In my years as a coach, I've observed a fascinating pattern in how both men and women perceive their self-worth. Like the varying landscapes we encounter in nature, these differences shape unique emotional terrains that influence how we navigate life's challenges.
Understanding Conditional vs. Unconditional Worth
Imagine two trees in a forest. One believes it must produce perfect fruit each season to deserve its place, while another stands tall, knowing its value exists simply because it is. This metaphor illustrates the distinction between conditional and unconditional worth, a concept that often manifests differently across genders.
We might get our worth tied up with external metrics: appearance, achievements, relationships, and how committed and nurturing we are to others. This internalised message is that value must be earned through constant performance and adaptation.
There may be a struggle with worth through the lens of productivity and success. Perhaps you have fallen into a situation that binds your value to career achievements, financial status, and your role as a 'provider'.
Each creates a different but equally challenging relationship with self-worth.
We are mainly born with unconditional worth, an acceptance of ourselves, just as we are.
Yet a range of social, and environmental factors and life experiences can teach us that to earn ourselves we have to do (or not do) particular things. Be or represent particular things to achieve specific things to be noticed, loved, validated, respected, feel 'safe' or belong.
Remember those confusing messages we got as children 'seen and not heard' followed by 'speak to your elders'. Learning our way to our worth and acceptance was a muddling path, for many.
These ingrained patterns of conditional worth significantly impact even in adult life:
In professional settings, you might hesitate to negotiate salaries or seek promotions, believing you must first prove yourself beyond doubt.
You might push yourself to unhealthy limits, seeing your new limits as a badge of achievement rather than a warning sign of burnout.
In relationships, maybe you overextend yourself, believing love must be earned through constant giving. Or struggle to show vulnerability, fearing it might diminish their perceived value or expose you as 'weak'.
Nature as Teacher: The Coaching Connection
This is where nature-based coaching offers a unique perspective. The natural world provides powerful metaphors and direct experiences that challenge our conditioned beliefs about worth:
Lessons from the Wild
The forest doesn't judge a tree by its height or a river by its speed. Each element exists in perfect authenticity, contributing to the ecosystem simply by being. This fundamental truth offers profound insights for coaching clients:
Natural Cycles: Nature demonstrates that rest and recovery are as vital as growth and production. The barren winter tree isn't less valuable than its summer self.
Interdependence: Every element in nature has inherent worth within the larger system, teaching us that our value isn't determined by individual achievement but by our connection to the whole. It challenges a 'go it alone' mentality we often have in proving our worth and invites us to value contribution and collaboration.
Resilience Through Authenticity: Like how each species thrives by fulfilling its unique role, we find our greatest strength in embracing our authentic selves. In coaching we explore ways for you to 'value your own uniqueness' and embrace this in others too.
Practical Applications in Nature-Based Coaching
When working with clients outdoors, several approaches prove particularly effective:
Observing curiously
Observing natural phenomena helps recognise patterns in your own thinking. Many people I coach share how this observation compounds their self-criticism mirrors human-imposed standards rather than natural laws of uniqueness, this can be freeing and offer new perspectives and beliefs.
This is not just use of metaphor of course, we can actually learn strategies to support our own views and actions, directly from the natural world. Through an approach called Biomimicry.
Embodied Experience
Simple exercises like being in the stillness of the forest with birdsong or flowing like a river help clients physically experience unconditional worth, through acceptance and connection to themselves in a beautiful and peaceful setting. These somatic experiences create new neural pathways that challenge limiting beliefs.
Metaphoric exploration
Nature provides endless metaphors and analogies for personal growth. A client struggling with perfectionism might find wisdom in how a forest naturally maintains diversity and values this.
Something in the landscape may help to explain a feeling or experience about your self-worth issues.
Re-wiring & Re-wilding your biological self
Exploring your own unique views and experience and combining this with psycho-education, neuroscience and coaching approaches. We help you understand how your own beliefs of self-worth have been compounded, understanding how thoughts, feelings and behaviours can inform these self-doubting moments and learn practical ways to manage and change your outlook, based on your environment and aims.
Understanding worth through nature's lens helps both men and women recognise and curiously challenge their conditioned responses.
The key lies in:
-Identifying and understanding your own beliefs & purpose
-Recognising that worth, like life itself, is inherent rather than earned
- Understanding that growth and rest are equally valuable parts of life's cycle
- Accepting that vulnerability and strength coexist in nature and ourselves
As a coach, I've witnessed profound transformations when clients begin viewing themselves through nature's non-judgmental eyes. The forest doesn't question its right to exist, and neither should we.
In our modern world of constant evaluation and comparison, nature offers a gently reviewed & renewed perspective on worth. Through nature-based coaching, both men and women can begin to unravel the complex conditioning around self, gender and worth, finding your way back to your inherent value and feeling more comfortable in your skin for it. Not because of what you do, but simply because of who you are.
Like the diverse ecosystem of a healthy forest, true well-being comes from embracing our authentic nature rather than conforming to external expectations. In nature's 'classroom' (aka my woods in Yorkshire) , we learn perhaps the most valuable lesson of all: that our worth, like the sun's light or the river's flow, is unconditional and ever-present.
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