Do you ever worry that you are not “good enough,” “not smart enough,” or just “don’t have what it takes,”? If so, you’re not alone. Many people have these thoughts. While it may be helpful to know that you are not alone, these thoughts can really interfere with your ability to achieve the things you want most out of life.

A recent report published by the Priory Group addressed the issue of low self esteem,  reporting that millions of British women are suffering from low self esteem that prevents them from having healthy relationships and reduces their overall quality of life. The report, titled, I’m Not Good Enough, surveyed the women on several issues and concluded that these problems are pervasive.

Have you ever seriously thought about your self esteem? Do any of the following statements ring true for you?

1.  I’m just not good enough to get what I want.

2.  At times I feel worthless.

3.  Other people don’t seem care about my needs.

4.  I’m often concerned about what other people might think of me.

5.  From time to time, I worry that there’s something wrong with me.

6.  It seems as though I’m all alone and I must do everything by myself..

7.  Thoughts such as I’m powerless, weak, not safe, helpless often pop into my mind

8.  At times feel like, I’m unlovable or unworthy.

9.  Sometimes in challenging situations, I don’t take care of myself very well.

10. My life is very limited, I have no choice.

If these are things that describe you or how you feel, then low self esteem is most likely limiting you in someway. Interpreting unpleasant experiences from our past often ends up making us think we are less worthy and less deserving of happiness. On the other hand, past circumstances aren’t the only way you might start believing statements such as those above.

For example, have you ever heard someone say something about you and you took it to mean that one of those statements must then be true about you? Now, just because someone says something about you doesn’t make it “THE TRUTH”, but the consequences of believing it is true can have a serious affect on your self-esteem.

On the other hand, self esteem doesn’t just miraculously improve when someone makes a positive statement about you either. Often it’s quite the opposite; many self esteem building experts now suggest we should back off from over-praising our children and making them feel good without having them put forth any effort or motivation.

The truth is, self esteem is not really the goal, it should be considered as more of a result of a person’s confidence in themselves, and knowing what they are capable of achieving. It is often described as a way to explain how well your actions produce results.

Can you learn to build self esteem? Yes, definitely. But only if you are able to transform the limiting beliefs that you hold, these are the things that are preventing you from developing enough competency to make you feel confident.

Before you can build self esteem you must take those limiting beliefs and transform them into new beliefs, ones that lead you to develop new skills or improve old ones. This is not as difficult as it seems. There’s a formula you can apply to help you work through the process, think of it as putting out a fire—the fire that has burned up your self esteem. You’ve most likely heard the phrase, “stop, drop and roll,” and this is what you need to do to build your self esteem.

How does this work? First, you must Stop and listen to the warnings you are hearing from yourself. Then, you need to Drop all judgments of yourself. Finally, you will Roll out a new plan to improve your beliefs.

Stop

Before you can make any changes, you need to identify how you feel. It is often easiest to start with feelings of discomfort—take these as the early warning signs. As soon as you begin to feel this way, immediately Stop and try to identify those judging thoughts that are running through your head. It can be helpful to actually write these thoughts down on paper.

Drop

Once identified, the judgments need to be quickly Dropped. This means you need to know what is truly important to you. When you figure out what you value–that has you make these judgments in the first place–you then shift your thinking from judgments to values and focus on them.

For example, ” I’m just not good enough to get what I want.” might change into focusing on how important accomplishment, or happiness are to you. Try these statements on for size, which feels better? ” I’m just not good enough to get what I want.” How does that feel? Now try this one, “I care so much about accomplishing things and being happy is very important.” How does that feel? Can you feel the difference?

Roll

Dropping judgments can put out those awful fires that have burned down your self esteem. After the fire is gone, get ready to Roll out a new plan, one that focuses on what is most important to you and one that focuses on your strengths. Plan to include two or more specific actions that will support you on your new path to improved your confidence and increased happiness. For instance, if you are looking to find more satisfaction in your career, perhaps your plan could include refreshing and updating your resume and pursuing some new job interviews.

How many do you have?

Have you ever counted how many remotes you have in your home? You probably have at least several, one for the television, the DVD player, the CD player, and even one for the garage door. Each remote is one that you probably can’t live without, each one having a specific purpose. You can perform powerful actions and make changes using each of these remotes.

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The one remote that’s more important than all others

What you may not have realized is that you also have something that works like a remote control for your brain. This remote is especially powerful, and allows you to change the way you think.

How much of your time do you spend on a negative talk station? Would you like to listen to a “different station” now and then? Well then it’s probably time to use your remote by choosing to listen to a station that broadcasts more positive messages, ones that give you support and encouragement, rather than judgment and negativity.

Stop listening to the messages that say, “I am not good enough, smart enough, good-looking enough “, “I can’t, I should have, I shouldn’t have,” and start tuning into the channel that tells you that you CAN do it, you are good enough, and you’ve done a great job.

“Affirmations are like prescriptions for certain aspects of yourself you want to change.” ~ Jerry Frankhauser

It’s time for a change

So don’t you think it’s time you use your built in remote to change the channel to a more positive station? How do you think you’d feel if you start to hear messages such as, “I am worthy,” and “I can get what I want from life.”?

When you choose to only tune in to the positive messages station, you will create the kind of [tag-tec]self help[tag-tec] strategies that you need to accomplish your dreams.

Anyone that has experienced the power of positive belief statements can attest to the changes that ensue when you use your internal remote to change that negative believe channel to a more positive one.

Allowing ourselves to focus on improving our self esteem and our self image can bring peace and harmony into our lives, along with a much more authentic happiness.

Of Course You want more Love and Intimacy in Your Relationship

We’re starting this post with the assumption that you want a satisfying and deeply intimate relationship with your spouse or significant other. If so, then it’s important to remember that the most successful relationships start with people who love themselves. The sooner you start giving yourself the kind of love that you’d like to experience in your relationship, the more fulfilling and intimate your relationship will become.

But do you ever wonder what the phrases “self-love” or “loving yourself” really mean, or what they have to do with creating a deeper sense of marriage intimacy? Even if you see the connection, do you wonder how to go about learning to truly love yourself?

Self Love Starts Here

Here’s the very first step: start noticing all the wonderful things about you! We know this might sounds simplistic, but you might be surprised how many people there are who, on a regular basis, simply ignore or don’t notice all the wonderful things about themselves.

“You must first love yourself before you can fully love another…” ~ Jennifer Good

How often do you stop and take the time to acknowledge yourself — to notice the things you enjoy about yourself? The best way to do this is to begin a practice of consciously focusing your attention on the wonderful things about you. Each morning make a conscious intention to notice and write down at least 10 things you enjoy about yourself during the day. When you go to bed at night, take time to review the list and appreciate yourself for these things.

Try It and Then Decide

This might sound a little silly, but when you start practicing this regularly you’ll be amazed how much better you feel about yourself, and how quickly loving yourself at a deeper level will follow. Once you feel this sense of self love and acceptance we guarantee it can’t help but stimulate more love, acceptance and intimacy in your relationship.

So now you know you know how to fill in the blank in the title of this post: Marriage Intimacy Begin With YOU.

So get out there and start consciously loving yourself–no one else can do this for you.

The Ups and Downs of Self Esteem?

In order to raise your self esteem, improve your self confidence and just plain start feeling good about yourself, you must stop protecting yourself from the ups and downs you feel when you are judged or criticized. People will always have opinions, some people will like you and some won’t. You will succeed at some things and not others. Some people will think you’re wonderful and some will criticize you. Rather than defending yourself from these negative judgments and opinions, start translating them into what they truly mean…

How do you react to being  judged or criticized?

If you believe that your self-esteem is attached to how you feel in each moment, whether someone likes you or not, or whether you succeed or fail with your goals, then it will feel like your sense of self-esteem is on a roller coaster ride.

A great woman once said,

“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”

The woman was Eleanor Roosevelt and she understood that you and you alone are responsible for how you feel. Why would you feel bad about what someone else thinks of you unless you are worried about it being true in some way?

Now, you’re not alone in this. The “habitual way of being” of constantly buying into the judgments of others is extremely common. In most cultures we are actually taught that our parents, teachers, and most other adult authorities were the best judge of whether we were good or bad, right or wrong, or acting appropriately or inappropriately. With this as our training, why wouldn’t we grow up believing that we are defined by other people’s judgments of us?

We are trained so well in fact that as we grow up we learn to judge ourselves in these same ways. So then, not only did we lean to worry about the judgments of others, we become paralyzed by our judgments of ourselves.

If this sounds all too familiar to you then the question becomes: how do we get out of this mental habit so we can improve our self-confidence and start feeling good about ourselves?

“The only way to change is by changing your understanding.” ~ Anthony De Mello

The key is to get conscious

A good first step toward becoming conscious is to recognize that our low self-esteem has deep roots in our fear of being judged, both by ourselves and others.

The next step is to start translating these judgments into the truth of what they really mean. This may be hard to see at first, but we’ve found that every judgment springs from a desire to support you.

You might be saying; “Support me, how can anything so negative and destructive be supportive?”

“Suffering occurs when something is taken for what it’s not, rather than for what it is.” ~Suzanne Segal

Judgments and criticisms are never about you. They are about the values and needs of the person expressing them. We believe that within every judgment or criticism–even the ones you have about yourself–there are core values that the person making the judgment wants to experience or needs they want to have met.

As an example, let’s say you locked your keys in the car and the person riding with you says to you with a tone of disgust; “You’re such an idiot!” Then you say to yourself; “They’re probably right. That was a stupid thing to do.” This response is a reaction from your old conditioning. Whenever you respond without investigating the deeper meaning of these negative labels you reinforce this “habitual way of being”. It’s no wonder that anger, frustration, sadness, and lowered self-esteem are the result.

“Whenever anything negative happens to you, there is a deep lesson concealed within it, although you may not see it at the time.” ~Eckhart Tolle

But let’s take a look at what happens after you’ve become conscious of this old pattern and have chosen to respond from the understanding that every judgment or criticism is stimulated by a value or a need that has yet to be revealed.

We’ll use the same example where somebody says; “You’re such an idiot!” But this time — rather than defending yourself or submitting to the judgment — you respond with curiosity and say to yourself; “I wonder what’s going on with them, what value are they trying to experience or what need are they trying to met?”

You are now ready to take the third step. This is when you start guessing what the other person may value or need that would lead them to say such a thing in the first place. This process requires that you develop your Values Intelligence.

Similar to Emotional Intelligence, Values Intelligence is the ability to identify the deeply held values that motivates a person’s thoughts, intentions, strategies, and the actions they take. It’s also the ability to recognize, regardless of our circumstances, what we personally hold deeply important. Our Values Intelligence is what allows us to, in an instant, form our own intentions and strategies so they are in harmony with the essence of who we are at a very profound level.

In our example the person may value predictability or carefulness and their remark is the best way they know how to encourage you to pay attention to these traits. They may be in a hurry and the remark was stimulated by their value for integrity or punctuality and they were hoping to let you know how worried they are about being late.

“In wisdom gathered over time I have found that every experience is a form of exploration.” ~Ansel Adams

It’s important to remember that you can’t know what the other person may value from a critical remark such as this. You can only put yourself in their shoes, guess what might lead you to make such a statement in a similar situation, and then perhaps ask them if your guess is accurate.

The crucial thing here is that, whether or not you get to what is important to them, you have taken your attention off of what might be “wrong with you” and placed your attention on discovering the hidden motivation that stimulated the comment in the first place.

Learn to turn your attention from the superficial judgments and criticisms you may hear to discovering the underlying values and needs that they so effectively hide, and you’ll also learn to turn their sting into a sense of anticipation about exploring a deeper connection and understanding with the person making them.

When you stop buying into these judgments you’ll start discovering it’s surprisingly easy to figure out how everyone can experience more of what they value in life. You’ll find that this ability to translate negative judgments and criticisms into their true meaning can lead to a deep sense of self-confidence and feeling good about yourself.

And isn’t that what self esteem is–feeling good about yourself?

Start with Yourself

Great relationships start with people who already love themselves. Intimacy like any other aspect of a great relationship begins with the love and intimacy you have with yourself. The more you learn how to love yourself, the more you can love others–and the more love you will experience in return.

Regardless of your relationship status–single, dating, married, or divorced–intimacy can only be achieved by learning about self-love or “loving yourself first”. This is the first step to experiencing the kind of fulfillment and deep intimacy you want in your relationships.

Start Today!

How do you enhance you ability to love yourself? First, commit to noticing all of the terrific things about yourself, and celebrate when you do. When you focus on what you appreciate about yourself, you’ll find that others will begin to notice them too.

“You, yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.”
~ Buddha

It takes a practice to focus your attention on all of the positive things about yourself. It might seem like negative self-talk is the norm. When you focus on only the negative aspects of yourself, not only do you miss your own beauty, you tend to discount the love others express for you.

Start Because You’re Worth It

Few people actually take time to recognize their own wonderful qualities. The sooner that you can start to appreciate your good qualities and love and appreciate yourself for them, the sooner your relationships will become happier, more satisfying, and more intimate.

Make a conscious choice to do this and you’ll find yourself more able to fully love and receive love from others.

Remember, the shortest path to a happy life is found through conscious choice.