The second framework, for once your sense of self-worth is already clear.
Once you’ve mapped out a clear sense of self-worth, the second framework is building your capacity to actually stay loyal to yourself. The focus here is guarding against self-abandonment. You can probably see why the order matters: you don’t want to cling loyally to a false sense of self. I’d say, in the grand scheme of things, the first framework, the self-worth one, is where most of the actual work happens. But building the capacity to stay loyal to your true self is deceptively hard in its own right. Because people have their own ideas about what you should be, and staying loyal means being willing to disappoint some of them.
What self-abandonment actually costs you
You’ll likely have your own enmeshed ideas too, about where your life is supposed to be, based on some external standard, and grieving that false picture is necessary, and not easy for most people. It’s easier to let people misunderstand you than to clarify what you actually stand for, especially when clarifying feels like standing against them. It can feel like a fight response gets activated. So a lot of the capacity-building in this second stage is simply building the ability to not fold, to be okay being misunderstood.
That way, no matter what happens with your decisions in the long run, you still have you. It’s easy to collect yourself if you never lost yourself in the first place, versus if you neglected yourself along the way. This isn’t about disgust with yourself for how much you may have abandoned your own needs. It’s closer to gratitude, actually, for the experience that now gives you the freedom to move on from a path when it no longer fits who you are, or where you want to go.
Small decisions count more than the big ones
We make decisions, even small ones, unconsciously, every single day. What a relief it is to have these two frameworks already in place, so that every decision you make, big or small, gets to benefit from your own wisdom and foresight. Big decisions are rare. Small ones happen daily, which arguably makes them more important in the bigger picture.
There’s a real way to re-engineer both of these frameworks so they serve you before you even make a big decision, and continue to serve you while you’re living inside its consequences. Together, they make it easier to stand behind your own decisions with clarity, and real fidelity to them.
If you want to start exploring which habits and mindsets are currently feeding your sense of identity, Renew90 offers a space to reset around exactly that, your identity, your habits, your perspective, all of which quietly shape the decisions you make next. Available on iOS and Android.