SELF-ESTEEM: A SELF-DEVELOPED SKILL

 

In psychology, the term self-esteem is used to describe a person’s overall sense of self-worth or personal value. In other words, how much you appreciate and respect yourself. Well we all know that self-esteem can be an important part of success. Too little self-esteem can leave people feeling defeated or depressed. It can also lead people to make bad choices, fall into destructive relationships or fail to live up their full potentials. I believe self-esteem starts in the mind. When born we are born with a promise and its potential which is a secret, invisible and it is surely inside us. This is the case with every person living or dead on the face of this earth and these potential stays “what I can be is up to me and what my life can be is up to me”. The saddest part is that many of us never find our potential and remaining many of us never live our potential. 

Imagine you were born with a Blank Canvas and totally equipped with required colors, brushes and it was totally up to you what you wanted to do with your life canvas. You can use any color, any brush stroke. it was totally up to you where you could paint the painting of your life using the potential that you came with and you can paint any image on that canvas. Creating a masterpiece and calling it the Painting of Life.

 

Now what happens is, as we are born with the canvas - a promise, potential and with this unlimited imagination and instantaneously what starts to happen is people also come and they start painting on your canvas. These people are well-meaning, they mean well some are great and are positive, uplift and support you. But other people keep you small and condition you, they tease and pull you down. All of these other people are painting on your canvas making our masterpiece. This continues for a number of years and then suddenly you start to realize the painting doesn’t quite look the same anymore. It’s something different than you had thought but this continues for further number of years and then eventually you start accepting that this painting is the one that should be your life. Basically, accepting other people’s ideas, conditioning and perspectives about you as your reality. Now people have added their conditionings, ideas and perspective on your mind space as colours and brush strokes which we now want to change.

The blank canvas we are born with is a mind space which explains the statement self-esteem starts in the mind. The thoughts are the colors used to make the masterpiece of life. They can be positive feelings, up lifting or will be negative feelings and these thoughts create our values, beliefs and ultimately our Self-Esteem. So, everything that you think in the mind about what has happened in your life until now is what is creating your self-esteem. It is this self-esteem that will make or break you in life. 

 

Leonardo da Vinci’s drawing of The Vitruvian Man is one of the most popular world icons was created by around the year 1487. It is accompanied by notes based on the work of famed architect, Vitruvius Polio. The drawing is on display occasionally at Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice, Italy. Every year when on display around six million people visit this place to see the drawing as it is very iconic and beautiful. Being a piece of heritage and volume of visitors The Vitruvius Polio is guarded around a lot of security but astonishingly you never see this security. The moment there is any step taken closer by any means the guards can race them and they protect the canvas. 

From today onwards our mind, panelist or mind space is like that Vitruvius Polio drawing and we guard it. We will allow people inside who are positive, up lifters, encouragers and the ones giving us confidence rejecting others who are negative, pull us down and the ones who tell us we are no good. This doesn’t mean you start removing people from your lives, some people are positive and some are negative but it means you do not allow the negativity into your mind space.

 

Imagine for a moment now looking at your painting of life. There are things positive as well as negative painted on it. Looking at it as it is, decide are you happy with the masterpiece, are you happy with your life or a bit frustrated. If frustrated the its time to make some changes and make some choices. This is how we move forward and make a decision only out of these two choices. First, we can accept the negativity and discouragements or Second, we can start to take action. We can take action knowing that we can are making a difference in our lives. 

 

There is a popular Indian saying “the bite of the snake does not kill you but it is the poison that is left behind once the snake is gone which is fatal”. We all have events in our lives where something bad had happened many years ago and we continue to think about it longer even after the event has happened. So, the the bite of the snake represents the event and we thinking about it long after it has happened is the poison. 

 

Solution: What’s already painted on you canvas stays on it. You may try to scrape off the paint. The scrapping will make it look uglier. So, the solution is as simple as you start repainting on you canvas. This means you are choosing not to develop negative thoughts and would repaint it with new colors of positive thoughts, ideas and experiences. From this moment, onwards you can change the way you think and act. 

 

Let me introduce you to a simple yet effective therapy and it is called THE SMILE THERAPY. It is a self-therapy and doesn’t need expertise like other therapies do. 

Practical: So, think about something that makes you angry. Feel that anger in your body and remember where you felt it the most. Now relax, get a small smile think of the same something and could you connect to the anger? The smile that you introduced to the memory that get you anger changed the definition or trigger to your emotion. 

 

There are two types of smiles. The smile that everyone regularly uses is called a laugh because of something funny. On the other hand, Mac smile a is create smile. In other words, its fun when you smile. By creating your smile, you can change your mind from negative to positive. As a result, it will improve your health, aesthetics and interpersonal relationships. The objective is to improve your overall human capability by improving your appearance with smile training and your inner strength with mental training.

 

This works on two principles: 

(1)FACIAL DOUBLE FEEDBACK EFFECT   

When the brain detects that you are having fun or liking something, it will naturally raise your mouth’s corner turning it into a smile. This is because a pleasure hormone called endocrines gets released in the brain.

 

(2)MIRROR EFFECT

Imagine a mirror between you and the other person. When you smile, they will smile right back; when they smile, you smile right back at them. Conversely, the transfer of your grim face onto the other person is called the reverse mirror effect.

 

Let me introduce you to another simple yet an effective technique and it’s called STOP. This technique is very effective and works for everyone. STOP technique just means when you have a negative thought you STOP your mind and mouth to introduce a pause. Then you introduce in a positive thought. Here you think of the positive instead of the negative. A positive thought is something that makes you happy the moment you think about it. Researchers have concluded that humans have about 50,000 thoughts every day. Miraculously all of those thoughts are the same you had yesterday and the day before and the day before that. Researchers have even proven that majorly those thoughts are negative. If we have low self-esteem then we have more negative thoughts of everybody else and we think about the past more than anybody else. 

 

The first thing every morning most of us do is we check our mobile phones. So, today onwards the first thing we do every morning is we stop checking our mobile phones and replace it with checking our mind space for the thought we have woken with. Consider you waking up with a negative thought – I am still tiered / I didn’t sleep enough / I drank too much / my exam today is going to be a blunder. We are going to say STOP to that negative though introduce a pause with a positive thought. This is when you are paining positivity over the negativity on your mind-space/canvas. You think of the positive thought for about 20/30/40 seconds and then you start your day.

 

Concluding with two easy solutions to nullify the negative emotions triggering bad thoughts majorly affecting your SELF-ESTEEM by virtue of The Smile Therapy and STOP technique you keep repeating this during the day. You have happy thoughts you have happy emotions and you take happier actions and lead a happier life. So, do not care what your past has been like nor what has occurred to you in your life until this moment. What really matters is how you move forward from this moment onwards. Remember you are the child born with the promise and the potential is still inside each and every one of you. It is the time you shine and bring out your potential choose your thoughts and repaint it on your canvas making it a masterpiece. 

SELF LOVE

 

Have you ever asked yourself “what defines me as a person and makes me the person I am”? Most of us characterise ourselves through a physical image of our profession, bank balance and mostly on what are people's opinion about us. We initially determine ourselves through three things termed as people’s opinion about us, our personality and physical appearance (physique for boys | figure for girls) and our relationships. The very initial need of pleasing people ti make everyone to like us. The more likeable we are the chances of us being needed, important and popular. Shaping us to a person that everyone would like. Simply said a life on opinion of others. It goes relentlessly immoral when we indulge in attaining the perfect physique/figure by dieting and cutting down on our meals. Furthermore getting in a relationship where we believe happiness comes from that one person we are affectionate to and we manage to pressurise them to be everything to us in exchange of making us feel worthy. Resulting the relationship to end and leaving us devastating/heart broken. So, broken that we lose our sense of identity, the only reason being that we do not know ourselves at all. 

 

Going forward we heal ourselves listening to positive affirmations, reading motivational books and seeking methods to find our happiness for ourselves. Thus, realising our capabilities of being our own self. To rectify our earlier mistakes of letting these things to control and consume our lives we seek happiness around these things and never ever seem to find it. Overlooking the fact that happiness is something we create on our terms for ourselves. The world that we live in is something we create for ourselves regardless to worldly society we actually live in. It’s about an individual's world each and every one of us experiences. This is where we shape ourselves, our worlds and our lives too. There is only one part of the universe we can all be certain about changing and that’s ourselves. 

 

Self-love is a state of appreciation for oneself that grows from actions that support our physical, psychological and spiritual growth. Self-love means having high regards to your own well-being and happiness, taking care of your own needs and not to sacrifice it to please others. Self-love means not settling for less than you deserve.

I came across a wonderful book named Fifteen Invaluable Laws by John Maxwell. The writer summarising facts we often ignore quotes “As children our bodies grow automatically a year goes by we get taller we become stronger become capable of doing more things facing new challenges. But a lot of us carry a subconscious belief into adulthood. That spiritual, mental and emotional growth occurs automatically too”. Personal growth has to be intentional and we need to take ownership of our growth process because we do not simply improve by coincidence. It's only when we focus our energy on getting to know and spending more time by ourselves resulting in learning more about ourselves. We need to make ourselves a priority in our lives and self-discovery is the best gift we can present ourselves.

 

Many people may think putting ourselves first is being selfish but it actually means taking a stand, looking at yourself saying “I will do everything in my power to see myself succeed and fulfil my dreams. I am going to make the best choices in my life, surround myself with self-chosen correct people that add value to me”. Once we decide to love who we are, we can take that self-love and spread it to other's. Without self-love, we are limiting our ability to add ourselves into lives of other people and add value to them. Living the best version of our self inspires other people to follow to live their best version as well. 

 

The relationship we have with ourselves is priority and important. It is how we see and treat ourselves reciprocating to how we treat other people. It is irrational to give love to other's when we don’t love our selves first. We must now think of every person that surrounds us asking ourselves “are these people adding value or helping me grow into the person I wish to become”. Then finally ask to ourselves “am I adding value to me?” These two questions are crucial since people we are alongside life has major impact and influence in our personality, growth and development. Nevertheless, we ourself are the biggest impact and influence dwellers in our lives. 

So, if the answer to these two questions is NO, then let's decide today that we go through a transformation. If you decide to take that transformation do not just place a small amount of value to yourself since it is guaranteed that the world will not raise your worth. KNOW YOUR OWN SELF-WORTH. Concluding on a positive note, let’s start focusing, developing and improving ourselves for good thing will surely come along. It is about time you notice the gap between where you are currently and where you see yourself can be achieved only with constant growth. This thing called life happening alongside is genuinely difficult yet worth living. Wishing you all a life where you have high regards for yourself, prioritise yourself and appreciate your gift called life. Love yourself and the world will love you back inevitably.

HEALTHY ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIP !!

Intimacy, Security, Respect, Good Communication and a sense of being valued these undoubtedly are elements which most people would agree involves in a healthy relationship. Many researchers and scholars have worked and agree to these elements in their findings and articles on healthy relationships. They also mention that frequent arguments between couples, lack of support, contempt, criticism, hostility are a few negative elements that take place in the relationship causing a lot of unhappiness and discomfort to either partners and in most cases, includes both. This leads to an ending of a relationship or divorce, a decision taken to part ways as there is no substantial reason to continue. Break-ups or divorce is just not any course of action or judgement, it is by human psychology making people physically and emotionally confused. This is by far the only reason that people engage into unhealthy relationships. Majority of us are unaware of the elements, do’s and don’ts of a healthy relationship because we are never formally explained. We learn from our experiences, right from the first couple in our lives our parents adding to famous personalities thinking and forming an idol healthy relationship prototype or benchmark. The truth of the moment is we consider Couples Therapy or talking to elders when it’s almost unamendable. Here the couples realize either the elderly or therapist do not understand or are considered biased or they were never meant to be together. The true reason being we have become intolerant to change and cannot accept the fact went were wrong somewhere. Most of this knowledge based on personal experience is shared with us right before marriage be it talking to a groom or bride to be. Most of it are partners who feel trapped in their relationships and are sharing perspectives of their partners being incompetent feeding the misery making it even more difficult because the person has already selected and what if it’s a bad choice for a partner? Isn’t that a bit too late to even share experiences and perspectives? The bottom line is “NO EXPERIENCED OR THERAPIST GUIDANCE CAN MAKE UP FOR A BAD PARTNER CHOICE.”

We need to adapt and learn about having a healthy relationship because it has been limited as they fail to address three major concerns. 

1.     Knowing what you need in a relationship 

2.     Selecting the right person 

3.     Developing and using skills from the beginning. 

We need to learn about our future relationships at a very young age following a skill based approach to relationships functioning leads us to create a healthy relationship reducing the ones that may lead to unhealthy ones. It consists of INSIGHT, MUTUALITY AND EMOTIONAL REGULATION forming the base of Romantic Competence. It is the ability to function adaptively across all aspects of a relationship process right from understanding what you need in choosing the right partner to building a healthy relationship, maintaining and growing one also for times where you need to get out of a relationship. 

INSIGHT is about awareness, understanding and learning. With insight, you can understand who you are, what you need and why do you react the way you always do. For instance, you are being irritable to your partner, with insight you may realize it is not something related to your partner it can be your work stress where you need to calm down so that it doesn’t bleed on to your relationship. It will also let you understand your partner better making you to able to anticipate the positive and negative consequences of your behavior. With insight, you will learn from your mistakes in a way that will allow you to behave in the future. For instance, maybe you will be able to understand that you are the kind of person which jumps into romance early and then things don’t work out and then would realize for the next time would be slow and easy to not to repeat the same mistake.  

 

Mutuality, it is about understanding that both people have needs and both senses of needs matter is the second skill. With mutuality, you will be able to communicate your own needs clearly likely making it to be met. For instance, you are to attend an office function and are needed to deliver a speech. You will be able to communicate to your partner that its going to be quite stressful there your need of them to accompany you as they are a good support. Similarly, with mutuality you will even understand to meet your partners needs as well and also makes you make decisions which are best for the both of you. Switching roles in the previous case, consider your partner has asked you to accompany them to an office event you will be able to rationalize and fulfill their needs adjusting your schedule for that day in advance not to disturb your priorities as well.

 

The third skill is EMOTIONAL REGULATION, is the response to things that happen in your relationship. With emotional regulation, you will be able to keep your emotions calm in your relationship and keep things in a positive angle of approach. For instance, in tight situations you may consider it as a disaster, difficult for you to handle and things like it’s the end of it wherein with emotional regulation you will consider it something that is manageable and you will be able to handle it. With emotional regulation, you will be able to tolerate uncomfortable feelings and not react impulsively making you to think yourself through the situation easily. It will make you maintain self-respect and commitment to your needs even if bad things happen in your relationships.

 

So, I believe insight, mutuality and emotional regulation when practiced on a day-to-day basis can help people with a healthy relationship. Being romantically competent at a young age is associated with more adaptive relationship functioning and greater individual wellbeing. We may know what a healthy relationship looks like but people have no idea how to have one and no one teaches us to do so. It is to know what an individual wants in a relationship and is able to choose the right partner. The decision made should be strong enough to deal with the challenges the relationships bring. Bringing to the conclusion that we need to learn and build skills right from the beginning. As this is the notion of Relationship Competence about. I strongly believe for sustaining a successful and motivated life the key is a good partner that we lack by making wrong choices and end up unhappy and lonely. I hope this adds value to your living and may you have a relationship you can depend and feel proud of.