7 minute courses
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The 7 Minute Course in
Self Esteem
IntroductionSelf esteem is the foundation of our self confidence and self motivation. Self esteem is how we feel about ourselves at any given moment. Almost everyone of us has been taught to base and build our self esteem on the wrong foundations. We build it on something external instead of something internal. We are taught to tie it to our position, possessions and pay, and by how much regard we receive from others. This is why we very seldom meet people who have rock solid self esteem. Most of us learn how to disguise our fragile self-esteem. Eventually the charade takes its toll, we surrender to the tension and then collapse somewhere in a heap. Each and every one of us will have to go back to school to learn this inner lesson and find our true inner strength. Life will give us many signals and offer many opportunities to do this, but most of us either avoid the message or shoot the messenger, preferring to live with the tension and keep up the facade. So here is a short seven minute course in self esteem. This is obviously no small subject, but this may get you started.
Insight 1: You are UniqueMany of us forget one of the most important human characteristics – we are each unique human beings, with unique histories, patterns of thinking and personalities. There is no duplication in humanity. One of the deepest habits that we learn at the knees of our fathers and mothers is to compare ourselves with others. We forget that we cannot be like, look like, act like any other person. Imitation always ends in failure, especially if we are dependent on being like someone else for how we feel about ourselves. In the world of appearances, fashion and fads trade on our desire to look or be like someone else. We buy into the belief that if we can successfully imitate our hero, our role model, even the model in the advert, then everything in our life will be OK, and we will at last be happy and successful. This habit of comparison and imitation is one of the greatest killers of self esteem. It stops us from ever beginning to know ourselves. It keeps us stuck in the world of surfaces as we compare faces, figures and fitness. We don’t even realise the beauty we seek is not to be seen with the naked eye but the inner eye. And so the first and most important step in building our self esteem is to break the habit of comparison, and to stop unconsciously trying to be like someone else.
Insight 2: You are Already BeautifulThere is, at the heart of the personal growth movement a paradox. We are all already beautiful and perfect, and we always have been. However we do not know this beauty, for it is hidden deep within, and we are not taught to go deep inside ourselves and see it, feel it, and express it. Inner beauty is made up of the innate qualities of spirit, and these qualities are always found in the heart of our consciousness, not the heart of our body. When we know and are aware of ourselves as sources of love and peace in the world, sources of wisdom and truth in our relationships, then we know what we are. But we don’t know this because we are taught not to regard ourselves as spiritual beings. And when we learn (falsely) that we are only physical bodies we then try to find beauty outside ourselves. We attempt to buy beauty and the success we think it will bring. We fall for the messages of the marketing men, and surrender to the illusion that beauty can be purchased and painted on, that beauty can be tucked, lifted and sucked into (or out of, as the case may be) our bodies. But now we all know the destination of this process is not high self esteem but the opposite. This is why the most physically beautiful people very often have the most fragile self esteem. They depend on attracting desiring glances of others towards their form for how they feel about themselves. This is fatal as anyone with physical beauty will eventually tell you.
Insight 3: Public OpinionThe strength of your self-esteem is always being tested. You will know how strong and stable your self-esteem is when someone criticises you, or you hear what someone has been saying about you behind your back. If you are in any way affected, in other words you react in any way, it means your self esteem is fragile. You are creating and feeling the emotion of ‘hurt’, and you will be thinking you have been insulted. And because most of us are taught to base our self esteem upon the opinion of others, you will experience both a disturbance in your intellect and your power draining away. All this happens very fast in your own head. In other words, you forget that the feeling of being insulted and upset is a choice, not an inevitability. It is a habit to react in a negative, emotional way. It doesn’t matter what anyone says or thinks about you, as long as you think well of yourself, then you will not lose your inner stability, your cool, your inner peace, your power and your ability to respond positively. It’s easy isn’t it? No! Then why? Conditioning, learning, copying others all conspire to make your self opinion dependent on the opinion of others. Fatal. Don’t worry about what anyone thinks about you. A hundred people in your life are all thinking different things – you can never know exactly what anyone of them is thinking, because you can never be in someone else’s mind. And even if you did know, are they not entitled to their opinion? You know who you are, you know your own intrinsic qualities…don’t you? You’re not dependent on the opinion of others … are you?
Insight 4: The Power of RespectSelf esteem and self respect are intimately connected. One is an integral part of the other. One is not possible without the other. Unfortunately, learning how to respect ourselves does not come high on our education curriculums. In fact, it does not appear at all. And this is why our relationships are so difficult, filled with conflict, often abuse, and certainly the frequent breakdown in communication. The root reason for all these symptoms of inner and outer disharmony is a lack of self-respect. Even though the other person is throwing all their negative energy at us, if we can maintain our own self- respect we will be able to remain stable, positive and unaffected. In fact, if our self -respect is strong, we will not feel the need to return like for like, but will be able to return understanding and compassion instead. So how do we restore, build and strengthen our self-respect. One way is to practice giving respect to others -–no matter what they are like, or what they do. To give respect to another human being is the foundation stone of that relationship. What we seldom realise is that in the process of respecting another, we are first of all respecting ourself. We are the first to receive it on the way out. We tend to think the other person exists ‘out there’ quite separate from us. They do, but they also exist in our own minds. So when we give respect to others we are creating respect within ourselves for our self! In the giving of respect we build our own self respect in the process.
Insight 5: Self Worth is True WorthIf you base your sense of self worth on your position, pay and possessions, you will not have real self esteem. All of these things are transient, they come and go, sometimes at the most unexpected moments. This is why almost every single human being from corporate leaders to househusbands, from Kings to college students have a self esteem issue! We are all taught by our society, which is now a global society, that worth is measured by rank, quantity of possessions and the amount of monetary income. Fatal, fatal, fatal! It creates an inevitable destiny of sorrow and unhappiness. Witness the worker or manager on the end of the down-sizing of their organisation and their inevitable redundancy or early retirement. Suddenly, after a lifetime of stability, their employment and income are totally lost They find themselves floating in a black hole, spiraling into despair, and in some cases contemplating suicide. Why? Because they allowed their self esteem to be defined by their work, their capabilities at work, their salary level etc
Insight 6: Self-confidence is built on the platform of self esteemThose who base their self-confidence only on a set of skills and abilities will not have real self-esteem. Why, because there will always be a situation where those skills and abilities will have no use, and the ones that are needed in that situation have not yet been developed. The classic example is the absent minded professor who is brilliant in the classroom with logic and reason. But take him to a cocktail party and he is totally lost. He has not developed the social skills of one to one conversation. He finds it tremendously difficult to express personal feelings, and almost impossible to be sensitivite to others feelings. In that situation self esteem evaporates. However, the person who has real self-esteem will recognise that while they may not have the skills now, they can and will learn. They are able to use such situations as their personal classroom where the after effect is not the feeling that, “Oh God I’m just no good at this one to one chit chat stuff”. Instead they think, “Now, how did I do, what did I not do too well, and what do I still need to learn”. High self esteem has a certain humility built into it. The person with the highest self esteem is free of the arrogance of “I know”. They know they will be a student of life, for the whole of their life.
Insight 7 : VoicesAlmost everyone of us has been on the end of the voice of criticism at a very young age. It is a voice which echoes through our whole life, and unless we become consciously aware of it, and decide not to heed its words, it will be a major reason why your self esteem never recovers from those first blows.
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