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How to Raise Self
Esteem: Part One
By Colin Smith
Have you ever felt bad about yourself? Most people have at
some point in their life, including the most exceptional of
characters.
It's part of the human experience.
A person that regularly experiences negative feelings such
as, self-hate, guilt, shame and embarrassment is commonly
referred to as
having low self esteem.
One of the main problems with
breaking out of these emotional habit patterns is that a
person with low self
esteem tends to 'beat themselves up' with overly critical
self-talk such as, "I shouldn't be feeling like this" or
"Why am I feeling like
this", and unfortunately this creates a looping effect which
re-enforces the crappy feelings!
So just how do you snap out of that kind of low energy level
wretchedness and raise self esteem?
Well, one of the master
keys
to using your brain is to keep in mind the fact that it goes
in directions. Your thought patterns are 'directionalised.'
Allow me to explain.
If you kept having thoughts along the
lines of, "I am a useless person", then that would become a
self-fulfilling prophecy. Because you'd set that up as the
direction for your brain to go in you would keep finding
'evidence' that proved it was 'true!'
There's a great quote
from philosopher, Robert Anton Wilson; "What ever the
thinker thinks, the prover proves."
Basically you need to adopt a new thinking pattern that
heads in an empowering direction. A really quick way to do
this is to use a technique known as disassociation.
Think of situation where you would like to raise your self
esteem feelings and notice what you can see in this
experience.
Now imagine
stepping outside of yourself and pushing that picture off
into the distance over there onto a movie screen. So you can
see yourself, in that situation, on the movie screen.
That's great!
Notice how your feelings have already changed.
It's as if you're having feelings about the feelings and
this frees up your inner resources so you can gain new self
- esteeming perspectives and insights.
Looking at that movie with you in it ask yourself, "If I
were to learn something useful about this situation what
would it be?"
And you can also ask the very powerful
question, "If I act as if or pretend there is a positive
intention behind my behaviour/feelings what would that be?"
Don't struggle with it. Just guess if it helps you get an
answer. The main point is does it get your mind going in a
more positive direction: Does it feel better?
Why not run through some other scenarios with the procedure
above and become aware of just how much more you really can
raise self esteem with a little bit of effort.
In part two of this Article I will introduce you to a very
powerful technique from the field of NLP that is one of the
fastest and most effective methods of creating change.
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Colin G Smith is a licensed Master Practitioner of Neuro-Linguistic
Programming (NLP) and author of 'The NLP ToolBox', a
personal development book that enables the reader to master
any area of their life with amazing speed. Complete
information on Colin G Smith's books are available at his
website,
including a FREE personal development eBook.
Click Here!
Resource Links
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