Embracing Worthiness: The Entrepreneur's "Cookie Jar"

This weekend, our Women Entrepreneurs group in Valencia came together for our monthly meeting after a summer break. As we discussed our plans for Q4, an important topic surfaced—worthiness. It's a subject that often challenges entrepreneurs.

You can be working SO hard, but do the sales reflect that? If they don’t, does that just mean you suck lol?

 Or perhaps your business isn't gaining the visibility you've been striving for—does that mean no one cares?

Entrepreneurship can be a lonely road, and it's easy to get caught up in the echo chamber of self-doubt. Even when things are going well, you might still question if it's enough.

Working in an environment of constant problem-solving and being especially exposed to criticism from all sides (warranted or not), it's common for entrepreneurs to tie their worthiness to productivity or recognition. But here's the catch: it's a never-ending cycle.

One thing I've noticed, especially among women entrepreneurs, is our tendency to downplay praise or recognition, no matter how small or significant. We ask ourselves, "Was it really that great? Am I truly worthy of this praise?"

We often become so absorbed in the "doing" that we forget to reflect or even applaud ourselves. At our meeting, we all resonated deeply with this struggle, and the lovely Dominique Cottrell had an idea—create "cookie jars." A “cookie jar” in this case would be where we’d store “cookies” of praise or goodness that we received for our business, to act as reminders on bad days, or to just be simply enjoyed. They could be testimonials, emails, screenshots, texts, whatever delicious bit of appreciation or amazingness that came our way.

Now, Dominique has given this suggestion of creating a “cookie jar” many times since the beginning of this year, and it is something that I had sincerely intended to do, but somehow, I got caught up in the doing of business and life.

Hers was a sincere and solid piece of advice, left behind for “other people” and the overly critical voice in my head scoffing about how I couldn’t have possibly done enough to warrant a “cookie” let alone a whole jar. 

I now realize that I thought of the "cookie jar" as a reward, like when I had accomplished something monumental, I’d feel worthy enough for the praise and then I would put that praise in my "cookie jar". And that’s not it at all.

The whole point of the “cookie jar” is to nibble or feast on its contents for daily inspiration or just because. It’s to help remind you that everything that you are doing is not, in fact, in vain and has a measurable impact. Somebody other than you cares about your work.

As adults, we all get to decide when we get to have our cookies. We can eat them for dinner or even for breakfast (like here in Spain). There are no rules and we’re largely unsupervised (for better or for worse lol). 

I think it’s especially critical for women entrepreneurs to eat our "cookies" every day!

Not to wrap them up in a napkin, tuck them into our purse, inevitably forget about them, and then errantly throw them away when we clean out our purse.

It is vital for us to be proud of ourselves at every step of the entrepreneurial journey and even before we take the next step and not let these “cookies” go to waste!

Reviewing some of my "cookies" of appreciation and praise, not only reminded me that “I’m that girl” (cue Beyoncé and hair flip), but more importantly lol, of the impact of my multi-hyphenate career.

That all of my efforts, hopes, dreams, creativity, weird ideas, hard left turns, and general whimsy are not lost inside an echo-less abyss, but they land in the hearts, minds, and businesses of people I know and people I may never meet. 

I say all that to say– make a "cookie jar" of praise, good wishes, testimonials, etc, and then eat those damn "cookies" whenever you need to but most especially, whenever you want! 

So, create your “cookie jar” today–it can be a folder on your computer, an album of screenshots on your phone, or some clippings tacked to a board.

You are worthy now! Clap for yourself now. Be proud of yourself now. Celebrate yourself now!