THE WORDS WE FORGET TO SAY TO OURSELVES
There is a voice most of us carry that is quick to catalogue what we did wrong, what we should have done differently, what we are not quite enough of. It runs quietly in the background — during a difficult meeting, in front of a mirror, in the middle of an ordinary Tuesday. We have heard it so many times we have stopped noticing it is even there.
What is far less familiar, for many of us, is the opposite. A simple, unhurried statement of our own worth.
The critic we never hired
Most of us did not choose our inner critic. It arrived gradually — assembled from old feedback, early comparisons, the accumulated weight of moments when we felt we fell short. By the time we are adults, it tends to be well-practised and fast. It does not need much encouragement to get going.
What is interesting is how rarely we question its authority. We treat its verdicts as facts rather than opinions. We assume that if the voice is ours, it must be telling us something true.
But a thought is not a fact simply because it is familiar.
Why self-worth is not vanity
There is a cultural discomfort, particularly in many communities, around stating our own value plainly. It can feel like boasting, or like tempting fate, or simply like something we have not earned the right to do yet — as though worth were a destination rather than a starting point.
Research suggests this discomfort is worth examining. Psychologist Claude Steele first proposed self-affirmation theory in 1988, exploring how affirming our core personal values helps protect and restore a stable sense of self — particularly when that sense of self is under pressure. The work that followed over decades points consistently to the same quiet finding: people who maintain a grounded connection to their own worth tend to navigate difficulty with more steadiness than those who do not.
This is not about confidence in the performance sense — the kind that needs an audience. It is something quieter. A settled sense that we have value independent of what we produce, how we are received, or what any particular day brings.
What the research says
A 2016 study by Cascio and colleagues, published in Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, found that self-affirmation activated areas of the brain associated with reward and self-related processing — specifically the ventromedial prefrontal cortex. The researchers noted this effect was most pronounced when the affirmations were personally relevant and values-based, rather than generic.
Psychologist James Pennebaker’s decades of research into expressive writing adds another layer. His work found consistently that the act of putting words on paper — about our feelings, our values, our inner experience — engages us differently than thought alone. Writing slows us down. It asks us to choose words, to commit to something, even briefly. There is something in that act of commitment that thinking alone does not quite reach.
Taken together, what this research points to is modest and sustainable: regularly returning to a sense of our own values and worth can support a steadier relationship with ourselves over time. Not a transformation. A practice.
The My Fyrst connection
My Fyrst is built on the idea that emotions are signals worth paying attention to — and that self-awareness grows through small, consistent moments of honest reflection rather than grand gestures or periodic breakthroughs.
The ancient Indian philosophical tradition that inspires the programme recognised nine distinct emotional states, each considered a genuine signal rather than something to be managed or overcome. One of them — Vīra, often translated as a quiet sense of courage or capability — tends to surface not in dramatic moments but in ordinary ones. The moment we choose to believe something kind about ourselves, without needing to justify it. The moment we decide the critic does not automatically get the last word.
A closing thought
We are often far more generous with our assessment of other people’s worth than we are with our own. We extend grace to friends, to colleagues, to strangers — and then apply a completely different standard to ourselves.
It is worth asking, occasionally, what it would mean to apply that same generosity inward. Not as a permanent state to achieve, but as a question to sit with. What would shift, even slightly, if you took your own value as a given rather than something still to be earned?
You do not have to answer it today. Just noticing the question is somewhere to begin.
My Fyrst is a personal practice, not therapy or clinical support. If you are going through a difficult time, please speak with a qualified mental health professional.