Ryan J. Faer

The more often I post about my mental health, the more often people tend to share their own journeys with me. I am grateful of this for a host of reasons – namely, the fact that it means my own story might be benefiting others. However, there is another reason: often, when folks reach out to me with questions or their own insights, it reels me back into a reflective mindset, something that I personally believe we should never stray too far from. It is important to process what we are going through as we go through it, yes, but what is just as valuable is to look back iteratively at our journey as it recedes further into our rear-view mirror, each time with all new experiences we accrue as we drive on forward.

One of those recent questions and reflections was around how I found or figured out my self-worth.

This is a pivotal – yet rarely asked – question when it comes to my own struggles in the past, as the way in which I viewed myself was a major driver of how I felt about my life as a whole. Self-esteem issues wrapped in body dysmorphia: the foundation for my life with disordered eating, exercise dependence, and every other psycho-pathology I might have been dealing with back then.

Before discussing some of what proved impactful in the process of cultivating my self-worth, I should note that the road to recovery did not begin with finding my self-worth. In fact, I needed to get an awful lot better – mentally, holistically – before I could learn to like who I was, let alone love myself and the life I live. This took time and effort; it took leaning into Cognitive Behavior Therapy (and actually putting in the work necessary for it to make a difference); it took a one-foot-in-front-of-the-other approach of just stacking one not-bad day on top of each other until I started to get okay days, and ultimately, finally, standing atop of years-worth of not-bad and okay days, finally being able to reach some better days, some truly good days.

Once we got there, now that is when self-worth became attainable, and here is how I did, in fact, find it.

I. Disassociating From What I Thought Gave Me Value

The first step was to take a step back and evaluate how I was currently quantifying my own value as a person. Years ago, I would have likely told you that my career was everything to me, and that training hard as an endurance athlete was also of utmost importance. But in reality, it was more than that: I fully judged myself in the context of how my career was trending and how many hours I was putting in on the bike, on the run, and in the weight room.

Thus, if I did not get a promotion (or if I even just had a tough day) at work, I felt like I was less than – less than others, and moreover, less than I had thought I should be as a person. It sounds crazy to say now, but I very much associated who I was as a professional with who I was as a person; Ryan the Strength Coach, Coordinator, Sports Scientist… well, he was Ryan the person – inseparable from one another.

Likewise, I also put an enormours amount of stock into what I was capable of physically: how many hours I could train, how many watts I could amass on the bike, how many pounds I could lift.

The problem with tying your worth to these areas is two-fold: for starters, it opens you up to incessant comparisons. You find yourself constantly looking around the room and essentially ranking yourself against others on the career or fitness spectrum.

Are you doing as well as them? Are you moving as quickly as they are? What do they have that you don’t?

Secondly, the only way to add value to yourself in these areas is to do or achieve more: run further, ride faster, lift heavier, climb the corporate ladder, earn a bigger pay check, post a more popular Tweet, present at a bigger clinic/conference…

And, while these are all admirable goals and benchmarks for those components of our lives – work and fitness– they are not healthy barometers for our own worth as individuals. So, chasing them with the fear that, if you don’t achieve them, you won’t like yourself or your life the same… you might see how that can become a problem and lead to an obsessive desire to do and acieve more.

It was a painstakingly slow process, but the priority for me was to disassociate myself from these aspects of my life in such a way that I could detach my self-worth from them – so that I could still chase them with the same vigor, but not stake my heart and well-being on them. Do them, but not be them.

II. Reframing Career and Fitness

Once I realized the need to detach from what I thought was giving my life value, I began working toward reframing them. After all, I did not want to stop working out, nor did I want to quit on my career. Instead, I needed to reframe them in my mind and life in such a way that I was positioning them less as things that define me, and instead more as things that give my life more meaning.

I may be oversimplifying it, but I think it was as straightforward as taking stock of why I enjoyed these parts of my life.

I enjoyed being on the bike, running, and lifting because I love feeling strong, being outdoors, and challenging myself. I enjoyed my line of work and current job because I genuinely enjoy spending time with our players and staff, and love to be intellectually challenged. Knowing that these were the actual elements behind my love for my career and fitness, I was able to starting focusing on those aspects as much as possible: laugh with our players, slow down to enjoy time with our staff, go back to school, get rid of the indoor bike trainer and instead opt to go outside for all of my activity, etc… Just some of the ways that I leaned into the enjoyment of the things, rather than the achievement that I was hoping they would grant me.

III. Finding Other Things to Fill Me Up

This year I took another massive leap forward: I finally got a hobby outside of work and fitness. I picked up a camera and was instantly hooked. And, as a byproduct, I have found further enjoyment and fullfillment in challenging myself creatively – whether it be with photography or writing, or reading/enjoying others’ work.

I can not understate how impactful this step has been in my development. For so long, I worried that if I wasn’t doing something for work, if I wasn’t training on the bike, if I was reading anything other than work-related books or personal development texts, that I was not advancing my career. But, that is the beauty of this entire self-worth paradigm shift: even if I am right and it is not advancing my career… that doesn’t mean it is not still adding value to me as a person. Because I am more than my career or my fitness.

Tying It All Together

These days I spend an awful lot of time doing things I enjoy. Yes, I still work hard at my career (hell, I made a commitment to go back to school in part to advance myself as a practitioner). But, thankfully, my mind stays quite firmly fixed on the parts that I enjoy the most. Likewise, I probably exercise as much as ever (and might be the fittest I have ever been overall), however it now comes with zero pressure to be anything more than what I am today. And now, I also devote much of my time toward the creative process: writing, photographing, and admiring others’ creations.

I also tend to say “no” to a lot of things these days. It is not because I don’t want to do them, but often it is because having too many extraneous things to do causes me the kind of stress that I know is within my control to minimize; as adults, there is plenty for us to stress about that we have little control over, so I do my best to steer away from the kind of stress that is controllable, and that is not clearly additive to my enjoyment of life at the moment.

Adjacently, I have found that one of those life stresses that is firmly within my control comes from social media. I am on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn less and less by the day. When I am on it, I am typically sharing out, not scrolling. And, I have to tell you… I am a much happier person when I am not continually scrolling, judging myself in the context of what others are saying or doing, or constantly finding reasons to disagree with whatever is being pushed out into the metaverse. Instead, I spend my time doing things I enjoy – school, work, photography, exercise – and just share out whenever I feel like I want to create or let other people into my world.

A final disclaimer: I am certainly not some bright, beaming ray of sunshine all of the sudden. Not everything is positive, and that is okay. That is life. But, I can promise you this: a lot less is negative in my mind compared to how it used to be. And, so much of that has come from investing the time to figure out who I am, what I enjoy about myself, and how I can best focus on those things above all of the noise in life.