HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!! THE WORLD WAS BLESSED WHEN YOU ARRIVED!!! Your article about going to the professional marketing event and ending up sitting alone changed my life. I decided then I was not alone in some times feeling as though I am non existant. Your comments in todays video really conviced me that I do exist and its ok to sometimes feel worthless for a second or two,but the truth is for the first time in my life I no longer feel I am worthess. I have you to thank for that!! HAPPY BIRTHDAY AND I HOPE FOR YOU THIS A NEW BIRTH DAY!! YOU ARE REAL, COMPLETE, WHOLE, WORTHWHILE,AND HAVE THE SOUL AND POWER TO HELP OTHERS in the world!! I am so greatful for you, with gratitude, Joan

The Law of Attraction meant nothing to me, until I became a part of the experience Antonio created. We love you.

P.S. your daughter is just TOO cute! ;o)

I hope you take this in the right light.

If I were to equate how people treat me as an indication of my worth, I’d have to say I have very little worth.

But I don’t.

I believe my worth is a given. And, I believe I am as worthwhile as Bill Gates, or Oprah, or the President, the Pope, Academy Award winning actors and actresses, Nobel Prize winning scientists and humanitarians, or whomever.

Now, do I believe I am having as much of an impact as these kinds of persons? No. But I don’t equate my worth to the impact I have on others. (In fact, I don’t believe I can ever really know what impact I’m having on others. And, although the above mentioned people are well known, and greatly admired, they also cannot really ever know what impact they are really having on others.)

I read an interesting story once. It was about a country boy who once went with his father into the big city. While there, he saw a man drunk, asleep in a doorway, wearing filthy clothes and giving off a stench that could be noticed several feet away. Seeing that man changed this boy. He had never seen someone in such a poor state, and he wanted to find a way to help.

So, here you have one of the world’s forgotten souls, having so great an impact on someone as to change the entire course of their life.

Everyone has influence. And one usually never knows how they are influencing others. Another story I read: A school teacher told how once, a former student returned, many years after leaving school. He wanted to tell the teacher, “You saved my life.” Apparently, there was a day when this young student was feeling so very bad that she had planned to take her life. She was getting sexually abused at home, and she could no longer take it. But, according to her, that day in this teacher’s class, the teacher had said something so profound that it just shook her to her core and made her want to live again.

But here’s the very interesting thing: Of course he was glad to have had such an impact, but this teacher didn’t tell have even the faintest memory of this former student, or the occasion she spoke of.

Never try to measure your worth by the impact you think you are having. You can never really know.

To me, we are all Children of God, and of equal worth. It doesn’t matter even if we die as babies or children in some Third World country or get so severely abused that we turn into the most heinous criminal. We are still of equal worth. To me, when we die, God welcomes each of us back, with absolutely no extra praise, bias or condemnation for one or another.

I just wanted to share a little of my thoughts on this.

By the way, I also don’t think you’re having any kind of bad impact on your little girl. She’s obviously delighted to be sitting on your lap, and you obviously love her. I suppose what I want to say, it doesn’t make sense to me, for you to be so hard on yourself.

As for being overlooked or ignored, I read (at different times) where even Madonna, President Bush, Mahatma Gandhi and Patty Labelle had stories where they were slighted or ignored. It happens to everyone. It doesn’t necessarily mean you’re projecting low self worth.

Phil

You are special! You’ve helped me create a lot of personal breakthroughs with your podcasts. I’ve been listening to them for a long time.

Happy Birthday!

From watching this video, what I would just like to say is that this just goes to show that you are human. No one feels 100% good, 100% positive all the time. That’s the goal. This is a curve which all of us goes through. Know that there are offline people who do care for you. It’s like sending broadcast messages daily to a full phonebook of people but only a handful responded and felt that nobody felt your presence. You’ll be surprised that they care. They do. We do. You are doing something good for the world. That’s what’s important. Keep it up!

First I wanted to delete your mail, but luckily enough I did NOT. Thank you, Antonio, for this inspiring and heartwarming Message, that actually made me cry .. Wishing you belayed birthday wishes and YOU ARE WORTH IT! and I love your daughter, give her kisses from me .. Christian

Hi,

I stumbled accross you podcast on iTunes looking for someone who could put the secret on a level that i could understand, and how to live it and I found you…Please don’t stop…I come to work every day ad spend some time with me and theuniverse by reading my daily word, our daily bread, my secret of the day, write my affirmations for the day, and look for your emails it takes me a little over and hour but it is worth it…I’ve listened to all your podcast… i do it because i know that i’ts going to help me and by my children and family watching me it will help them and so on and so on So thank you for paying it forward (good movie, awesome book)

please pleas keep up the great work it’s food for my soul!

have a blessed day
Bren~
New and life time member!

Hi Antonio,
I was missing you at SLC. In fact, I thought of you last week. You would have enjoyed the last two week I spent with Eric from Montreal. He worked with a group in healing the internal wounds. These wounds stop you from creating. It might have helped you during your period of being against the wall and experiencing this humanist. Remember that you created this journey and you can change the creation. You daughter is beautiful. She has an old soul that has been on this earth before.

Self Worth Issues

Something bothers me, about what you said you experienced. You said, on your birthday you never felt so worthless.

But that’s not what bothered me. What bothered me was how you seemed to have reacted or responded to that feeling of worthlessness.

But let me give a little of my background, so you have at least a little idea of why your response to your feeling worthless bothered me.

I’m what many would call an old fart. I’m approaching 60 and I’ve been a conscious student of life for at least 30 or so years. (Before that I just took it for granted that life sucked, my life sucked, and anybody who seemed to be doing well was faking it, but their life actually sucked too. Well, I didn’t believe that entirely all the time, but I did believe it more and more until finally I got so depressed I wanted to just die. But ahh,… I had the good fortune to have a very tiny, tiny, tiny glimmer of a thought that, “Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe life can be better.” And, lo and behold, I began looking and things started ‘showing up’ and I learned things that absolutely turned my life around – 180 degrees – for the better. But now, let me get back to why I’m writing,… i.e., how your reaction to the experience of feeling worthless bothered me.)

One of the – what seems to me – very important things I’ve learned in my 30+ years of being a life student is:

How we feel is not necessarily an indication of how things are.

Another thing I’ve learned is:

When we feel poorly about ourselves it is almost always because we have a distorted, limiting, fundamentally incorrect and false idea of Who We Really Are or How THINGS Really Are.

So, let me explain how these concepts work, when a person feels worthless, for example. Let’s go back to your experience and let me try to show what is happening with it.

You feel very worthless.

But what then did you do? You tried to disprove the feeling. And how did you try to disprove the feeling? One of the ways was, you counted all the people who sent you Birthday Blessings. But let’s look at this.

Your decision or choice to do this you must have been coming from the premise (the belief) that: One’s worth is dependent on how one appears to others, or how others treat you.

Analyze this: If you didn’t believe your worth was DEPENDENT on the good opinions of others, you wouldn’t feel the LEAST bit worthless if no one appeared to care about you. So, what does this mean?

It means, at the time you felt worthless YOU caused the bad feeling, because you were experiencing a false idea of what constitutes your WORTH.

Let me try to give you examples, so that you can readily see how other people’s responses or opinions of you are completely IRRELEVANT, when it comes to your worth.

Suppose you are born in some Third World country and your mom is poor and cannot even feed you. Does this mean you aren’t worthy?

Or, suppose a child comes home from school one day, excited because he or she did unusually well in some test, and when s/he goes to tell mom or dad, mom and dad are freaking out because they can’t pay their bills and irritatedly respond with, “Can’t you see I’m busy here? Go out and play, or something.”

Does the parent’s response to the child’s desire to share their joy mean they aren’t worthy or deserving of kind attention?

Of course not.

If a person doesn’t have enough to eat, or a nice place to sleep, does this mean they aren’t worthy of it? Of course not.

How others treat us, or the conditions we experience are NOT determiners of our worth.

At least, not to me.

To me, Who We Really Are, are beings of Unconditional Worth. By that I mean, I believe each and every person is worthy and deserving of excellent, wonderful, happy, peaceful, joyful, meaningful, fulfilling lives.

Now, at this point, since you seem to have an inquisitive mind, I can imagine you asking, “If everyone is Unconditionally Worthy and Worthwhile and deserving of every good thing, why don’t we all experience this?”

A part of my answer is: Because we have come to BELIEVE ideas that blind us to being aware of and experiencing our Unconditional Worth. Let me explain that,…

Here you were, on your birthday. You experienced a bad feeling. You said you felt very worthless. But what did you do with that feeling?

You didn’t immediately say, “That can’t possibly be true.” No. Instead, you tried to look for EXTERNAL EVIDENCE for why that wasn’t true. But look at what that reaction means: It means you BELIEVE that your WORTH is DEPENDENT on EXTERNALS, e.g., how others treat you, how nice your circumstances are, what others are saying about you.

If, instead, you believed that your worth is NEVER AN ISSUE, you would have dealt with that bad feeling differently.

You see, MY belief about worth is: Every person is absolutely worthy of a completely wonderful life. Therefore, if someone is FEELING unworthy, they must be BELIEVING something about what constitutes WORTH that isn’t true.

Now, here’s another question you might now be asking: If every person’s worth is so Unconditionally Wonderful, why are so many people struggling? The general answer is: Most people BELIEVE ideas that blind them and OBSTRUCT them from experiencing reality abundantly, happily, peacefully, meaningfully and fulfillingly.

What are some of these limiting beliefs?

I’m not as worthy as someone else. (Translation: I am worthless – worth LESS than some other person.)
I am not beautiful.
I am not wonderful.
The Universe and/or God doesn’t care about me.
I’m not important.
I don’t have what it takes, whatever that is.

You see, no one can EARN or add one IOTA to their WORTH by what they do, or try to do.

The things we get, by getting people to approve of something we say or do, may add to our bank account or status. But they don’t change our worth.

For example, a baby who hasn’t earned a dime is not ‘worth less’ than, say, a rock star or famous politician. Isn’t that obvious? (But notice how people’s behaviors belie their blindness to this obvious fact.)

Most people spend an enormous amount of time, thinking, strategizing, energy and effort, on trying to EARN a feeling of WORTH. But it is not something to be earned; it is only something to be understood or REALIZED.

YOU CAN’T EARN A SENSE OF WORTH.

Do you see?

Our feelings tell us what we believe. That’s all they do.

If you don’t like the way you feel about something (or yourself) learn to question the feeling. It’s likely the bad feeling is the result of a mistaken, limiting belief. And that’s all it is. Discover the right belief and the bad feeling just goes away,… easy, with practically no effort required.

Now, do you agree or disagree? Do you think I’m just blowing smoke up your x or does what I say resonate?

Phil

Antonio:
Happy Birthday Brother:
Beautiful Baby Girl God has Blessed you with.
Great Inner Work leeting your Feelings of Hurt and Pain Out.
It is not easy but is necessary to Release the Hurt and Pain we’ve all Experienced in our Lifetime.
Just Remember “God Loves You and Has made you in His Perfect Image” and we All Know “God Don’t Make No Junk”.
God Bless You and Aria with Health,Love,Happiness
Wisdom and His Blessing.

Love You Bro.

Peace.

Smac

Late Happy Birthday !
I don’t know you but found your blog by chance…
Thank you for doing what you’re doing, being who you are!

xoxo

I am relating to this right now, wondering if what I am doing is worthwhile, if anyone is receiving what I am giving. I am a yoga teacher and a writer working to move into this field full time struggling to make this transition while working an unfulfilling day job. your words along with the yoga practice remind me to have faith and more importantly, to remain positive. What I am sending out into the universe will return. I want to thank you for your offerings, your teaching. This is my show of return to you. Please continuen to share your wisdom. I have come to rely on it… Jason Galbraith