The Self-Worth Safari: Valuing Your Life and Your Work

In your career and work, finances, and indeed all areas of life, experience the transformative power of a key relationship—the friendship you have with yourself.

In a world obsessed with building self-esteem—doing activities to improve our reputation with ourselves—our sense of well-being hinges on performance, the whims of good luck and positive outcomes. But when we don’t measure up to our own tough standards, things don’t go our way or life falls apart, we are called to access a deeper source of resilience, that of self-worth. In The Self-Worth Safari, author, speaker and business coach John Niland invites us on a powerful adventure to uncover this intrinsic state of value, which is ultimately untouched by changing fortune.

Along the journey, seven self-worth shifts reorient our perspective. Through simple, practical actions, we train ourselves to step off the hamster wheel of self-esteem and onto the untrodden paths of self-worth. We move from a stance of self-reproach to self-acceptance; from constantly evaluating our performance to focusing on our usefulness to clients, customers and others; from a preoccupation with “being interesting” to finding interest in the people and circumstances around us. By applying these shifts through six key “terrains” of life—the body, relationships and family, career and work, money and status, friendship and environment and leisure—we develop a faithful ally in challenging times. We better rebound from setbacks, find new meaning in what we do and honour ourselves as a valuable member of any enterprise or team.

An adept, highly knowledgeable and often humorous guide, Niland offers stories from his own life and from previous Safari participants to illuminate self-worth in action. Drawing on more than eighteen years as a business coach, he provides a proven path to self-worth, on which we learn to build confidence, trust ourselves, and take a new lease on happiness and freedom.