One way to build your self worth is through the eyes of compassion.  Compassion exposes the essence of your humanness.   

First, you live in a world where you have to constantly struggle to meet your daily needs or you will die.  You must find shelter, food, rest, emotional support and recreation.  Most of your energy goes into satisfying these needs. But all of us are struggling with something, be it knowledge, sickness, disease, lack of support, sensitivity to pain, and so on.   And amidst this struggle, we all know that our intellect and physical abilities are slowly declining with age.  

During the course, we also make many mistakes that cause us pain, lots of pain.  We feel afraid, we suffer loss, yet we continue to live and to feel.  

If you let this awareness sink in, if you let yourself really feel the struggle, you may begin to get the glimpse of your real worth.  

Your looks, how nourished you are is irrelevant.   

The only thing that counts is the effort.   

And the source of your worth is your effort.  

After understanding comes acceptance that nothing you do to survive is bad.  Despite your mistakes, you are doing a good job – because it is the best job you can do.  Your mistakes and pain that follows – teach you.   

You can forgive and accept your failures because you have already paid for them. It is our condition or environment that we don’t alway know the way. And even knowing the way, we may lack the resources to follow it.     

Your worth, then, is that you were born into this place and that you continue to live here despite the enormous difficulty of the struggle.  

Finding compassion for yourself will help you be more compassionate toward others. 

Or increased compassion for others will help you be more compassionate to yourself.  

But find that balance through the eyes of compassion.