Self-EsteemIn my opinion, self-esteem is a critical factor in life when we consider our capacity for happiness. People can still achieve much in life that suffer from a lack of self-regard, but it not only makes the journey harder, it can also make victory and success somehow ring hollow. A true lack of self-esteem can be a major impediment to our success in almost every facet of our lives. If we don't feel worthy of truly being loved, we tend to refuse to reach out to others in fear of being rejected or finding that, after we have become attached to someone, we have to go through the agony of suffering the pain of loss. This leaves us to endure the painful alternative of suffering a life of isolation. Even those that manage to get involved in a relationship that is solid, healthy and beneficial to them can have problems when they lack self-esteem. Often the unconscious can interfere with our attempts at relationship and, since we feel unworthy of another's love, we end up sabotaging the relationship in some way. The same principle can apply where our jobs are concerned. Some individuals hold themselves back from fear of their capability to move up the ladder at work. They lack the confidence in themselves to take on new challenges and so allow themselves to get stuck in a rut – never moving forward and, in some cases, even losing ground. In this manner a lack of self-confidence is intimately tied into a lack of self-esteem. We can rob ourselves of enduring and deep relationships because of this and ultimately rob ourselves of prosperity as well. When we lack self-esteem we somehow come to believe that we deserve nothing more that the bare essentials for survival. This is common in most cases and is often referred to as being stuck in "survival mode" or being afflicted with a survivor's mentality – all we are worthy of is the barest necessities to ensure our survival. Obviously, this leads to a very bleak and rather grim existence. But what about joy, happiness, love and the prosperity the Universe has to offer us? We don't feel worthy of those things so we either can't seem to figure out how to allow or bring those things we want into our lives or, because of our unconscious belief in our supposed unworthiness, we find ways to sabotage ourselves when we are a hair's breadth from success. This then reinforces our belief in our unworthiness and our unconscious beliefs then becomes the proverbial self-fulfilling prophecy. This ensures us of a life of angst, bitterness, disillusionment, and a sense of utter abject defeat and feeling as though we are participating in nothing more than an exercise in futility. We feel as victims incapable of overcoming the challenges of life or ever attaining our goals and wishes. Obviously, this is not how our lives have to be. Life is most certainly challenging at times, but if we look around us we can see others in the world achieving success daily. Even if we don't know these individuals personally, we can use them as examples of how people can and do achieve success, reach their goals, and fulfill their aspirations. We should revel in the success of others – it is proof-positive that we can succeed, too! So where does this insidious lack of self-esteem stem from in our lives and how does it come to undermine even our most strenuous efforts at achieving our goals in life? For many of us this comes from a background that was lacking in emotional support when we were children. This is not an indictment of your parents. Most parents do the best they can do for their children. However others, such as mine, are far from perfect and in some cases may have been downright abusive. It doesn't surprise me at all that if you came from an abusive background that you may have problems with self-esteem. As a matter of fact, if you did come from a bad background, it would surprise me if you didn't have trouble with issues of self-esteem! Now, we could go through all the reasons why you may be lacking in self-esteem. This would help us to understand where these insidious beliefs come from. However, once we have established where you acquired these beliefs about yourself we have to let them go! This is your first step at freeing yourself from these erroneous assumptions about yourself and taking your first steps toward acquiring self-esteem. All people are imperfect in some way. We cannot expect others to be flawless anymore than we should expect perfection from ourselves. As a matter of fact, perfectionists have an absolutely uncanny knack for putting obstacles in their paths from their fears that their attempts at anything will be seen, by themselves and others, as less than perfect. We are not perfect – we are human beings! Imperfection is part of the human condition. So ease up on yourself and others and stop expecting perfection from anyone – even yourself! We often learn more from our failures than our successes, anyway. So we could trace our personal history and find where these opinions of ourselves arose from, but it will not change those feelings. Here is where positive thinking comes into play. We may have suffered at the hands of people that were downright cruel to us, but we have to acknowledge our own role in this scenario, too. No, I am not trying to imply that you deserved to be treated badly. But we do have to acknowledge our collusion in laying the foundations for our lack of self-esteem. We aided our tormentors by buying into the negative messages they gave us about ourselves! We may have received these messages so often that we not only began to believe in the veracity of them, but we also began telling ourselves the same thing! This same is true even for those that have had a relatively supportive childhood. Somewhere along the line we began feeding negative messages to ourselves about ourselves and we began to believe them. It is this phenomenon, I believe, that is always the underlying foundation that a lack of self-esteem is predicated on. We come to believe the false messages fed to us by others so completely that we begin to feed ourselves the same messages over and over again even after our tormentors are long-gone! This is just one more of the many reasons that we have to practice positive thinking! It is almost always the messages we give to ourselves in our self-talk that have us believing this fallacy about ourselves. The other cause is buying into the negative messages we receive from others and believing those messages are true. We have to stop buying into the negativity that others feed us and we also have to stop believing in the negativity we feed ourselves as well. Think of your brain as you would your tummy – if you put bad food in your tummy, you get an upset stomach. And if you put bad thoughts into your brain – you get an upset mood, a distorted image of yourself, other people, and the world in general. Stop believing in these distorted views of yourself. You are a marvel of Creation and just as worthy as any other fallible human being of success, love, prosperity and happiness. You were created from star dust! Take a moment to ponder your hand. It is a marvel of Creation's engineering. Look at the simple digit of your thumb – the opposable thumb. The opposable thumb allows us the ability to grasp tools to work with - surgeons, a scalpel; artists, a paint brush; a sculptor, a hammer and chisel; a writer, a pen. I wouldn't be surprised right now if your thumb is helping you to read this! Are you using it to grasp your mouse? Our hands are marvels of engineering and something as common as the opposable thumb separates us from almost all the other creatures on earth by giving us the capacity to use tools. If our hand is so marvelous, just think how much more miraculous the entire body you live in is! You have no reason to lack self-esteem. You are a wonder of Creation – believe it and believe in yourself! Issues of self-esteem can benefit from positive thinking. |