.
Thank you!!
Not only do I want to welcome you to the show, but I want to thank you as well. Today is our 300th episode on the Chris LoCurto show. Woo! It’s because of you guys, those of you that are listeners, those of you that are clients…that we are able to put out free content daily. I have to say that it has been a blast putting out so much information. I love helping people and it’s folks like you that are the reason that I do this every week.
Our hope is that it changes your life, that it helps you in something you’re experiencing, that it changes your leadership, that it changes your business. That’s our goal. That is our focus here. For those who know us and who’ve been here, a lot of you that are listening, have been here to our offices… You know that our philosophy, our mission is to love people, to take care of people, so thank you that we get to do this because this is fun for us.
This is a joy to be able to get in here and put out something that hopefully will affect you, your team, your family. Thank you for that. Thank you for allowing us to speak into your lives. That means the world to us and thank you for all of the responses that we get you guys write in. When you answer our surveys, you help us to see what helps you the most and the things we can do to change your lives.
Thank you for all of those that have left reviews. That for us means a lot because that helps us to reach even more people. So once again, thank you for allowing me to do what I do. I appreciate it and it means the world to me. So today we are talking about clay pots. Now you might be saying to yourself, when in the world did this show become about pottery?
The Comparison Trap…
It is not about pottery, but it is about something that hopefully is going to make a lot of sense to you today. What we’re really talking about is comparison and worth, and how we compare ourselves to people and things in an attempt to get our worth from that thing or to prove to ourselves that we’re better. Or maybe you’re somebody who compares yourself to others, maybe your worth or your approval or the approval that you’re seeking comes when you constantly compare yourself to everybody around you or specific people or maybe it’s only one person.
For some of you, social media can be a good thing and it can be a horrible thing. For some folks, they use social media so that they can scroll through and see how much better the other parents are being to see how much prettier the other women are to see how much more weight the other guys are lifting.
If you’re choosing to use that platform as your comparison, then you are absolutely wasting your time. If you’re choosing to use instagram to compare your outfit or how many likes you got to somebody else, then you are self sabotaging you. You’re using that platform to gain or lose worth to gain or lose approval. Maybe you’re somebody in your office. Maybe there’s a another gal or another guy that looks a lot like you and maybe they have talents like you or maybe they have better talents than you.
Maybe they are doing something that is in a different area and you’re not even in the same role, but you constantly compare yourself to that person. Did they gain someone’s attention more than you? Did they accomplish a goal better than you did? They were a better outfit today. Did they have more smiles? Were they happier? Whatever the thing is, you constantly compare yourself to them.
When Leaders Assume They’re the Only Ones Struggling…
If you’re a leader, we get a lot of leaders and business owners that come to our programs thinking that they’re the only ones struggling with the things they’re struggling with. Let me just make this very clear right now to all leaders listening and to all business owners listening to this. You’re no different. You are not struggling with something that all the people in our groups, who are being successful, haven’t struggled with. It’s great.
We do it at the retreats after we have new teams come on board, we’ll have a retreat and we’ll ask people who thinks they’re the only ones going through this thing and you’ll see the new people will raise their hands and the veterans laugh. Why? Because they’ve been through it. They’ve struggled through it. Stop comparing yourself to somebody who might be successful in an area that you’re not, when they’re not even the same person as you or they don’t even have the same business as you or they’ve been doing it longer than you.
The comparison trap is something that we use to try and tell ourselves that we are either worthy or unworthy. It’s something we use to either convince ourselves that somebody is approving of us or we use it to affirm the terrible thoughts that are in our mind, which is we aren’t worthy to that person, that we are less than them or that we are failures. So here’s what I want you to learn from this process.
If you’ve experienced any of that, and even if you’re looking at it and thinking that specific example is not me, that’s fine. You know exactly what I’m talking about. This was probably resonating inside, and if it’s not fantastic, that’s great, but chances are it is resonating. Chances are you’ve experienced this, chances are you might be experiencing it today, this week. So here’s what I want you to understand. When we seek approval from man, we are convincing ourselves that man has the ability to say that we are worth something.
How You’re a Clay Pot
So one of the tools I use all the time here, especially Next-Level Life is understanding who we are and how we came to be. So for those of you that have a nice ceramic coffee mug in front of you, that’s the example I use. I usually use two coffee mugs and what I do is I help people to see something. So imagine me picking up this coffee mug and showing you that that coffee mug that I have in my hand is something that I created.
It’s something I took some clay, pulled it together, shaped it into this mug, and I created this mug. Put it in a kiln and fired it up or put some great paint on it. So I create this coffee mug and the mug that I have in front of me. It’s mine. I created it. I am the genius behind the mug. The coffee mug is not. I can take that coffee mug, I can fill it with great stuff. I can allow it to be filled with crappy stuff.
I can take it and throw it against the wall and busted into a million pieces. I can put it back together again better than it ever was. I’m the one who created the mug. The mug doesn’t have any creation ability. It takes on the form, the shape of what’s put in it, put on it, put around it. It’s not the creator I am.
Now. Let’s change the roles here. I’m the coffee mug and the person who made it is God.
God and Your Self-Worth and Striving
God reached down, the guy who spread billions of galaxies in Pico seconds. If you don’t know what that is, that’s something like a trillionth of a trillionth of a second. That’s the amount of time it takes something traveling at light speed to cross the shaft of a hair. That’s how fast the universe was created. How accurate it was, the guy who made the biggest star. This is as of right now, that I know of, the biggest star out there is 2.4 billion kilometers across.
The earth, 13,000 kilometers. We are a pinhead compared to the size of the biggest star that we’ve discovered, that God made, right? He made something that massive and we’re on this teeny tiny little rock that’s only 13,000 kilometers across, right? That guy who created those things, made you. He’s the one who reached down into the dirt, pulled it together and made you.
He did not make a mistake. He didn’t do something wrong with that. He made what he loved. Here’s the problem. We tend to spend our time as a clay pot not turning to the creator in seeking worth not turning to the creator and discovering how worthy we are to it, what does he think of us? Even though he’s given us this phenomenal manual that gives us tons of ideas of how he sees us and how much he loves us and how much he cares about us and how righteous he is and how much he wants us to spend eternity with him instead of focusing on worth from him.
We turned to what? Another clay pot. We turn to another clay pot and we spend our time trying to convince that other clay pot that we’re worth something. Hey, do you think I look good? Hey, do you think I’m smart enough?
Hey, do you think the things I say sound great. Hey, do you like the accomplishments I’ve done in my life? Do you like the amount of money I’ve made? Do you like the car I drive the house I have? Do you like my kids? Are they photogenic enough? We spend our time trying to convince other clay pots that we’re worth approving of and if by chance we can convince another clay pot that we are worthy and we gained some worth in that moment.
How long does it last? Five minutes. Maybe. Most likely one minute, 30 seconds, it doesn’t really last that long, but you get this great high of, “Oh, that person thinks I’m something,” now what? Now I’ve got to go convince them again, or I’ve got to go find another clay pot and convince that clay pot, that I’m worth something the whole time. We’re kind of pushing, you know, waving our hand at God going, don’t, don’t, don’t worry about me.
I’m getting worth down here by these other clay pots. I don’t need to turn to you to find out how worthy I am. I don’t need to turn to you to discover what you truly think of me because what are we convinced usually? That what God thinks of us is horrible. Well, he thinks we’re terrible if that were true and if he does realize that we do terrible things, otherwise there would not have needed to be a savior.
So no matter how terrible we are, the guy who created us, the guy who makes trees on the weekend actually made a way because we were enemies of his, to actually be loved by him for eternity. That guy shows us how worthy we are by showing us how much he loves us. Now some of you out there, you’ve got some pretty bad examples in your life of what love looks like.
You might have some bad parents that did not do a great job of showing you what love looks like. So unfortunately you may have a very bad image of God. You may believe that he is not a loving God. You may believe that, he is nothing but this fire and brimstone God and I can tell you that is absolutely untrue.
Now, he is a righteous God. There is no doubt about it, but his word is absolutely full of his love for us even though sometimes it involves discipline, even though sometimes involves punishment for the wicked. What it has more than anything is how crazy he is about you little clay pot, and how much he wants to fill you with great, amazing, loving things, holy things. The kind of stuff that tells you you’re worth will never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever come from what another created thing tells you your worth this.
So no matter how much I try to convince you that you’re worthy because you accomplished 73 things today or because you’re attractive or because you have big muscles or because you have a great car or your house is amazing, no matter how much I try to convince you of that, it doesn’t actually make you worthy. There’s only one thing that does make you worthy.
That’s the god of the universe, that’s your father or as Jesus called them Abba, which our translation would be, Daddy, your daddy wants you to know that your worth his son taking on the world’s worst beating, having the flesh ripped off his back, being beaten with fists and sticks so badly that his own mother would not have been able to recognize him, had she not known it was him being nailed to a splintery tree
and for a period of time, for the first time being separated from God so that he could take on all the stupid that we do. Folks, show me another clay pot in your life that has done that for you. Show me any clay pots in your life that can get you into heaven, that can impact your eternity.
Show me any clay pots that tell you how much they love you compared to the love that was displayed on that cross. You’re not gonna be able to find that for a reason. There’s only been one person who’s loved you so much that you have worth, and what is your worth? He’s worth dying for you so that you can have the phenomenal inheritance that comes when we transfer from this life to the next, which is eternity with him.
So today, what do I want you to know? I want you to know that no other clay pots are going to make you worthy. Now, that doesn’t mean that you don’t get worth from loving people. well. I love you guys. I love our clients that come in. I love our team. I love my family, and I get worth from doing so, but that worth I have to keep doing. I have to keep loving them well I have to keep doing things to help you guys, but if I seek and gain all of my worth from doing that, then I’m missing out on the greatest worth of all.
I used to say I got five percent from God, which was probably zero. Today my focus on my worth, and sometimes this is a daily thing…it’s many moments throughout the day where I have to remind myself, the guy who made all of the amazing beauty around me, the 3.2 or 3.3 billion bits of code in my DNA, the brain that even the best surgeon still don’t really truly understand. They’re just doing a great job with what they got, but they still don’t understand it.
That guy who made all of this, the guy who shows me a beautiful flowers, amazing mountain tops, friends that love me, people who care for me, the guy who did all of that stuff, man, for some strange reason that I don’t truly understand yet, he’s crazy about me. He loves me immensely. I can’t wait to see him, so why? Why? Why? Why would I not spend the bulk of my time getting my worth from him?
Two Things Probably Holding You Back The Most
Now there’s, there’s some seriously intense ways you need to do this and it’s again, this is stuff that we teach people in Next-Level Life. How to get to that place. I’m just going to tell you the two things that are probably holding you back the most. You need to spend way more time in his Word. You need to spend way more time talking to your daddy, not just asking him to bless your food for 30 seconds, not just dial-a-Jesus, I want you to take care of everything for me today, but spending time talking to the one person who wants to spend every second of your day with you.
Spending time in his word, learning what it says, guys, people do not spend enough time in God’s word. If you want to learn his love for you, find it. Discover it. Look over the promises that he has for you. Look over the things that he says about you. You can discover his love for you. If you go after it, it’s there. It’s waiting for you. He’s already done it. He’s already put it out there. He’s constantly guiding you to try and get you to go after it. So choose today.
Every time today you find yourself feeling unworthy, unloved. Then you discover that you’re trying to get it from another clay pot. Stop. Stop and focus on the only one who can give you consistent, accurate, eternal love. So there you have it. Choose today to not seek your approval from men. Choose today to seek approval. Choose today to learn about your worth from God. It is an amazing thing.
I’m able to love you so, so, so much better because I’m not seeking my approval from you. I’m seeking my approval from God. Knowing how much he loves me allows me to love you much better. When the Pharisees asked Jesus, what is the greatest commandment, he said, love your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength and love your neighbor as yourself. Guys, this is the Bible according to Chris. I do not believe that you can love your neighbor until you love you, and most of us hate ourselves.
Most of us loathe ourselves. I don’t believe that you can truly love you until you truly love God, and the way that I’ve discovered to love God is to discover how much he loves me. The more I see how much he loves me, the more I love me and the more I’m able to love you, so choose today.
Get your worth from the only consistent place you can. Hopefully this has helped you today. Hopefully, if there’s somebody you know that needs to hear this as well and let them know, go back and love people well, but love you and start by loving your God and as always, take this information. Change your leadership. It’ll change the way you look at your team members. It’ll change the way you lead people to success. It’ll change the way you care about their success. Change Your Business. It’ll change the things you go after. It’ll change your core values. It’ll change your mission, change your life. I can promise you it will change every single day. Do these things, and as always, join us on the next episode.
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