self esteem – Page 4

When New Year Resolutions Break Down

January 7, 2009 by David

I have reflected before on the strange phenomenon of new year resolutions. The majority of people never use goal setting for most of the year. But come 1st January they set themselves unrealistic goals, masquerading as resolutions. Sometime later in January they absentmindedly eat a cake or smoke a cigarette and find they’ve broken their resolution – and return to their pre January habits.

The statistic about resolutions are pretty bleak, quoted in The Happiness Project:-

According to one survey, the top three resolutions made by Americans in 2009 are:
1. Losing weight — 20%
2. Quitting smoking — 16%
3. Spending less — 12%
—About 80% of people who make resolutions stop keeping them by mid-February.
—Two-thirds of dieters gain back any lost weight within a year.
—Many people make and break the same resolution year after year.

Part of me feels I should be encouraging new year’s resolutions – after all I’ve created this blog and written thousands of words on making positive changes. A resolution is a statement of intent to make change. The explosion of “goal setting” around January should be welcomed as a sign that people want to make changes in their life, they’re perhaps just going about it the wrong way. So why does it go wrong – and why is a well intentioned, goal setting activity, seen as a bit of a joke?

[Read more…]

Make Every Day Count

December 31, 2008 by David

One of the first personal development books I ever bought (the Magic of Psychic Power!) had a number in it that shocked me so much that I have remembered it ever since – 25,500. That, according to author David J Schwartz was the average number of days someone lives. (Life expectancy in the developed world has increased; in Japan it’s now around 82 years, near enough 30,000 days)

When I first read that figure, aged around the age of 20, it seemed such a small figure. Now 30 years – or 11,000 days – later I’m rapidly eating into my allotment, if I’m lucky enough to get an average quota.

The film American Beauty has a nice twist on the famous poster quote:-

“Remember those posters that said, “Today is the first day of the rest of your life?” Well, that’s true with every day except one: the day that you die….”

In the chapter of Schwartz’s book, he further illustrates his point by saying that every day 5500 Americans die (it’s a generally cheerful, uplifting book!). [Read more…]

Build Self Esteem with Affirmations

December 8, 2008 by David

An affirmation is a positive self talk statement. They are usually goal based – such as tangible things (to earn $xxxx a year, to drive a Ferrari) – where you can clearly say yes or no whether they have been achieved. But affirmations can also cover personal qualities – such as “I am a great communicator”.

An affirmation should be stated in the present tense – “I am a positive person”, “I earn $200,000 a year”,” I have great self confidence”. The logic behind affirmations is that giving yourself positive messages, the mind starts believing it to be so. This is exactly the same principle as how negative thinking undermines us – being told repeatedly “you’re useless”, we believe it to be true.

I use affirmations. I believe they are a useful tool in the battle for healthy self esteem. My starting point is that positive affirmations are healing, positive scripts you give to yourself to counter your negative inner voice. They can help you free yourself from the over dependence you have on other people’s opinions, attitudes, or feelings about you and help you feel good about yourself.

Every one of us has some kind of internal dialog, or self talk, going on most of the day. We have two voices, one positive and one negative. The positive one is the one that is supportive of all your ideas, beliefs in what you do and always expects the good in other people. The negative one is the whiner who always tries to put you and the rest of the world down, has no belief in what is possible and makes you feel doubtful and frustrated. [Read more…]

Does it matter what you look like?

November 24, 2008 by David

I recently came across this article – The Best Way to Gain Confidence – where the author (Steve Hill) briefly describes his attempt and success at gaining self confidence and overcoming low self esteem. He outlined his problem thus:-

I had a speech impediment, commonly referred to as a stutter or stammer. I was desperate, for some unknown reason, to be liked and was basically paranoid about what other people thought of me. I had a bald patch on my head and I am also quite short in height in comparison to the average male. I was also over-weight.

Steve goes into detail about his efforts to lose weight and overcome his stutter. He somewhat breezes over his paranoia and negative thinking…

I had to learn how to become a far more care-free person and to accept that not everyone will like me. I had to become a positive thinker and to ignore the negative voices in my head.

…not exactly explaining how he achieved this!

But what fascinated me was his dealing with his lack of height and his bald patch:-

I unfortunately had to accept my lack of height and also the fact that I would have a bald patch on my head for the rest of my life as there was nothing that I could do to change them.

There was nothing I could do to change them. So Steve [Read more…]

Start Challenging Your Beliefs

November 3, 2008 by David

Last weeks post looked into our beliefs and came up with the, unsurprising, suggestion that perhaps we should abandon our unhelpful, negative beliefs.

People confuse their beliefs with facts, and generally a belief is something we see as being true. Having been told all their life that they’re useless, a person with low self esteem may see this as a fact of life, rather than a belief they have learnt over the years.

Our mind is full of thoughts, that we are conscious of; our belief system is generally silent and we don’t notice it. But our thoughts arise from that belief system.

“Just because you’ve believed something for a long time doesn’t mean its right. It just means you’ve believed it for a long time!” Craig Harper.

Take Stock

Thats why its useful to take stock and separate out what you believe and why. For example, you may be a vegetarian because of a decision you made in your teens that eating meat was unhealthy and cruel to animals. Or it could be that you were brought up in a strict “meat is murder” household, where there was never any questioning of this as a fact. In both cases you would have an underlying belief that eating meat is wrong, but reached from different directions.

If we are out driving a car at night, we only see the bit of the world that our headlights pick up. Our whole awareness, what we take see, is determined by what our beliefs allow us to see:- [Read more…]