When Chronic Illness Steals your Self-Esteem

Valuing character over accomplishments

Life doesn’t always go according to plan. No one plans to walk through life with mental or physical illness. I know I certainly never expected the chronic pain, fatigue, and anxiety that I’ve experienced for the past 14 years.

Many people find themselves on a path like mine, with no map and no clear destination. Previous goals and plans now seem unachievable or unimportant.

If this is your story, too, I want you to know that you can still thrive! I have found that changing my mindset and redefining my goals put me back on the path to contentment and self-worth.

What Defines Success?

I have been living with pain, fatigue, and anxiety for years. Before my life changed, my focus was all about the big picture, where I could go in life, and what I could accomplish. Adventure, relationship, and purpose.

After chronic illness, my goals are all about who I can be.

Does your idea of success focus on accomplishments or character?

We often think of success in terms of the roles we can achieve or titles we can earn. For example, graduating from college, earning a promotion, and becoming a spouse or parent can all feel like success.

Sometimes success is about accomplishing goals like buying a car or house, paying off bills, building a savings account, or affording a vacation. These can all be milestones to success.

Receiving accolades can feel like success. When your boss gave you that bonus, when your student called you the best-teacher-ever, when your neighbor said they just didn’t know what they would do without you, that feels like success, right? You are needed, contributing, and receiving gratitude and praise.

So what happens if you can no longer do those things consistently, or at all? Will you still feel valuable?

Now is the time to name the things in our life that hold value. Not our dream life, but our actual life. Because understanding what has value is the key to redefining success.

What Defines Value?

Living with chronic illness does not mean that you can’t be successful. You just need new goals! The place to start is redefining what you value.

Changing your perspective on what holds value will not only increase your self-worth, it will dramatically increase your enjoyment of life.

“Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.”

— Albert Einstein

We can all agree that careers, accomplishments, and volunteering are valuable. But if you cannot do those things, does your life lose value? Of course not! You need to recognize other areas of your life that have value and redefine what makes you worthwhile.

The goal is to see your life through new eyes. Your life does not look like it used to. It does not look like your original plan. So what does it look like? What pieces are there? Where can you thrive?

In my life, I lost the ability to work outside of the house or to participate consistently in my community. Redefining what makes me valuable and finding where I can thrive in my new reality was imperative. I can’t go to the office, but on good days I can write, on my own schedule. I can’t volunteer in my community in a significant role, but I can make every effort to show up at home for my family and friends. I can be available for my kids and my husband in a meaningful way. This is my new life, and I’m going to make the most of it.

Becoming Someone Valuable

Your world might be smaller than it used to be, I know mine is. The most important part of my world now is my family and friends. Who I am is valuable to them. Your family and friends feel the same way.

Don’t believe me? Think about why you value them. Is it because of their job title? Or is it because of the type of person they are and the goodness they bring into your life?

You are still part of this world, and your very presence here has an influence, large or small, on every person you encounter and place you go.

Who you are matters. It’s worth a little effort.

Valuing the development of your character over the physical achievements of your former life is important. Building a career is certainly an achievement, but it pales in comparison to becoming the person you can be.

Few life circumstances offer the opportunity for character development like living with a chronic illness. Every part of being a ‘good person’ becomes more difficult.

Patience and gentleness are a challenge when you are in pain. It’s difficult to offer peace and love to those around you when anxiety or depression takes hold. Joy and self-control can be very elusive when you are facing the loss of identity and lack of control over your circumstances.

But aren’t these the things that hold real value? Aren’t these the very things that, when cultivated to the highest potential, would equate to being a success at life?

Here is your big chance. Become the person you always wanted to be. Ditch your old goals and instead focus on being the best ‘you’ possible.

Setting New Goals

You can be successful if you redefine your goals. What would success look like within your current restrictions?

Before you let that question discourage you, take a moment to recognize that there have always been restrictions. They just look different now. Let’s be honest about our current stage of life. If you are living with chronic or mental illness, your restrictions have changed, but so have your opportunities.

You may have lost the opportunity to be an astronaut, but you have gained the chance to focus on a different goal — developing character.

We will no longer define ourselves by what we can do or what people think about us. From now on, we will define ourselves by who we are.

What bothers you the most about your character? Maybe it’s the way you are quick to become irritated with others. Pain magnifies that issue in many people. Now is your chance to develop patience. Now THAT is a worthwhile goal. Being patient is no easy feat, and you can feel proud when you expand your ability in this area. It will have an impact on your happiness as well as those around you.

Personally, I hate the anxiety I carry with me when I enter a room. Now is my chance to learn to live from a place of peace. I know, easier said than done. But what a goal! If I could walk into a room and share peace with others, wouldn’t that be a significant success?

Whatever part of your character is not where you would like it to be, that is where you start with your new goals.

I challenge you to identify a new goal today. Before you choose your first goal, I want you to think about one more important concept.

Focus on Building Positives

When you set a goal, don’t focus on overcoming the negative parts of your character. Instead, swap out the negative for a positive.

Focus on building something positive, not on overcoming something negative.

Take another look at the examples from the last section. Instead of setting a goal to overcome irritation, you can focus on increasing patience. Instead of trying to calm the anxiety, focus on cultivating more peace. It’s a tiny little shift in perspective, but it’s the difference between trying to fix your shortcomings and building toward success. One looks backward, the other moves forward. When you expand the positive character traits, there is automatically less room for the negative ones.

Count each incremental gain as a success. You are not bad or failing when the negative tendency wins the round. You just look for the next opportunity to practice the positive. Focus on moving toward your new positive goal.

Perfection is not the expectation; incremental gains are the path to developing your character.

Putting it All Together

Sometimes physical or mental illness limits us from doing the things we consider valuable. We can add significant value to the world by developing our character to become the best possible versions of ourselves.

Developing who you are instead of focusing on what you can do is even more challenging now than it was before chronic illness. Being patient can be difficult, but living from a place of patience even when you are in pain is a laudable accomplishment that adds value to the world.

There are already plenty of people who have invested significant time to become successful in their careers. How many people do you know who have put in the same time and effort to build their character? I mean, really dug in and worked through the difficult parts?

“Character isn’t something you were born with and can’t change, like your fingerprints. It’s something you weren’t born with and must take responsibility for forming.”

— Jim Rohn

Being a person of good character in the world is invaluable. Modeling the concept that we can own our imperfections and work towards goodness without shame and negative self-talk can impact future generations through each person you encounter, no matter how many or few that may be.