If I’m Not Performing, Am I Still Worthy?

Why So Many Men Confuse Value with Usefulness

I can walk into a room full of women and teach breathwork like I was born for it. Confident. Grounded. Purposeful. Fully embodied in the gift I’m there to give.

But put me in that same room with no workshop to run, no mat to unroll, no wisdom to drop… and suddenly I become that awkward kid at the middle school dance—posted up near the fruit punch, pretending to look chill while mentally rehearsing what to say if someone actually talks to me.

That’s when it hit me: if I’m not offering something—insight, guidance, presence—I don’t know who I am. Worse, I don’t believe I matter.

And I know I’m not the only one.

The Etymology That Brought Me to My Knees

I was nerding out on word origins (as one does when avoiding the Void), and I looked up “self-esteem.” It literally means the value one assigns to oneself. Not how much others value you. Not whether you’re productive. Just the worth you decide you have.

Which left me staring at a hard truth: I don’t know how to assign myself value unless I’m being useful to someone else.

Masculinity’s Dirty Secret: Perform or Disappear

Most men are raised to earn their value. Be strong. Be smart. Be useful. Be silent. Don’t rest—produce. Don’t feel—perform. Take away our job, our body, our skills, our ability to fix things—and many of us are left wondering who the hell we are without them. Or worse, we believe we don’t deserve love unless we’re doing something to earn it.

We become ghosts in our own lives. Haunting rooms we don’t feel worthy of entering unless we’re giving, solving, leading. Anything but just being.

That’s not a personality flaw. It’s a survival pattern.

When “Just Being” Feels Unsafe

This isn’t about confidence. It’s about nervous system safety. When I’m not performing—when I’m not guiding, teaching, or helping—my body tightens. My breath shortens. My thoughts spiral like someone just pulled the drain stop on a glorious Epsom salt bath. That deep, floaty sense of being gone in an instant, replaced by cold urgency.

It’s not that I don’t want to relax. It’s that my system doesn’t trust I’ll still be loved if I do. So I became helpful. I became useful. I became the man who brings value. But somewhere along the way, I forgot how to bring that value to myself.

The Hidden Burnout of Being the Useful Man

Every time your value is tied to being “on,” you reinforce the belief that love is conditional. That you have to earn your place in the room. You turn connection into currency, and your nervous system into a 24/7 job interview.

That’s not leadership. That’s emotional codependency with a résumé.

Eventually, it breaks you. You stop trusting your intuition. You abandon your body. You forget who you were before you became everyone else’s solution.

That’s how good men burn out.

The Pressure No One Talks About

And underneath that burnout? There’s something heavier. The fear that if we stop providing, we stop mattering. That we were only ever valuable because of what we gave. Men are often only given worth based on what we can provide. Financially. Emotionally. Physically. Spiritually. We become the emotional shock absorbers of everyone else’s chaos—but no one asks how we’re really doing unless we’re visibly falling apart.

So what happens when we lose the thing we’ve built our worth on?

Illness. Job loss. Injury. Burnout. Suddenly, we’re not “productive.” And in the back of our minds, the question gets louder:

“If I can’t provide… will I still be loved?”

Most men don’t have an answer. Because we’ve seen it—when a man loses his role, his income, his drive… sometimes the people he was providing for start to distance. And we’re left wondering:

“Were they ever loving me, or were they just grateful for what I gave?”

We’re told unconditional love is for women and children.Men get expectations. Men get applause when they perform, and silence when they stop.

No wonder so many of us over-function. No wonder we run like we’re one missed paycheck or bad day away from being discarded.

So How Do You Reclaim Value Without the Performance?

This is what I’ve been practicing. Not as a coach. As a man in the mud with it.

1. Change the Scoreboard: I stopped measuring my worth by how others responded. I started asking: Was I connected to myself? Was I honest? Did I stay rooted? If the answer was yes, I won. Even if no one clapped.

2. Offer Something to Yourself First: Before I guide someone through breathwork, I breathe for me. Before I support others, I check in with my own heart. If I don’t give it to myself first, it’s just performance in a healer costume.

3. Get Uncomfortable Without a Role: I put myself in spaces where I’m not “the leader.” No fixing. No teaching. No performing .Just a dude. Present. Slightly twitchy. And every time I don’t implode, my nervous system updates. I get stronger.

4. Talk to the Boy Inside: The one who learned love was earned. I tell him, You don’t have to do anything right now. I’m proud of you anyway. He doesn’t always believe me. But he’s starting to soften. And so am I.

This is the work.

So what happens if you don’t perform?

Who are you when there’s nothing to give?

Can you sit in silence without scrambling for worth? Can you rest without guilt?

Can you look yourself in the mirror and say, “I’m enough—even when I’m not useful”?

These are the real questions. The ones that strip away the mask and let the real man step forward—not the fixer, not the performer—but the one underneath all of it.

The one who was always worthy He just forgot.

This is how we stop outsourcing our value. This is how we stop proving and start leading.

This is how we become self-led.

Not men waiting to be chosen. But men who choose themselves—and live like they mean it.